(Two messages, Berry & Ljungstedt’s, dated 1 Sept. 1819, on the back leaf, and Robert Berry’s, dated 18 Nov. 1819, on the front.)
Transcript
Wednesday 22nd Jan[uar]y 1800
My Dear Sir!
My daughters particularly thank Mrs T. for the drawings. Since she was good enough to offer, & my eldest daughter {1} only mixes water colours & lead (having nothing else here), I will thank Mrs T. to lend the box of body-colours she show’d me; of which my daughter will be as sparing as possible, & carefully return the rest. Indeed, they are going away, in a week or a fortnight, with Mrs Walker & Lady Irvine: which brings me to a request.—I wish them much to having the honour of knowing Mrs T.; that they may have a claim to see her, in my house or houses of their own, hereafter, when she wanders from Yarmouth: I wish them to see a Lady, whom they have repeatedly heard me mention as a model of a wife & a mother: & I sh[oul]d like to know whether Mrs T. do not think that few girls of 18 have the good sense of my eldest daughter. The greatest obligation Mrs T. can confer upon me, is to let me introduce my children to her, the evening that I read the tragedy; w[hic]h, too, they have not heard. Never mind M. Septmonville, about whom I spoke before. The sooner we fix, the better. Mr Gurney’s poem {2} is, now, finish’d; so he will not be occupied. It will be a most creditable, elegant, manly thing. Make him keep the lines to his sister; {3} w[hic]h are Ditto, as above.
Yours ditto, as ever, very faithfully
H. Croft.
—————
{1} Sophia.
{2} Presumably Cupid and Psyche: A Mythological Tale, from the Golden Ass of Apuleius, by Hudson Gurney, published anonymously by J. Wright, ‘opposite Old Bond Street, Piccadilly, London’, in 1799. Dawson Turner’s presentation copy, which he supplemented with a portrait and autograph of the author, is in the British Library (General Reference Collection 11632.g.2). A second edition appeared in 1800.
{3} Hudson Gurney had one full sister, Agatha, who married Sampson Hanbury, and two half-sisters, Elizabeth, who married John Gurney Jr, and Anna. See W. H. Bidwell, Annals of an East Anglian Bank (1900), p. 400.
Market Place, Pontefract. - Enclosing copy of resolution at the Annual Meeting of the Committee of the Pontefract Branch of the British & Foreign Bible Society, held on 11 Sept. 1885.
(Pasted to the letter is a list of names of persons whose autographs Harding is able to supply.)
Woodbridge. - Asks Quaritch to send him Coues' Birds of the Northwest... Does not know anything about Aldis Wright's being the owner of FitzGerald's copyright, other than 'the letter addressed to him, and leaving him the box of MSS. as asserted in the preface by A. W.' Asks if Quaritch has had much demand for the book. FitzGerald left him a self-portrait by Raphael Mengs, 'a d-d ugly fellow - but as good as Rembrandt, only in a different way of course'.
Remembers coming now and again to 'worry' Quaritch forty-four years ago when a Collector at Simpkins.
Meeting held at the Stock Exchange. Signed by James Van Sommer, the secretary of the Committee for General Purposes.
(Dated Saturday, and franked 10 June 1820.)
(Transcript in Turner’s hand. At the head is written, ‘The original is among Autographs, Series B.’)