Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    Z1265/14/4/1
  • Title
    Letter to “Kent”* from William T Moncrieff at Monkery Saint Percy [William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857), dramatist, blind from 1843]
  • Date free text
    16 January 1852
  • Production date
    From: 1852 To: 1852
  • Scope and Content
    “What is the use of having friends if we don’t make use of them? I shall therefore sans ceremonie again trespass on your kindness to do me a little bit of service. I shall shortly be writing a work on the Life and Times of Shakespeare semi-dramatic probably nearly one of the last I shall undertake before I make my final exit from the great stage of the world. Now what I want of you is this to ferret out for me an account of such works as may have been published during the last ten years relative to the personal history of Shakespeare is there not a life by Knight one or two works by Payne Collier**. Your friend Fairholt’s*** Home and Haunts of Shakespeare as it is essential for me to purchase them all. You will be pleased to hear I have perfectly recovered myself from my awful panic and shall now always be happy to receive and entertain you during the time I stay here ‘comme a l’ordinaire’ I wrote a very kind letter to Mrs Ashmore some fortnight or three weeks since sending her down at the same time the Sunday Times with a little review of my publication which appeared in its columns opening the ball she has not however taken any notice of it except by returning the paper directing it in her own hand writing & shewing she is in esse and as usual she is therefore huffed. Improper in not doing as I usually did this is very foolish. I have ever held with George Coleman “that they who take offence where none is intended are in themselves offending”. I would not bestow benefactions when in want myself but I suppose she is acting under Mrs Coocke Lorril’s if she had never done so it would perhaps have been better for her. I have heard nothing of my brother - brother what do I say? “I have no brother. I am like no brother”. I have however been having a rare game with old Lloyd giving him short cut & returns so put in our pipe and smoke”. “With very pleasant remembrances of two or three visits to cheer me in my despair and desolation”. * possibly William Charles Mark Kent (1823-1902) poet, biographer and journalist ** John Payne Collier (1789-1883) Shakespearean critic and forger *** Frederick William Fairholt (1814-1866) antiquary and engraver and writer of books on Shakespeare
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