Letter from John George Cooke, London, to Baroness Marie Blaze de Bury, 1856 December 6 : autograph manuscript signed.

Informing her that he has visited "Fanny" and paid her and assuring her that she need not hurry about the bootmaker; writing that his sister is in London with her second son, Baynsford, who is unwell, having suffered an accident during the summer ("His charger fell with him and hurt his hip & side - & he has been ailing ever since"); writing, "You ask about Harry ... I wish I could send him to you for he is a pleasant gentlemanly lad", but that his mother "prohibits his acquaintance with any French people" and lamenting her "foolish fanaticism" which "enters into and corrodes all her springs of action"; commenting on the financial market ("We are beginning ... to breathe a little freer in the money market - and some sanguine people think the crisis is past") and current political situation in England, mentioning Lord Derby, Disraeli, "young Stanley", and the "poor old worn out Tories"; relating a story "going about the clubs" concerning a discussion about W.M. Thackeray at Woburn, wherein "some one remarked that really Thackeray was becoming a 'horrid radical' & that he had spoken ... acrimoniously of the noblesse of the court of George the IV in his latter lectures Indeed indeed said the Ducal authority 'He must be put down' Ha ha I'll trouble you to put Thackeray down my Lord Duke with all your house of Lords to back you."; describing a "piece of scandal" concerning Mr. Stirling [Sir William Stirling-Maxwell], a "very rich Scotsman", and lover of Mrs. [Caroline] Norton, "the living widow of that blackguard George Norton the police magistrate", claiming that Mrs. Norton's sister, the Duchess of Somerset, has arranged for her eldest daughter to marry Mr. Stirling, remarking, "very convenient for the aunt to have her nephew in law her own lover."