BIB_ID
421307
Accession number
MA 1352.289
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
Dover, England, 1852 September 23.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.0 x 11.3 cm + envelope
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 "Dover, Thursday Twenty Third September / 1852."
Envelope with postmark and Dickens' signature to "Miss Burdett Coutts / Stratton Street / Piccadilly / London."
Written from "Dover, Thursday Twenty Third September / 1852."
Envelope with postmark and Dickens' signature to "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
Expressing his criticism of the public spectacle of the funeral for the Duke of Wellington; saying "The whole Public seems to me to have gone mad about the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. I think it a grievous thing - a relapse into semi-barbarous practices - an almost ludicrous contrast to the calm good sense and example of responsibility set by the Queen Dowager - a pernicious corruption of the popular mind, just beginning to awaken from the long dream of inconsistencies, monstrosities, horrors and ruinous expences, that has beset all classes of society in connexion with Death - and a folly sure to miss its object and to be soon attended by a strong reaction on the memory of the illustrious man so misrespected. But to say anything about it now, or to hope to leaven with any grain of sense such a mass of wrong-doing, would be utterly useless. Afterwards, I shall try to present the sense of the case in Household Words. At present, I think I might as well whistle to the sea;" conferring with her on other projects.
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