Caroline Norton | Seven autograph letters signed, to various correspondents

Caroline Norton

Seven autograph letters signed:

i) to Mr Doyle, apologising that she failed to "pack & send away the Sybilline book", which has just been viewed by her future husband William Stirling-Maxwell ("Mr Sterling of Keir, who wrote on Spanish art"), and wondering if "the letter to Hogath might be available still as suggestive of a series of drawings of the way that hours are passed over the Sabbaths", 3 pages, 12mo, n.d.

ii) to Anne-Margareta Higford Burr, reporting on her recent meeting with Garibaldi ("...a man more like an ideal hero than most of those one is compelled to admit are 'famous'; and whose sweet clear animated utterance seems the very voice he ought to have to speak with..."), 3 pages, 8vo, monogrammed stationery, n.d.

iii) to Miss [Emily ?] Eden, recalling that she has previously praised her verses, so sending her a new volume of poems, which she has written despite recent family tragedy ("...I have lost the mainspring & the mainstay of my life - in my eldest son & I thought never to be able to write again. But we do not know ourselves, or what can be borne..."), 3 pages, 8vo, 3 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, "Monday", mounted on album leaf

iv) to Mrs Cecil Forester, explaining that her sister is dying ("...the doctor in immediate attendance thought it could not last now by any possibility more than a few days. She has quite ceased to take nourishment...") so she cannot come to dine, 3 pages, 8vo, 12 June, n.y.

v) to "Dear Sir", arranging a meeting with a visiting foreign dignitary ("...I have asked our Poet & Musician, [Tom] Moore, to meet you..."), 3 pages, 8vo, n.d. 

vi) to "Madam", denying that "Amelia Deacon or Dickinson" was ever in her service and agreeing to meet her to prove the deception, 2 pages, 8vo, Brighton, 25 January, n.y.

vii) to Dr Clark, in the third person, accepting an invitation, 1 page, 12mo, n.d.