BIB_ID
234528
Accession number
MA 6123
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1854 January 4.
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2003.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.9 x 11.2 cm
Notes
Written from "Tavistock House."
Georgiana Morson was the matron of Urania Cottage, the home for women in Shepherd's Bush which Dickens managed for its founder, Angela Burdett-Coutts.
There is another letter in the Morgan Library's collection on the same topic, written on the same day, to Angela Burdett-Coutts. This letter has been cataloged as MA 1352.352.
Georgiana Morson was the matron of Urania Cottage, the home for women in Shepherd's Bush which Dickens managed for its founder, Angela Burdett-Coutts.
There is another letter in the Morgan Library's collection on the same topic, written on the same day, to Angela Burdett-Coutts. This letter has been cataloged as MA 1352.352.
Provenance
Mrs. Morson; by descent to Judith Hughes; Susan Shatto.
Summary
Responding to Mrs. Morson's entreaty to give one of the Home's residents, a former prisoner named Rhena Pollard who had threatened to leave Urania Cottage, one more chance; writing "For, every circumstance in her story that makes you pity her, makes her ingratitude towards the benefactress who has tried so hard to rescue her from ruin, the greater. You say that she has no friend in the world, no place to go in this bitter weather, no chance before her but a jail, a hospital, disgrace, misery, despair, Death. I know all this as well as you do, and we both know it far better than she does. How horrible then, to know, at the same moment, that she can be so extraordinarily wicked as under that roof which alone protects her from the great black world of Crime and Shame, to slight the refuge it affords her and audaciously pretend that she desires to leave it!"; saying that there are hundreds of other young women who would happily take Pollard's place; writing "However, at this forgiving Christmas time, and at your request, I will be weaker in my responsibility to my honored friend Miss Coutts, than I believe I have a right to be. Try Rhena Pollard once more. Let her stay. But only on this condition. If you ever hear from her, one word expressive of discontent and an intention to leave the Home ; that instant put the dress upon her and shut the gate upon her for ever;" telling her to inform the other residents that the object of the Home is to "save young women who wish to save themselves" and that it should not be taken for granted; adding "If any young woman ever signifies to you that she wants to go, or conveys to you in any way a threat that she means to leave, make that circumstance immediately known to me, and she shall be taken at her word and instantly discharged;" saying that he has discussed this with Angela Burdett-Coutts and the other gentlemen who help him run the institution and he has their consent to apply this rule strictly.
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