Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1853 May 19 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
419955
Accession number
MA 1352.336
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1853 May 19.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.9 x 11.1 cm + envelope
Notes
Written from "Tavistock House."
Envelope with stamp and postmarks: "Miss Burdett Coutts / Star and Garter / Richmond / Surrey."
The letter from Georgiana Morson that Dickens enclosed has been preserved and is cataloged as MA 1352.662. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
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.
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
Referring to her baby nephew and saying there must be a mistake, "because (it is a remarkable fact) we have in this house the only baby worth mentioning [i.e. his son Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens] ; and there cannot possibly be another baby anywhere, to come into competition with him. I happen to know this, and would like it to be generally understood;" returning Georgiana Morson's letter to her; sending news about various residents of Urania Cottage; discussing proposed improvements to the Home; mentioning that the foreman is concerned that they have no regular supply of water in Shepherd's Bush and saying that he has given him leave to look into it; asking for advice about how to proceed with a request from Mrs. Antonina Matthews; saying that he agrees with her opinion of Hans Christian Andersen's book A Poet's Day Dreams: "Why a man who is forever fainting away, should be making himself limper with Scandinavian poetry, is one of those extraordinary mysteries that the mind cannot fathom."