BIB_ID
407625
Accession number
MA 35.2
Creator
Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840.
Display Date
1787 July 28.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1905.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 20 x 16.3 cm
Notes
Address panel with postmarks and remnants of a seal: "Captain Burney / at Mrs. Hamiltons / Chesington near / Kingston / Surry."
There is an apparently unfinished letter on the verso addressed to "Dear Sister," possibly referring to her sister-in-law Sarah Payne Burney, which begins "To be sure I did put on my red coat and I will be so candid as to acknowledge I looked very smart in it -- so thought I wd. [illegible word] and give you an opportunity of admiring me...". This letter does not appear in The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, cited below.
There is an apparently unfinished letter on the verso addressed to "Dear Sister," possibly referring to her sister-in-law Sarah Payne Burney, which begins "To be sure I did put on my red coat and I will be so candid as to acknowledge I looked very smart in it -- so thought I wd. [illegible word] and give you an opportunity of admiring me...". This letter does not appear in The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, cited below.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer Quaritch in July 1905 as part of a collection of Burney's correspondence and fragments of manuscripts, bound in three volumes. Disbound in 1925.
Summary
Teasingly chiding her brother for not coming to see her: "What have you to say for yourself now, Mr. Brother? -- To be so near me - yet not to come? [...] And not a line of How sorry I was ill & How glad I was well, & all that -- Fie! Fie! Fie! Fie!"; writing that he could have their sister Susanna (called "Susan" here) as a guide; sending her love to his wife Sarah, their daughter Catherine ("dear little Kitty"), Sarah Hamilton ("good Mrs. Ham"), who kept house at Chessington Hall, and Catherine Cooke ("dear great Kitty"), niece of Sarah Hamilton; ending with a short poem: "So my Scribble shall go / All to Fire & flames / Ere I write any mo' -- / Till you come to St. James!"
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