Dominic Winter Auctions
Lot 91
* Dickens (Charles, 1812-1870). Autograph cheque signed, ‘Charles Dickens’, London, 3 February 1870, in favour of Mr. Carlin, for twenty-five pounds on a Messrs Coutts & Compy printed cheque, with Dickens’s manuscript insertions and autograph in blue ink, a little spotting, toning and light creasing, short closed tear near date upper right, ink receipt name stamp of ‘London & County Bank, Hanover Square’ partly obscuring ‘Cha’ at start of signature, payee name of ‘T. B. Carlin’ inscribed in brown ink to verso in another hand, 93 x 190 mm The recipient of the cheque was Mr Carlin of the firm of T. B. Carlin, cigar importers, 189 Regent Street, London. Dickens was a devoted cigar smoker who helped popularise the cigar in England, and the highly regarded cigar merchants T. B. Carlin were his suppliers. Thomas Barnes Carlin (1824-1859) had died before this cheque was drawn so it would have been another Carlin family member with whom Dickens was then dealing. In the conclusion to a letter written to Arthur Helps a month later, (6 March 1870), Dickens says: ‘In the accompanying box is a bundle of those choice little cigars duly dried in the summer heat of Gad’s Hill. If you continue to like them and will impress upon Mr. Carlin that you confide in his supplying you as he supplies me, I think you will rarely get any worse’ (The Letters of Charles Dickens: The Pilgrim Edition, Volume 12, 1868-1870, p. 500). Dickens died three months later, following a stroke at his Gads Hill Place home, on 9 June 1870.QTY: (1)