BIB_ID
420761
Accession number
MA 1352.128
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1848 October 26.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.1 x 11.0 cm + envelope
Notes
Mourning envelope with seal, postage stamp, postmark and Dickens' signature to "Miss Burdett Coutts / Stratton Street / Piccadilly."
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 on mourning stationery from "Devonshire Terrace / Thursday Twenty Sixth October 1848."
Dickens enclosed a letter he had received from George Laval Chesterton regarding Mrs. Furze dated October 21, 1848. This letter has been preserved and is cataloged as MA 1352.637. 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.
Written on mourning stationery from "Devonshire Terrace / Thursday Twenty Sixth October 1848."
Dickens enclosed a letter he had received from George Laval Chesterton regarding Mrs. Furze dated October 21, 1848. This letter has been preserved and is cataloged as MA 1352.637. See the published correspondence, cited below, for additional 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
Commenting on a new Assistant Matron, Mrs. Furze; saying "I am afraid Furze is rather thorny and irritating [...] I had been there on the previous night, when I thought Furze looking grimmer and more gratuitously vinegary than she need. I think she has an idea that she is to serve as a sort of human rasp, or file, or nutmeg-grater, in respect of the general establishment. I had, before, heard from Mrs. Holdsworth that the said Furze had greatly over-rated her powers of 'cutting out' in the millinery way. And Mrs. Holdsworth reports her, since, as certainly having a provoking way of dealing with the girls. We are now all ready for the Mark System, and I hope to begin on Monday."
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