BIB_ID
408052
Accession number
MA 35.25
Creator
Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840.
Display Date
[1816 January 19].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1905.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 18.5 x 11.4 cm
Notes
The date of writing has been taken from the postmark.
FBA does not give a place of writing, but based on biographical evidence, it is very likely that this was written from Bath, where she and Monsieur d'Arblay had moved in November 1815. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
Address panel with postmarks: "Captain Burney, / James Street, / Westminster / 26."
FBA does not give a place of writing, but based on biographical evidence, it is very likely that this was written from Bath, where she and Monsieur d'Arblay had moved in November 1815. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
Address panel with postmarks: "Captain Burney, / James Street, / Westminster / 26."
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
Reporting that Louis XVIII has awarded Monsieur d'Arblay the rank of Lieutenant General; writing that his superior attempted to get a raise in pay for d'Arblay as well, but was unsuccessful: "But the right is established, & the acknowledgement of the King's approbation of M. d'A.'s services & conduct, at a critical, & critycising [sic] moment such as this, sooths his Mind in his long confinement, & recompenses, to his disinterested loyalty, all his exertions & sufferings & privations"; apologizing for her son Alex's laxness in correspondence and an incident in which he borrowed money from a neighbor of James's; describing a bout of influenza; discussing the publication of the fourth volume of James's A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea and his concerns about its length; mentioning that the trunks containing her manuscripts have arrived from France, though she has not been well enough to unpack them; begging him to accept part of the money she had sent to Martin from the "Irish mortgage" (see MA 35.21 for background on this matter) and to put it towards the expenses of printing his Chronological History; commenting on passages about Fernão de Magalhães (Magellan) in the book: "I was [...] truly glad when his dauntless perseverance got him to Cape Discado."
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