BIB_ID
421548
Accession number
MA 1352.641
Creator
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865.
Display Date
Manchester, England, 1850 January 12.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.5 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 ten letters written by Catherine Dickens to Angela Burdett Coutts and 73 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner. See the collection-level record for more information.
Written from "121. Upper Rumford Street / Saturday, Jan'y 12th."
This letter was enclosed by Dickens in one of his letters to Miss Coutts, written January 14, 1850, and cataloged as MA 1352.185.
Written from "121. Upper Rumford Street / Saturday, Jan'y 12th."
This letter was enclosed by Dickens in one of his letters to Miss Coutts, written January 14, 1850, and cataloged as MA 1352.185.
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
Thanking him for his help, enclosing a letter she had just received from Miss Coutts and expressing her appreciation for the suggestions Miss Coutts gave her in her efforts to help a young woman in Manchester, recently released from prison (See MA 1352.640); saying she will follow up on Miss Coutts' suggestions but also asking Dickens if he could ask Miss Coutts to write to the Plymouth Ladies, "...of whom I never heard before. I have already received kind offices from Mrs. Chisholm in helping out a family of emigrants, but I thought she required those whom she assisted to be of unblemished character. Miss Coutts is very, very kind - for she evidently thinks as she writes, of what can be done. - My head & eyes ache so, with crying over the loss of three dear little cousins, who have died of S. Fever since I last wrote, leaving a childless mother, that I hardly know how or what I write, but will you thank Miss Coutts as you know she will like best. Of course I never named her name at Silvers. The girl herself is in a Refuge - a literal refuge for any destitute female without enquiry as to her past life being made - all are received, and not classified. So it is a bad place, but what can we do? I am going to see her today to keep up & nurse her hopes & good resolutions."
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