- Brief description
- Letter, from Charles Dickens to Margaret Gillies, 23 October 1843
- Label
- In this letter Dickens writes to the portrait artist and social campaigner Miss Margaret Gillies about a sitting the following week. That year she painted a portrait of Dickens which was later lost for a century before emerging in a house sale in South Africa in 2017, now known colloquially as the 'lost portrait'. Dickens also asked Gillies if his friend Daniel Maclise would also be present at the sitting because it would be befitting the “spirit” of the desired portrait - this was a joke about the painting appearing in the publication New Spirit of the Age.
- Collection
- Archives & Manuscripts
- Object number
- A240
- Object type
- letter
- Production person
- Dickens, Charles
- Production date
- 23/10/1843
- Inscription content
- Devonshire Terrace | Monday October Twenty Third | 1843.
Dear Miss Gillies
Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 3 o'Clock, I will dutifully present myself: having now got rid (almost) of a cold, which has ridden rough-shod--to use the favorite newspaper expression--over my features.
Would you like me to ask Mr. Maclise to look in, during the sitting? He has a mighty knowledge of my face, and expressed himself much struck with the "spirit" of your portrait as photographed. "A very little bit"--he said, waving his hand in the air, something [?like an auc]tioneer, and giving it a twist [at] the same time, "would make it ca-pi-tal".
Faithfully Yours always
CHARLES DICKENS
Miss Gillies
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