BIB_ID
126771
Accession number
MA 9520.2
Creator
Elliston, R. W. (Robert William), 1774-1831.
Display Date
1816 May 27.
Credit line
Purchased, 1891.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 20.4 x 16 cm
Notes
Signed with initials.
Address panel with postmark: "Mrs Elliston / 9 Stratford Place / Oxford Road / London."
There is a short note in an unknown hand on the address panel, summarizing the contents of the letter.
Part of a collection of three letters from R. W. Elliston to his wife Elizabeth Rundall Elliston. Each item has been described in an individual catalog record.
Removed from an extra-illustrated volume from the series Dramatic Memoirs (PML 9505-9528).
Address panel with postmark: "Mrs Elliston / 9 Stratford Place / Oxford Road / London."
There is a short note in an unknown hand on the address panel, summarizing the contents of the letter.
Part of a collection of three letters from R. W. Elliston to his wife Elizabeth Rundall Elliston. Each item has been described in an individual catalog record.
Removed from an extra-illustrated volume from the series Dramatic Memoirs (PML 9505-9528).
Provenance
Purchased from Henry Sotheran & Co., London, 1891.
Summary
Beginning "If I did not regard you with a respect & fervour more [than] commonly to be found, I should be inclined to be angry at your last intemperate letter"; continuing "That you have mortified me I am free to confess, that you have distressed & hurt me, I feel, & at what a period does this uneasy ebullition arrive? when I am pursuing a mode of life most exemplary"; defending himself: "You have yourself been a witness of my late conduct, you have had my undivided attention, you have beheld my anxiety, & my endeavours to do every act of justice to you & yours, & I think you treat me unkindly by your ungenerous suspicions"; referring to a letter addressed to him that she had read: "What is the mighty crime in the subject you have read in it; a difficulty in which a part of her property is involved occurs, & I am applied to for my advice. I have told you in honour & in confidence that I owe an obligation there, I am now applied to, to discharge a part of it. Is this a crime? I have paid a part of it. Is that a crime? & having altogether abandoned any connection, & giving her notice to quit the house, must I dishonestly deny my debt"; protesting "To you my dear Betsy, I have ever been a kind, a tender & affectionate husband; the errors that I have run in to, have been errors of the head, my heart was never, never, engaged in them"; referring to his plans, which will "place us in a comfortable independance"; adding "I am not on very good terms with the world, & I have no comfort that I wish to look to, but in the bosom of my own family. We have full affection & means within ourselves for all my wishes & let us not destroy them"; concluding "God bless you" and sending "Love to the Circle."
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