BIB_ID
419879
Accession number
MA 1352.13
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1841 October 27.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.2 cm + envelope
Notes
Envelope with seal and Dickens' signature to "Miss Coutts / Stratton Street."
The letter is part of a collection, MA 1352, which consists of letters from Charles Dickens to the Baroness, to her companion Hannah (Meredith) Brown, or the latter's husband, William Brown; with 70 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner; and a few others. See the collection-level record for more information.
Written from "Devonshire Terrace."
The letter is part of a collection, MA 1352, which consists of letters from Charles Dickens to the Baroness, to her companion Hannah (Meredith) Brown, or the latter's husband, William Brown; with 70 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner; and a few others. See the collection-level record for more information.
Written from "Devonshire Terrace."
Provenance
The letters formed part of the Burdett-Coutts sale (Sotheby, 17 May 1922); they were purchased for Oliver W. Barrett in whose collection they remained until it was sold by his son (Parke-Bernet, 31 October 1951).
Summary
Apologizing for not calling on her as soon as he returned to London but explaining he was still recovering from surgery; saying "It is scarcely three weeks, since I was obliged to submit to a painful surgical operation (for which agreeable change I left the seaside) and although I have recovered with a rapidity whereat the Doctors are astounded, I have only just begun to feel my legs at all steady under my diminished weight. I almost thought, at first, that I was about to go through life on Two pillars of jelly, or tremulous Italian cream, - but I am happy to say that I am again conscious of floors and pavements;" mentioning that he will be going to Windsor and would like to call on her when he returns; commenting on his raven; saying "Some friends in Yorkshire have sent me a raven, before whom the Raven (the dead one) sinks into insignificance. He can say anything - and he has a power of swallowing door-keys and reproducing them at pleasure, which fills all beholders with mingled sensations of horror and satisfaction - if I may [say] so; with a kind of awful delight. His infancy and youth have been passed at a country public house, and I am told that the sight of a drunken man calls forth his utmost powers. My groom is unfortunately sober, and I have had no opportunity of testing this effect, - but I have told him to 'provide himself' elsewhere, and am looking out for another who can have a dissolute character from his last master."
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