BIB_ID
409791
Accession number
MA 4647.8
Creator
Cleland, John, 1709-1789.
Display Date
1757 February 18.
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 1989.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 23 x 18.7 cm
Notes
Cleland gives the place of writing as "Pallmall," a street in London.
Cleland does not refer to Dickinson by name on the letter, but internal evidence strongly suggests that he is the recipient.
In Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Hal Gladfelder argues that the "Mr. Grose" referred to in this letter is probably John Henry Grose, author of A Voyage to the East Indies, with Observations on Various Parts There, first published in 1757 (see pages 34-35 for Gladfelder's argument).
Cleland does not refer to Dickinson by name on the letter, but internal evidence strongly suggests that he is the recipient.
In Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Hal Gladfelder argues that the "Mr. Grose" referred to in this letter is probably John Henry Grose, author of A Voyage to the East Indies, with Observations on Various Parts There, first published in 1757 (see pages 34-35 for Gladfelder's argument).
Provenance
Purchased at Sotheby's, London, December 14, 1989 (lots 11 and 12).
Summary
Asking for Dickinson's assistance in getting some papers of his from his mother, with whom he left them; explaining that he would like to send them to a "Mr. Grose of Richmond," who is writing a treatise on the East Indies; describing the papers as being about the East Indies and especially "the island of Salset"; describing himself as "sick even to death of Politics" and lamenting the current state of affairs; writing of Admiral John Byng: "I almost envy poor Byng's fate, if he is to be murthered as they say he is [...] No englishman who deserves to live would wish to live longer in this infamous and abandoned period"; discussing the court-martialling of Byng for his conduct during the Battle of Minorca: "I have just this instant finished the perusal of his trial, and dare assert myself a judge from my long conversancy with sea-affairs, and having been myself Advocate and Register of a Court of Admiralty. I dare then not only pronounce him as innocent as you are, but a much better commander and seaman than those who set upon him, and who having acquitted him in fact condemned him for the form, for want of that courage, to clear him as he deserved, or perhaps out of a mean time-servingness [...] One comfort however his friends ought to have, which is that if that negligence on which he is condemned and of which there is not the least shadow of proof but much the contrary, was a sufficient reason, Tyburn would not hold the twentieth part of the ministers and servants of the Public that in equity if not in law, have incurred, or deserved the like sentence"; commenting on the hypocrisy of condemning Byng for a split-second decision while the politician who authorized Byng's actions is made a lord of the Admiralty (Cleland refers to this individual as "a gentle cur of Pit's"); apologizing to Dickinson for the letter but explaining that "my rising indignation at that complication of folly, stupidity, and cruelty which I see with such regret, and the sentiments just fresh from the reading of the trial rendered this first opportunity of venting them, a relief to me which I had not the power to refuse myself."
Catalog link
Department