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, Broadstairs, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1843 September 5 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
419976
Accession number
MA 1352.36
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
Broadstairs, England, 1843 September 5.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.3 x 11.3 cm + envelope
Notes
Envelope with seal, postmarks and Dickens' signature to "Miss Burdett Coutts / (Lord De Grey's) / Putney."
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 "Broadstairs / Fifth September 1843."
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
Commenting on Macready's departure for America; saying "All of a sudden it occurred to me the other day that if I went to Liverpool with Macready they would bowstring his throat in New York; so tightly that not a word should come out of it upon the stage - and drive him out of the country, straightway [...] As he knows the virtuous Americans pretty well and as I think I do too, I immediately abandoned my intention. And so it came to pass that I sat down to Chuzzlewit quietly, and am now in the heart of it. Under other circumstances I should have been reporting to you this week, touching the Ragged Schools;" relating his plans to visit the schools and his intention to report back to her with his findings; relating the distractions from his writing at Broadstairs; saying "The piano is gone, and the flute is out of hearing - at Dover. But a barrel organ, a monkey, a punch, a Jim Crow, and a man who plays twenty instruments at once and doesn't get the right sound out of any one of them, are hovering in the neighbourhood. Also a blind man who was in a Sea Fight in his youth; and after playing the hundredth psalm on a flageolet, recites a description of the Engagement;" relating news of Charley and Katey and asking to be remembered to Miss Meredith.