Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from John Sutherland, Istanbul, to Charles Dickens, 1855 June 27 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
116853
Accession number
MA 1352.674
Creator
Sutherland, John, 1808-1891.
Display Date
Istanbul, Turkey, 1855 June 27.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.5 cm
Notes
The letter is part of a collection, MA 1352, which consists of letters from Charles Dickens to the Baroness, to her companion Hannah (Meredith) Brown, or the latter's husband, William Brown; with ten letters written by Catherine Dickens to Angela Burdett Coutts and 73 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner. See the collection-level record for more information.
Written from "Constantinople / 27th June 1855."
Provenance
The letters formed part of the Burdett-Coutts sale (Sotheby, 17 May 1922); they were purchased for Oliver W. Barrett in whose collection they remained until it was sold by his son (Parke-Bernet, 31 October 1951).
Summary
Reporting on the success of the drying machine; saying "Some ages ago I received a note from you forwarded to me at Balaklava introducing a drying machine and its bearer for the hospital at Scutari. I did what I could with people in and out of authority in Scutari to get their aid in putting up the machine, and heard nothing more of it till the day before yesterday. On that day I went over [to] the hospital for the first time [in] three months and found it in operation. It is well put up, gives great satisfaction and does its work so effectually that the wet clothes, like David Crockets Coon, give in as soon as they have seen it & dry up forthwith, at least such is the general impression if I can judge from the times in which it was spoken of. The Machine does great credit to Miss Coutts' philandryphy and also to your engineering."