BIB_ID
413575
Accession number
MA 1581.10
Creator
Baillie, Joanna, 1762-1851.
Display Date
London, 1825? January 20.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.6 x 18.4 cm
Notes
Baillie gives the place of writing as Cavendish Square, an address in London.
Baillie does not give the year of writing on the letter, but it is partially visible in the postmark and appears to be confirmed by the contents of the letter. In her edition of Baillie's collected correspondence, Judith Bailey Slagle suggests 1825 as the year of writing; see full citation below.
Address panel with intact seal and postmarks: "Sir George Beaumont Bart. / Coleorton Hall / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicester Shire."
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall, and to other members of the Beaumont family.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Baillie) 3.
Baillie does not give the year of writing on the letter, but it is partially visible in the postmark and appears to be confirmed by the contents of the letter. In her edition of Baillie's collected correspondence, Judith Bailey Slagle suggests 1825 as the year of writing; see full citation below.
Address panel with intact seal and postmarks: "Sir George Beaumont Bart. / Coleorton Hall / Ashby de la Zouch / Leicester Shire."
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall, and to other members of the Beaumont family.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Baillie) 3.
Provenance
Purchased as the gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Sending her condolences on the death of an unidentified relative and writing that she hopes the news has not affected Lady Beaumont too severely ("With her own well-ordered mind and such a comforter as yourself, she has many advantages"); thanking Beaumont for writing to Thomas Lawrence and David Wilkie to recommend Charles Bell for a professorship at the Royal Academy (see MA 1581.9 for background); adding "I am well convinced of what you say regarding the jealousy of the Academicians as to any interference with their privileges; and Mr Bell has been ill advised, I should think by some of his friends, to make too many applications by different channels to the R. Academicians, instead of relying more on his own acknowledged qualifications for the office. Nothing but my unwillingness to refuse any thing that was requested of me by a man who had payed such a tribute to respect to the memory of my Brother [Matthew Baillie], would have induced me to interfere in such a matter, altho' I was not then aware, as I am now, of the light in which such applications are regarded"; suggesting that the academy could with confidence elect either Bell or his rival "Mr Green"; saying that she has passed his message along to Mrs. Lushington (possibly Sarah Grace Carr Lushington), who is "flattered by your remembrance"; telling him that she and her sister Agnes are at present with Mrs. Baillie (probably her sister-in-law Sophia Denman Baillie) and that she also sends her condolences to Lady Beaumont, "whose affliction she can sympathize with most truly."
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