BIB_ID
409772
Accession number
MA 4647.2
Creator
Cleland, John, 1709-1789.
Display Date
undated [1752-1763].
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 1989.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 23.5 x 18.6 cm
Notes
The letter is dated only "Saturday morning." John Cleland's correspondence with his mother's lawyer Edward Dickinson began in the early 1750s and continued until, approximately, Lucy Cleland's death in 1763; the first dated letters from the correspondence are from 1752. See Hal Gladfelder's book Fanny Hill in Bombay (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), pages 180-193, for a discussion of this correspondence.
Addressed to: "Mr Dickinson / Carey Street near / Lincoln-Inn."
With a red wax seal containing an elaborate floral motif.
Addressed to: "Mr Dickinson / Carey Street near / Lincoln-Inn."
With a red wax seal containing an elaborate floral motif.
Provenance
Purchased at Sotheby's, London, December 14, 1989 (lots 11 and 12).
Summary
Explaining that "[a]n incident perfectly new, which is like a thunder-bolt to me occasions you this trouble. My poor landlady wearied out with the endless delays of a payment, which it is not in her power not to press, has been twice at Mrs. Cleland's house, and on my solemn word and Honour, without my knowledge and consent [...] See! this poor family on the brink of destruction, only for having trusted me!"; describing his state of mind: "I am raving mad to think to what scenes that woman's execrable obstinacy exposes me, and the innocent who have depended on me. My brain is on fire, I do not know what to write, or how to act. If my going to goal [sic], or my blood will satisfy this inveteracy of my mother, I am ready to lay down my life; but, to have such innocent creatures involved, and turned out into the street upon my account, is a torture beyond that of Hell."
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