BIB_ID
421313
Accession number
MA 1352.291
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
Boulogne, France, 1852 October 4.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (1 page, with address) ; 22.8 x 18.5 cm
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.
Address panel with fragment of a seal, postmarks and Dickens' signature to "Angleterre / Miss Burdett Coutts / White Hart Hotel / Reigate / Surrey."
Written from "Hotel des Bains, Boulogne. Monday October Fourth 1852."
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.
Address panel with fragment of a seal, postmarks and Dickens' signature to "Angleterre / Miss Burdett Coutts / White Hart Hotel / Reigate / Surrey."
Written from "Hotel des Bains, Boulogne. Monday October Fourth 1852."
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 on his visit to Shepherd's Bush, detailing the bills he paid and commenting on the possibility of enlarging the Home; saying "My impression - formed, however, without actually going over the adjoining premises - is that it would be difficult to make one establishment of the two houses, and that if you should at any time think of enlarging the Home, it might be easier and much cheaper, to enlarge our present house. I should amazingly like (you know my infirmity in the arrangement way) to carry out some notions that have come into my head with that view, including the small improvement of more than doubling the height of the long room! I am going to work tomorrow morning, and purpose remaining here while I write the next No. of Bleak House. It will probably take me until this day fortnight. As soon as I have done I shall return home - the children have already gone home - and then perhaps you will be able to look at the house that is to let;" adding, in a postscript, "I know the country in which you are staying, and the house too. We had a very bad passage over, and I feel as if I had exchanged my eyes for two brass bullets."
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