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, 1848 December 22 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
420800
Accession number
MA 1352.137
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1848 December 22.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.1 x 11.0 cm
Notes
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 / Twenty Second December 1848."
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
Regretting that he cannot accept her invitation to dinner; discussing Charley's education; saying "Eton is an assumption of Mr. King's, founded on my entreaty to him about a peculiar mode he has, of teaching the Latin Grammar. I have no doubt whatever, that Harrow is a better school for a boy who has to live, in after-years, by his own exertions. I shall take another look at Nautical presently, I begin to think there must be an o in it - and I am quite sure there's an e. A very little would induce me to believe in a z."