BIB_ID
408203
Accession number
MA 35.51
Creator
Arblay, Alexandre Jean Baptiste Piochard, comte d', 1754-1818.
Display Date
undated [1802-1806].
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1905.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.1 x 19 cm
Notes
This letter is written jointly by Alexandre d'Arblay [M.d'A] and his friend Antoine Bourdois [AB], the husband of FBA's niece Maria: M.d'A writes a letter to James on the first page and a half, and then AB adds his own letter to James on the remaining pages, writing mostly in French but adding a postcript in English. Both men sign their letters.
The letter is undated and without postmarks. It must have been written in the years when M.d'A was working on a translation of the first volume of James's Chronological History, which he began around 1802 and abandoned in 1806.
No place of writing is given. M.d'A was in France during this period, but no other information about where specifically this letter may have been written is available.
Address panel: "Capt. J. Burney / Margaret Street No. 72 / Cavendish Square / London."
The letter is undated and without postmarks. It must have been written in the years when M.d'A was working on a translation of the first volume of James's Chronological History, which he began around 1802 and abandoned in 1806.
No place of writing is given. M.d'A was in France during this period, but no other information about where specifically this letter may have been written is available.
Address panel: "Capt. J. Burney / Margaret Street No. 72 / Cavendish Square / London."
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
[M.d'A]: Telling James that he is working "serieusement" on the translation of the first volume of A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea; discussing how many volumes there will be in the finished work; writing that he is going to submit the sections he has translated so far to a publisher and see whether there is interest; [AB]: mentioning that he is in the midst of writing a long letter to FBA, but will interrupt it to send "un petit mot à Mon Oncle Le Capitaine et à ma petite tante [Sarah Payne Burney]"; sending congratulations to James on the publication of his Chronological History; adding in a postscript that he and his wife Maria "have been both blind for a week or 10 days, but now we begin to See again, I wish we Saw you. Maria is gone in quest of Some Cap, bonnet, or other thing of that importance, so you may think She is not very dangerously ill."
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