Autograph letter signed : London, to Clarkson Stanfield, "Friday Night" [1821-1845?].

Discussing an "absurd" rumor circulating regarding a painting; saying "I am more concernd than surprizd to find that the nonsense you allude to has reached Sir Martin's ears, but surely he cannot at all suppose that any thing so absurd could for a moment be listened to by anyone with the slightest degree of credit. Pray, for the sake of the Common Sense of the Club, disabuse him if it be otherwise - I have been at several Committee meetings lately, & the fact of its never having been even alluded to in any one of them, till you mentioned last Saturday that you had got the picture, would be an ample refutation of the idea that the remotest degree of attention had been paid to so ridiculous a story. A report that the Lord Mayor was in training for a set to at Moulsey Hunt with 'young Dutch Sam' would, I should conceive, gain an equal degree of belief. I never knew, for my own part, that Sir Martin had the picture at all till I was told of it in connexion with this foolish piece of mystification. For such I have no doubt it has been;" saying he cannot come to the Committee meeting "...but I am quite sure, if you think it worth while to mention the matter, there is not one then who will not repudiate all belief in it..."