BIB_ID
409814
Accession number
MA 4647.15
Creator
Dickinson, Edward, active 18th century.
Display Date
undated [1752-1763].
Credit line
Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 1989.
Description
1 item (1 page) ; 31.5 x 19.5 cm
Notes
The letter is undated and Cleland is never mentioned by name in it. However, given the contents, it appears to be a draft response to one of Cleland's letters about receiving financial assistance from his mother Lucy Cleland. John Cleland's correspondence with 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 the correspondence between Cleland and his mother's lawyers.
The letter contains many crossings-out, edits and substitutions. It is not signed.
The letter contains many crossings-out, edits and substitutions. It is not signed.
Provenance
Purchased at Sotheby's, London, December 14, 1989 (lots 11 and 12).
Summary
Writing that he is sorry to find that he can be of so little service in mediating between John Cleland and his mother: "I did hope in accepting Mrs. Cleland's commands that I might have been able to do some thing agreeable to you as well as to her in ye execution of them. But whilst one side is fixt in a resolution & the other tied down with an impossibility, I see no prospect of any accomodation"; adding that his engagements are such that he does not know when he will be able to see Cleland; urging him to not to "deprive yourself of the Assistance offered you...".
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