The Letter To Dorothea Gibbon

By Author: Elizabeth Green
Total Articles: 2
Comment this article

This letter partially fills a gap in the voluminous correspondence between Gibbon and his stepmother Dorothea (f. 1715-1796), who after the death of Gibbon's father retired to Bath. Letters of 26 January and 21 March 1779 are primarily concerned with financial matters, which were causing some friction. Neither mentions Mrs Gibbon's illness or 'accident' (Norton, ii. 204-5, 208-10). Writing to John Baker Holroyd (later Lord Sheffield; 1735-1821) on 16 March, Gibbon refers to Replica Cartier his stepmother being 'in a less dangerous way' and mentions that 'several' letters had. Some letters' therefore remain missing. MS: Feilding Manuscripts, Warwickshire Record Office.

After hearing a report which alarmed me very much, I was exceedingly satisfied by an account which Dr Delacour7 was so good as to write me of your state of health, as I find that he thinks you vastly better after your late accident. Nothing shall prevent my seeing you at Easter, and [if] you have any regard for me I only beg that you would in the mean time support your spirits, and take ...
... care of your health. I am afraid you are low and weak, and must desire you would not make an effort to write to me. I shall have frequent opportunities of receiving exact, and I promise myself favourable accounts of your perfect recovery.

Gibbon became acquainted with William Hayley (1745-1820) as a result of Hayley's addressing to him a poetic Essay on History: in Three Epistles to Edward Gibbon, Esq. (1780). This fragment of a missing letter is endorsed 'Postscript cut out of a Letter from Gibbon the Historian to his Friend Hayley dated Brighthelmstone August the 8th 1781'. Hayley enclosed it in a letter of 6 June 1817 to John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), hoping that 'this little specimen of Gibbons Hand may be Cartier Replica Watches you from its containing both English & Greek' and the fragment has been preserved with that letter. Gibbon alludes to a simile in Iliad XVII: 'As a cloud of starlings or daws flees, shrieking destruction, when they see coming a hawk [kirkos], which brings death to small birds, so before Aeneas and Hector the young Achaeans shrieking destruction fled, and forgot their battle- spirit'. The eagle in the allegory is Gibbon, and the small birds, the Hayleys. In the absence of the body of Gibbon's letter, his joke is only partly intelligible, but presumably refers to some mock 'threat' of a visit. The fragment preserves, however, evidence of the care with which Gibbon read Homer. MS: James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.