Beschreibung:

UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('F. d'Arblay'), to her 'dear Friend' 'Mrs' [Sarah Martha] Holroyd, reporting on her physical and mental health [following her husband's death on 3 May 1818] ('...my health is much amended...With regards to my Spirits - it may be better not to talk of them - they are broken from all Nature, internal gaiety for ever - yet the style in which I write, & mean to write will show you I have learnt to keep them, outwardly, in decent order...'), acknowledging the support of her friends ('...I could not, indeed, find myself destined still to live, & yet refuse to listen to the alternate pleadings & remonstrances of such a union of kind preaching Friends...'), especially the Princess at Homburg [Elizabeth, daughter of George III who had married Prince Frederick of Hesse-Homburg in 1818] who answers her letters almost by return with 'almost every species of acceptability', requesting news of Mrs Piozzi, Lady Charlotte FitzGerald and 'the Ladies Keith' ('...they were feelingly attentive to me in my suspensive miseries...'), regretting the departure of 'the dear & admirable Friends from France' [Madame Marie-Francoise-Elizabeth Beidault de Maisonneuvre, 1770-1850, and her brother the Marquis de Latour-Maubourg, 1768-1850, Ambassador to England in 1819], mentioning a visit to their mutual friend Archdeacon Richard Owen Cambridge, who she says has taken her son Alexander 'by the hand, & shews him a Friendship so useful & so kind, it deserves the Name of being hereditary', and giving family news, 4 closely written pages, quarto, black-edged stationery, black wax seal, small cut where opened without loss of text, stamped and manual postal markings, Bolton Street, 28 December 1819