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, 1854 January 2 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
420114
Accession number
MA 1352.351
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1854 January 2.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.9 x 11.2 cm + envelope
Notes
Written from "Tavistock House."
Envelope with stamp and postmarks: "Miss Burdett Coutts / Bedford Hotel / Brighton."
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
Saying that he has just returned home from Birmingham and he wishes she had seen the large crowd of working people who attended his reading of A Christmas Carol; discussing news from Urania Cottage, including the fact that the matron, Georgiana Morson, is engaged to be married; inviting Dr. Brown to a celebration next Friday (which was both Twelth Night and his son Charley's birthday), during which the family will be performing his own adaptation of "Tom Thumb," with Dickens playing the ghost and "Mr. [Mark] Lemon (as great a child as himself) the queen of the Giants;" sending best new year's wishes to her and to "O" (referring to Hannah Brown); writing about the cold and adding "I persevered in the cold bath at Birmingham, notwithstanding its being frozen ; and not only escaped the least hoarseness or sense of fatigue from three nights of three hours each in that enormous hall (which requires a great effort) but felt as if I could have gone on for three weeks."