Description:

Charles Dickens accepts an invitation to dinner with the John Latrhop Motley the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain at which the pair good-humoredly needled each other over the author's American Sketches

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) Autograph Note Signed, "Charles Dickens," 1 page, 4.5" x 7" on his Gad's Hill Place stationery, "5 Hyde Park Place W[estminster]," February 28, 1870, to Sir Edward Bruce Hamely (1824-1893) Faint dampstains, else fine.

Dickens writes to "My Dear Colonel Hamley," accepting a dinner invitation: "I shall be delighted to dine with you on at the Army and Navy [Club] on Friday the 11th March."

Dickens and Hamley were joined by several others on March 11 by Horatio Walpole, John Lothrop Motley, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, and Russell Sturgis. According to one observer who sat next to Dickens, recalled that the author "was remarkably agreeable; his conversation was so affluent, so delightfully alive, so unaffected. When dickens was in congenial company—and he had the happy faculty of making it congenial to himself—he talked like a demon on delightfulness. At this repast Motley, who was very fond of Dickens, poked a good deal of pleasant fun at him, especially about his American Sketches, pretending to be Mark Tapley; much to Dickens' joy, who gave it to him back with interest. This was the more diverting as we knew how sensitive Motely usually as regards America and the Americans, and certainly Dickens had tried him…" (Collins, Dickens: Interviews and Recollections, 1981, 116)

Beyond his military exploits in the Crimean War and in Egypt, Hamley, who rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in the British Army, was also a frequent contributor to literary magazines. His military and literary accomplishments earned him a professorship of military history at Sandhurst. He later sat as an MP in Parliament for Birkenhead as a Conservative.

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