Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Autograph letter : [Great Bookham], to James Burney, [1797 May].

BIB_ID
407726
Accession number
MA 35.9
Creator
Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840.
Display Date
[1797 May].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1905.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 22.8 x 19.3 cm
Notes
No place of writing is given on the letter. In The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, Hemlow suggests Great Bookham as the likely place of writing based on biographical evidence.
There is no date of writing. Hemlow argues that it was written before May 11, 1797, based on the contents of the letter and other letters by FBA written at around the same time. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional information about both the place and date of writing.
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
Telling James that she has received a letter from their sister Susanna, "who gives no particular reason for her long silence, & says nothing of her health; but writes in her usual serene & interesting manner. All about her is still pretty quiet -- & should it be otherwise, she is to remove, she understands, to some safer place -- but she does not say where. -- Would to God she were home again!"; asking James to arrange for money ("in small notes, or dollars, or as you can get it best") to be sent to Alexandre d'Arblay via William Locke and to arrive by cart on Friday evening, in order to pay "Butchers & Bakers & Candle Merchants"; mentioning that "the two good Charlottes" (referring to her sister Charlotte Ann Broome and her daughter Charlotte Barrett) arrived the previous day with two other guests; commenting on the unrest in Ireland: "That they may do better without us is possible -- but what are we to do without them? Even if your plan of making Guards for the Country of all its Inhabitants were adopted, I do not think they could protect it should Ireland, first being Free, next prove inimical"; writing that she is glad he does not currently have command of a ship, "as I pity all the officers who have to serve at such a time of insubordination"; exclaiming "God send us Peace!"; writing "My Mate sends you his kind love -- & bids me write these Letters, because they are troublesome, & may be unwelcome"; asking in a postscript whether they can draw additional money from the bankers Coutts & Co. or whether it will be available elsewhere and adding "Did you ever know greater Plagues than we two is?"