BIB_ID
421359
Accession number
MA 1352.305
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1852 December 20.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 18.1 x 11.3 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.
Written from "Tavistock House / Monday Evening / Twentieth December 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.
Written from "Tavistock House / Monday Evening / Twentieth December 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
Concerning the order for the surveying instruments and Charley's bills; saying "I have written to order the instruments as you request. My whole moral Being is now absorbed in intense curiosity to know what shape and what size the chest will be. I represent it to myself as like a Grand Piano without the legs. I cannot make the sum total of Charley's bills (memorandum enclosed) and the Shepherds Bush bills, your total;" here Dickens has pasted a fragment of his reply from Miss Coutts authorizing payment of "73£ odd to be paid at the Bank if -;" continuing in Dickens' hand, "Fearing that my not saying so might involve some other account in confusion, I think it right to mention the total incapability of my arithmetic to get at your result."
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