Dickens, autograph letter signed to Roderick Murchison, 1857

DICKENS, CHARLES

Autograph letter signed, to Sir Roderick Murchison

WITH HIS PASSIONATE SUPPORT FOR ANOTHER POLAR EXPEDITION TO DISCOVER THE TRUE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, Murchison's efforts being "another proof ... of your manly championship on all occasions, of the claims of humanity and the dignity of science", with a withering dismissal of the British government and a promise of his "readiness to call attention to the subject" in a future issue of Household Words, blue ink, 2 pages, 8vo, text on rectos only, Tavistock House, 4 March 1857 

"...I have no belief in the justice or generosity of an English ministry. I have no belief in their caring about anything but themselves and their miserable party strife. I have no belief in their having the least interest in Franklin, or in anything Polar except the polling at corrupt elections..."

The fate of Sir John Franklin had fascinated Dickens and the wider British public since his disappearance in 1847, but had erupted back into public consciousness in 1854 when John Rae's published a report providing evidence of cannibalism. Dickens followed public opinion in dismissing these claims in 'The Lost Arctic Voyagers' (Household Words, December 1854), and now a new expedition was in preparation to discover the truth. The McClintock Artic expedition set forth in July 1857 and went on to discover the last written communications of the expedition.

LITERATURE:

The Letters of Charles Dickens: Volume 12 (2002), pp.675-76

PROVENANCE:

The Pencarrow collects ion of Autographs, sale in these rooms, 8 December 1999, lot 18

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