![JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784). Autograph letter signed ('Dear Love Your most Humble servant Sam: Johnson') to Lucy Porter ('My dear Love'), Boltcourt, Fleet Street [London], 4 March 1779, 2 pages, 4to, blank integral leaf (a few tiny splits in folds, endorsed '1779' on verso). Provenance: Lucy Porter (d.1786); Revd. John Batteridge Pearson (1749-1808, formerly curate of Lichfield), her principal legatee; Philip Pennant Pearson (his grandson, and the godson and heir of David Pennant), who took the name Pennant in 1860 on inheriting the Pennant estates at Nantlys; by descent to the present owners.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2007/CKS/2007_CKS_07399_0091_000(021230).jpg?w=1)
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JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784). Autograph letter signed ('Dear Love Your most Humble servant Sam: Johnson') to Lucy Porter ('My dear Love'), Boltcourt, Fleet Street [London], 4 March 1779, 2 pages, 4to, blank integral leaf (a few tiny splits in folds, endorsed '1779' on verso). Provenance: Lucy Porter (d.1786); Revd. John Batteridge Pearson (1749-1808, formerly curate of Lichfield), her principal legatee; Philip Pennant Pearson (his grandson, and the godson and heir of David Pennant), who took the name Pennant in 1860 on inheriting the Pennant estates at Nantlys; by descent to the present owners.
ON PRESENTS, LICHFIELD FRIENDS AND HIS HEALTH. 'Since I heard from you, I sent you a little print, and two barrels of Oysters, and I shall have some little books to send you soon'. Johnson is pleased that 'Mr Peirson' has got a living, while the death of 'Poor Mrs Adey' [Felicia Adey, widow of the Lichfield Town Clerk, who had died the previous year] prompts thoughts of mortality: '[It] is not pleasant to think how uncertain it is that, when Friends part, they will ever meet again'. He himself has his 'old complaints of flatulence and tight and short breath', and urges Lucy 'to take what care you can of yourself and do not forget to drink'. The 'little print' was presumably the first instalment of the Prefaces Biographical and Critical to the Lives of the Poets. Four volumes were announced as published in the London Chronicle on 31 March 1779. Oysters were a regular offering -- on the same day Johnson wrote that he had sent a barrel to Elizabeth Aston.
The Reverend John Batteridge Pearson (1749-1808) was Perpetual Curate of St Michael's at Lichfield, and recently appointed Vicar of Croxall in Derbyshire. He was to be Lucy Porter's principal legatee, and inherited Johnson's bequests to her. (2)
ON PRESENTS, LICHFIELD FRIENDS AND HIS HEALTH. 'Since I heard from you, I sent you a little print, and two barrels of Oysters, and I shall have some little books to send you soon'. Johnson is pleased that 'Mr Peirson' has got a living, while the death of 'Poor Mrs Adey' [Felicia Adey, widow of the Lichfield Town Clerk, who had died the previous year] prompts thoughts of mortality: '[It] is not pleasant to think how uncertain it is that, when Friends part, they will ever meet again'. He himself has his 'old complaints of flatulence and tight and short breath', and urges Lucy 'to take what care you can of yourself and do not forget to drink'. The 'little print' was presumably the first instalment of the Prefaces Biographical and Critical to the Lives of the Poets. Four volumes were announced as published in the London Chronicle on 31 March 1779. Oysters were a regular offering -- on the same day Johnson wrote that he had sent a barrel to Elizabeth Aston.
The Reverend John Batteridge Pearson (1749-1808) was Perpetual Curate of St Michael's at Lichfield, and recently appointed Vicar of Croxall in Derbyshire. He was to be Lucy Porter's principal legatee, and inherited Johnson's bequests to her. (2)
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