BIB_ID
103418
Accession number
MA 22928
Creator
Fordyce, James, 1720-1796.
Display Date
Place not specified, before 1771.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 22.4 x 18.5 cm
Notes
The letter is undated, however it would have been written before May 21, 1771 when he married Henrietta Cumming.
Henrietta Cumming worked as a governess for the family of James Lindsay, 5th Earl of Balcarres and staged a hunger strike in order to be permitted to eat with the family and not with the servants.
Address panel to "Mrs. Cokburne."
Removed from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: Printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791), I, 193; PML 9812-9815.
Henrietta Cumming worked as a governess for the family of James Lindsay, 5th Earl of Balcarres and staged a hunger strike in order to be permitted to eat with the family and not with the servants.
Address panel to "Mrs. Cokburne."
Removed from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: Printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791), I, 193; PML 9812-9815.
Summary
Expressing his distress, his concern and his love for Henrietta Cumming; thanking her for her letter and "...kind intention & endeavour to relieve me. I wish you had succeeded better. But, alas, it gives me little comfort to hear that your Sylph neither eats nor sleeps. I had just heard that she was in as good health & spirits as her friends had ever seen her, Miss Annie Keith had told my Sister so in her way through Durham to Bristol. The account made me as happy as I could be under so long a silence; which last I imputed to the cause you mention - 'a real disease' - not in her heart, which is the soundest & noblest I ever knew, but in her constitution which does not do the other justice, & I fear never will. But it was her heart for which I parted with mine; & whether she writes me or no, whether she sends what she has written or no, whether she enjoy health & spirits or wants them, I will rely on the truth & glory in her affections. My chief regret is to think, as you observe, that 'her mind is too acute & too much wrought for any Situation she is in;" adding that it would be "...his greatest honour to enjoy & cultivate the attachment of Henrietta Cumming, & who wishes for nothing in this world so ardently as to be able to place her in a situation worthy of her. Till then I shall deem my portion incompleat...My very pains for that angel have pleasure in them...I was afraid our lovely friend was not pleased with the miniature as she had omitted to acknowledge her having received it which I supposed she [cut out] do weeks ago, from the time Mr. Loch left Lon[don]...Not even your pencil, Madam, could give compleat the image that reigns & will forever reign in the breast of your friend & servant / James Fordyce / Wednesday night."
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