FIRST PAGE OF ONE OF CHARLES DICKENS'S LAST LETTERS, MAY 15, 1870.
Here is one of the last letters he ever wrote, to which I have already alluded as a rare specimen of a valuable autograph written in duplicate:—
Charles Dickens to J. B. Buckstone.
Gad's Hill Place,
Higham by Rochester, Kent
Sunday Fifteenth May 1870.
5 Hyde Park Place W.
My Dear Buckstone,—I send a duplicate of this note to your private address at Sydenham in case it should miss you at the Haymarket.
For a few years past, I have been liable, at wholly uncertain and incalculable times, to a severe attack of Neuralgia in the foot, about once in the course of the year. It began in an injury to the finer muscles or nerves, occasioned by over-walking in deep snow. When it comes on, I cannot stand and can bear no covering whatever on the sensitive place. One of these seizures is upon me now. Until it leaves me I could no more walk into St. James's Hall than I could fly in.
I hope you will present my duty to the Prince, and assure His Royal Highness that nothing short of my being (most unfortunately) disabled for the moment, would have prevented my attending as a Trustee of the Fund, at the dinner, and warmly express my poor sense of the great and inestimable service his Royal Highness renders to a most deserving Institution by so very kindly commending it to the public.
Faithfully your's always
Charles Dickens
J. B. Buckstone Eqr