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 Uvedale Price, Foxley, to Sir George Beaumont, 1794 November 28 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
127841
Accession number
MA 1581.67
Creator
Price, Uvedale, Sir, 1747-1829, sender.
Display Date
Foxley, England, 1794 November 28.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 23.5 x 18.7 cm
Notes
Written from Foxley, Price's estate near Yazor, Herefordshire.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Price) 1.
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family.
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Telling Beaumont how much he and his wife Caroline were amused by the "little friend" enclosed in a previous letter (the reference appears to be to an image or a toy, not a person); saying that he is just about to send off to Beaumont the second-to-last packet of his recent writings, containing "all I have said on prospects & on views down steep hills on both of which I am happy to find how well we agree"; asking for Beaumont's comments and criticism on the work; responding to a question: "I should think that a view down a steep hill, would be picturesque if it was rugged & abrupt just as it would be beautiful if it was soft, smooth, & with gentle swellings, & that it's being capable or not capable of being represented on the canvas would not at all affect the question"; saying that, in his essay, he has extended the idea of the picturesque to include music; mentioning that when Charles Fox read this assertion in his essay, he burst into a "loud laugh" and wrote "questo e un poco troppo [this is a bit much], I am afraid my uncle Toby would whistle Lilleburlero"; saying that he believes, though, that on further reading Fox was convinced; arguing that if the terms "sublime" and "beautiful" taken as general principles can be used to describe music, then "picturesque" can also be so used; adding in that in the last packet he will be sending Beaumont "I have taken great pains to distinguish between the general & the more confined sense of Beauty & I flatter myself the explanation & illustrations I have given will obviate many objections that have been made to Mr. Burke as well as to myself & particularly by our friend [Richard Payne] Knight"; discussing the health of Knight's mistress: "She is I fear in a gallopping consumption with very little hopes of her recovery, & I believe it has very much affected his spirits as it well may. I judge from her letters one of which I received very lately for he has not been here this summer & I have been but once at Downton"; saying that his wife wishes to be remembered to Lord and Lady Beaumont.