BIB_ID
409802
Accession number
MA 4647.14
Creator
Cleland, Lucy, d. 1763.
Display Date
undated [1752-1763].
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 1989.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 18.6 x 15.3 cm
Notes
Addressed to: "Edward Dickinson Esqr." With a red wax seal containing the image of a ship and a surrounding motto.
The letter is undated. However, given the contents, it appears to have written around the same time as John Cleland's letters to Edward Dickinson (MA 4647.1-11). This correspondence 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 the correspondence between Cleland and his mother's lawyers.
The letter is undated. However, given the contents, it appears to have written around the same time as John Cleland's letters to Edward Dickinson (MA 4647.1-11). This correspondence 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 the correspondence between Cleland and his mother's lawyers.
Provenance
Purchased at Sotheby's, London, December 14, 1989 (lots 11 and 12).
Summary
Writing that she has just sent a servant to inquire after his health: "I hope I shall hear by Him that you are better, and that you will not venture abroad this extream cold weather"; discussing an order she placed at the banker Campbell's and her concerns about encountering her son John there: "after you left me I reflected it was possible If the Gentleman knew of my order on Campbell That He might call there to Day, and I might possibly meet Him w[hi]ch wou'd be mortal to me, I went immediately to Their shop and presented them my order as you had dictated for me, The amendments you have made are extream proper, I shall some time this morning send it, and withdraw the other"; noting, about the allowance she is giving her son, that "his manner of accepting, is like doing me a favour"; adding "I am not concerned that He should be grateful to me but I wou'd have Him thoroughly persuaded, that He has nothing more to expect from me, that all future applications will be in vain, let his case be never so deplorable, and that in whatever way He misbehaves, or is troublesome to me the allowance shall be withdrawn"; asking Dickinson to convey this message to her son: "This I am persuaded you will be so good to have notified to Him, and unless He can be made to believe it, my trouble will never Cease, I am very sensible I owe all my present peace to you, and am only providing for the future."
Catalog link
Department