BIB_ID
363785
Accession number
MA 49.85
Creator
Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 1730-1815.
Display Date
1791 Apr. 30.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913.
Description
1 item (4 p., with address) ; 24 cm
Notes
Addressed to "Mr. Robert Burns / Ellisland / Dumfries."
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. Second May 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.
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. Second May 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.
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
Explaining that she wrote to his brother for news of Burns when she did not hear from him for so long; congratulating him on the arrival of a baby boy; responding to his characterization of his wife in his last letter, and writing that "the real refinement and delicacy of a woman's mind is certainly independent of all education, and, like a genius for poetry, fire from Heaven falling on the embryo on its first existence"; alluding to [Laurence] Sterne's "illustration of the smooth shillings"; contrasting Burns's letters, which never answer the questions she poses, with his brother's letter to her, which "contained every information, and answered every word of mine"; reporting that her grandson has been inoculated for smallpox; commenting on her own struggles with rheumatism; asking what he thought of Jenny [Janet] Little when he met her.
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