Autograph letter signed : Loudoun Castle [near Galston], to Robert Burns, [1791 Mar. 30].

Record ID: 
363773
Accession number: 
MA 49.83
Author: 
Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 1730-1815.
Date: 
[1791 Mar. 30].
Credit: 
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913.
Description: 
1 item (10 p., with address) ; 24 cm
Notes: 

Addressed to "Mr. Robt. Burns / Ellisland / Dumfries."
Docketed; date is from docket.
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).
Franked by W. Kerr at "Edinr. Thirty first March 1791."
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.

Summary: 

Explaining that she just learned from Jenny [Janet] Little that he "had a third fall from [his] horse, and broke [his] arm"; fretting about his health, and worrying that he may have suffered "some contusion that may be of still more vexatious consequences"; asking him to have someone else write to her with news of how he is doing; advising him to be more careful about which horses he rides; recommending that he "dismiss Pegasus ... for [the sake] of Mrs. Burns and the children"; congratulating him on his promotion to supervisor in his excise job; asking him to forgive what she wrote in her last letter, when she did not yet know that he was injured; sending him two poems, one she wrote and one by Jenny Little

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.