BIB_ID
363220
Accession number
MA 49.9
Creator
Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 1730-1815.
Display Date
[1787 May 21].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913.
Description
1 item (3 p., with address) ; 22.9 cm
Notes
Addressed to "Mr. Robt. Burns / Mr. Creech's Bookseller opposite / the Cross / Edinburgh." Crossed out and replaced by "Care of Mr. Ainslie," which is then crossed out and replaced by "To be left at the / Post Office / Dumfries." "Returned by Dunse" above the address.
Dunlop likely reacquired these letters after Burns's death and left them to her descendants with the Lochryan manuscripts (42 of Burns's letters to Mrs. Dunlop and some autograph poems, now MA 46 in the Morgan's collection).
Part of a large collection of letters from Frances Dunlop to Robert Burns. Letters in the collection are described in individual records; see MA 49 for more information.
With postmark and trace of a seal; probable date is from postmark.
Dunlop likely reacquired these letters after Burns's death and left them to her descendants with the Lochryan manuscripts (42 of Burns's letters to Mrs. Dunlop and some autograph poems, now MA 46 in the Morgan's collection).
Part of a large collection of letters from Frances Dunlop to Robert Burns. Letters in the collection are described in individual records; see MA 49 for more information.
With postmark and trace of a seal; probable date is from postmark.
Provenance
General Sir John Wallace; by descent to Sir William Thomas Francis Agnew Wallace; bequeathed to his brother, Colonel F.J. Wallace; acquired by Robert Borthwick Adam before 1898; purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913, possibly from the London dealer Pearson.
Summary
Discussing why she took offense in her last letter; explaining that she wanted him to omit parts of his Poems because they were "a sort of indignity to [her] sex"; writing, "you severely mortified me, nor did I ever in my life feel more degraded in my own eye than by the utter contempt you have shown for those hints which it cost me a great deal to give, and which I now heartily wish I had let alone. Friendly advice when wholly overlooked makes one feel themselves mean, officious, and in the present case indelicate; and I fretted at you because I was discontented with myself"; informing him that he has "annihilated a scheme" she had for his advancement because the scheme involved "a number of ladies so respectable" that now she does not dare "offend them with the mention of [his] name"; asking him, "Was it a perversion of taste or a corruption of heart made you stick so fast to what was so unjustifiable?"; noting, "I have been told Voltaire read all his manuscripts to an old woman, and printed nothing but what she approved. I wish you would name me to her office"; reporting that he has "inspired a shoemaker [George Campbell] at Kilmarnock, if not with the capability, at least with the idea of becoming poet"; asking if there are still books for sale from the last printing; quoting [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau.
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