Scope and arrangement
· Holograph verses, "In your gay, favoured leaves, I am ordered to write" : 20 Mar 1840 : (BLES 3.246) : 2 p.; apparently composed for the amusement Lady Blessington; begins, "In your gay, favoured leaves, I am ordered to write, / Where wit on poetical verdure reposes; / But I fear I shall prove in those pages so bright -- / To use the Count's phrase -- like a pig among roses.".
· To Lady Blessington, writer and literary hostess : 5 letters : -- 1 autograph letter signed : 27 Apr 1840 : (BLES 3.249a) : from Admiralty : begins, "After all the kindness which my work and its author so undeservedly received at your hands, I should be very ungrateful if I did not exert myself to the best in my power to obey your commands." With an excised letter cover address panel. -- 1 autograph letter signed : 16 May 1840 : (BLES 3.249b) : from 22 Down St., Piccadilly : begins, "In sending you the enclosed odd-looking document, some explanation is necessary." -- 1 autograph letter signed : 26 Aug 1843 : (BLES 3.247) : from West Cowes : begins, "I should be very thoroughly and properly ashamed of myself for not having acknowledges the receipt of 'Merideth' at an earlier period ..."; with an additional excised letter cover address panel. -- 1 autograph letter signed : 14 Jul 1845 : (BLES 3.248a) : from Admiralty : begins, "I must return you many thanks for your very kind, but I fear too flattering note." With an excised stamped envelope address panel. -- 1 autograph letter signed : 4 May 1847 : (BLES 3.248b) : from 84 Mount Street : begins, "I should indeed be most ungrateful if your wish was not law with me, but you have given me the refuse of the queens of England, and how to write half a dozen pages (much more twenty or thirty,) about either Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr, I have no idea.".
· To "My dear O'Beirne" [perhaps really Richard Robert Madden?] : 1 autograph letter signed : "Tuesday" : (BLES 3.249c) : from Admiralty : begins, "The only London clubs that Count D'Orsay belonged to were 'Crockford's,' as long as it lasted, and afterwards 'The Coventry' ..."; at the head of the first page of the letter is scrawled "From J. H. Jesse Esq. / To R. R. M." [i.e., Richard Robert Madden?].