BIB_ID
421271
Accession number
MA 1352.278
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
Dover, England, 1852 August 5.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.0 x 11.3 cm + envelope
Notes
Signed with initials.
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 "10 Camden Crescent / (N.B. Not 32 Camden Terrace) / Dover. Fifth August 1852."
Envelope with postmarks and Dickens' signature "To be forwarded / Miss Burdett Coutts / Stratton Street / Piccadilly / London."
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 "10 Camden Crescent / (N.B. Not 32 Camden Terrace) / Dover. Fifth August 1852."
Envelope with postmarks and Dickens' signature "To be forwarded / Miss Burdett Coutts / Stratton Street / Piccadilly / London."
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
Reporting that he delivered her gift of one hundred pounds to Mr. Richards "...and have myself placed it in his hands. As he assumed that the friend whom I did not mention was a gentleman, and spoke of the friend as 'him', I acted on that suggestion and did the same;" enclosing a letter from Mrs. Goldsmith related to an earlier gift of funds to her from Miss Coutts; commenting on the wife of his friend Richard Watson, who had recently died: "Poor Watson was buried yesterday, in his own Church. She is a woman of great courage and understanding, and of a well disciplined though very affectionate nature. I hope she will find comfort and resignation in sources that she has not been accustomed to neglect while happy. She has four children (the eldest eleven years old ) and expects to be confined sometime hence - which is very sad. She has come home, her brother writes me, far more tranquilly than they could have hoped, and has her children about her, and means, from the first, to live with them at Rockingham - whither she went, straight. I am so glad to think that she can associate her home with his grave."
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