Letter from Edward FitzGerald, Little Grange, to Thomas Constable, 1874 May 5 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning a Stothard painting which FitzGerald owns and which is "...professing to a View of your Father's house near Edinburgh. I cannot recall the name : but, beside that it is a delicate picture by one of the most delicate and amiable of Painters, I have taken pleasure in believing it to represent the house where your Father and Sir Walter may have often met. The enclosed sketch - or Scratch - will perhaps be sufficient to remind you of any such place as it purports to represent : and I should be obliged to you if you could authenticate it to me...I have never been in Scotland, though I have been these 20 years determining to see Edinburgh, and Abbotsford - Perhaps this Summer! - I fancy, however, that this Picture represents Scotch Landscape, at any rate : indeed the Architecture of the House alone (very dimly indicated in this Sketch) is I suppose enough to assure one of that. I please myself with fancying that the man on horseback may be a kind of Dumbiedikes!~Perhaps Stothard was, at some time, your Father's Guest? The Picture is, I am sorry to say, much cracked, where the transparent glazing was laid on - perhaps before the under-colour was dry. Once more, excuse my troubling you, Sir; and believe, at least, that I am yours, very much interested in your Book."