BIB_ID
129405
Accession number
MA 1581.8
Creator
Baillie, Joanna, 1762-1851.
Display Date
Hampstead, 1820 December 8.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 22.9 x 18.7 cm
Notes
Baillie gives the place of writing as "Hampstead Hollybush hill." Hampstead is located in the Borough of Camden, London.
The signature has been cut away.
Address panel with intact seal and postmarks: "Sir George Beaumont Bar[t] / Coleorton Hall / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicester Shire."
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.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Baillie) 1.
The signature has been cut away.
Address panel with intact seal and postmarks: "Sir George Beaumont Bar[t] / Coleorton Hall / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicester Shire."
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.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Baillie) 1.
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Telling Beaumont that she is in the midst of preparing a volume for the press, "chiefly containing Metrical Legends or memorials of exalted characters, but added to these are a few ballads and amongst them I have put the Elden Tree which I formerly wrote from your hint, founded on the story which you was so good as to tell"; saying that she would like, in the preface, to mention that it is based on "a true or at least a traditional story" and from whom she heard it, if he has no objections to his name being used; adding "I should also be very glad to be informed of the part of England where this story is supposed to have taken place, and where the tradition of it still remains"; asking him to "[l]et me know your mind frankly upon this subject, and let me do nothing which you at all dislike. It would be pleasant for me to have such a name for my authority, but I should be sorry to gratify myself at any expence of feeling on your part"; mentioning that she had heard that he and Lady Beaumont had intended to spend the winter in Rome, "and afterwards that you had, luckily for your friends here, given it up"; saying that she and her sister Agnes returned from Scotland about a month ago, where they had passed "a very agreeable summer with our old friends there"; describing their return journey in the mail coach and how tantalizing the places they passed through looked, though "I believe it was more so from the lamps of the coach casting that strong light & shadow on the objects as we past which made them appear better worth seeing than they really were"; adding in a postscript that "[o]ne of the pleasantest things which has fallen to our lot since we returned to Hampstead has been meeting your friend Mr Wordsworth with his Wife & sister at Mr [Samuel] Hoares. He looks very thin but Miss W. is really in beauty."
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