Gad's Hill, Higham by Rochester
Tuesday Twenty First July, 1857.
My dear Jerdan,
[...]
Andersen went to Paris, to go thence to Dresden and thence home, last Wednesday morning. I took him over to Maidstone, and booked him for Folkestone. He had been here, five weeks. He had spoken of you with much regard, and I understood or fancied, had seen you. But whenever he got to London, he got into wild entanglements of Cabs and Sherry, and never seemed to get out of them again until he came back here, and cout out paper into all sorts of patterns, and tathered the strangest little nosegays in the woods. His unintelligible vocabulary was marvelllous. In French or Italian, he was the Wild Boy - in English, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. My eldest boy swears that the ear of man cannot recognize his German; and his translatress declares to Bentley that he can't speak DanisH!
One day he came home to Tavistock House, apparently suffering from corns that had ripened in two hours. It turned out that a Cab Driver had brought him from the City, by way of the new unfinshed thoroughfare through Clerkenwell. Satisfired that he Cabman was bent on robbery and murder, he had put his watch and money into his boots - together with a Bradshaw, a pocket book, a pair of scissors, a penknife, a book or two, a few letters of introduction, and some other miscellaneaous property.
These are the particulars I am in a condition to report. He received a good many letters - lost (I should say) a good many more - and was for the most part utterly conglomerated - with a general impression that everything was going to clear itself up, 'tomorrow'.
Ever Faithfully
Charles Dickens.
