BIB_ID
330986
Accession number
MA 494.5
Creator
Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797.
Display Date
1789 Apr. 28.
Credit line
Acquired by Pierpont Morgan, before 1904.
Description
1 item (3 p.) ; 16.5 cm
Notes
Location of writing identified by Lewis and Wallace as [Berkeley Square].
Numbered "No. 5."
Part of a collection of letters from Horace Walpole to Mary and Agnes Berry. Items in the collection have been described individually; see related collection-level record for more information. See also MA 495 (Letters from Walpole to the Misses Berry, 1791-1793); MA 496 (Letters from Walpole to the Misses Berry, 1794-1796, and letters from the Misses Berry to Walpole); and MA 497 (letters to various persons and miscellaneous writings).
Recipients identified by Lewis and Wallace.
Numbered "No. 5."
Part of a collection of letters from Horace Walpole to Mary and Agnes Berry. Items in the collection have been described individually; see related collection-level record for more information. See also MA 495 (Letters from Walpole to the Misses Berry, 1791-1793); MA 496 (Letters from Walpole to the Misses Berry, 1794-1796, and letters from the Misses Berry to Walpole); and MA 497 (letters to various persons and miscellaneous writings).
Recipients identified by Lewis and Wallace.
Provenance
Given by Mary Berry to Sir Frankland Lewis; by descent to his daughter-in-law Lady Theresa Lewis; by descent to her son Sir Thomas Villiers Lister; by descent to his wife Lady Lister; Acquired by Pierpont Morgan before 1904.
Summary
Sending them "the most delicious poem on earth," remarking that Dryden's "Flower and Leaf" was simply the prototype for Darwin's "Botanic Garden." Further praising Darwin's poem, wondering "how strange it is that a man should have been inspired with such enthusiasm of poetry by poring through a microscope, and peeping through the keyholes of all the seraglios of all the flowers in the universe!" Referencing the "universal polygamy going on in the vegetable world" and maintaining that it is better to have two wives to one husband than the other way around.
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