BIB_ID
408292
Accession number
MA 35.60
Creator
Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840.
Display Date
1802 April 17.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1905.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 22.7 x 18.7 cm
Notes
There is a note in pencil on the first page: "This letter is listed as 'Sarah Burney to her father.'" However, neither Sarah Payne nor Sarah Harriet Burney was traveling to France during this period; the contents of the letter accord only with FBA's movements at this time. There are also other ambiguities about the letter: the hand is significantly different from that used in other letters by FBA from this time period, and it could be that this letter was either dictated or is a copy. Given the date of writing, it may also have formed part of the Paris Letter Book that M.d'A compiled and transcribed, and which was partly copied by Charlotte Barrett. The hand does not, however, resemble known examples of Monsieur d'Arblay's or Charlotte Barrett's hands. More information about the Paris Letter Book can be found in the introduction to Volume I of The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney.
Address panel: "Captn Burney / Margaret Street."
Address panel: "Captn Burney / Margaret Street."
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 her father that she, her son Alex and Adrienne de Chavagnac (the six-year-old daughter of French émigrés, who Burney was escorting to Paris) are at last in France: "O! -- half dead I am arrived with fatigue and sickness -- but so glad to be arrived"; writing that Alex suffered severely on the journey but Adrienne was "gay as a little Lark"; describing the bribes she had to pay in England and France: "The Fees which were demanded sans cesse at Dover, & are now demanded here, are beyond measure surprizing -- & I am afraid to refuse any thing, or any body"; adding that she will write more when they get to Paris; asking Fanny Phillips (her sister Susanna's daughter) to send word that they are safe to her brothers and sisters, to "Miss [Charlotte] Cambridge," and to her aunt Rebecca.
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