BIB_ID
420887
Accession number
MA 1352.169
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1849 July 20.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 17.8 x 11.1 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 from "Devonshire Terrace / Twentieth July 1849."
Written from "Devonshire Terrace / Twentieth July 1849."
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
Sending her "...a copy of the prescription for Dr. Southwood Smith's pill, which I know to be an excellent medicine to keep in the house. It is to be taken on the occurrence of any symptoms that appear, as Shakespeare says, 'new-hatch'd to the woeful time'. He gave it to me himself, and my private opinion is, in the usual language of the advertisements, that 'no family should be without it' - especially a family under those mephitic Shepherd's Bush circumstances."
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