BIB_ID
363840
Accession number
MA 49.96
Creator
Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 1730-1815.
Display Date
1792 July 17.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913.
Description
1 item (3 p., with address) ; 25.3 cm
Notes
Addressed to "Mr. Robt. Burns / Officer of Excise / Port Division / Dumfries."
Docketed.
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.
Docketed.
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.
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 when she wrote her last letter, she "saw through the medium of selfishness and offended pride -- a very magnifying glass for [her] own mortifications and the blame it attached to [his] long silence"; reporting that she saw Fanny Burns, was touched by his "generous kindness to an unprotected orphan girl," and wants to repair their friendship: "If I have ignorantly offended my friend, forget it. If I have seemed capricious, forgive it; or if uninterestingly insipid, compassionate an involuntary want which no endeavour can supply, and exert towards me the same disinterested good-nature you have bestowed upon your young cousin"; inquiring after his wife and children; apologizing for sending a letter that he will have to pay for because she has "lost [her] privilege of franking for a time."
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