DODGSON, Charles Lutwidge (1832-1898). 'Lewis Carroll'.
Autograph Letter Signed to Mrs [?Martha] Combe, 1 page 8vo, 21 December 1879. Sending some [photographic] prints, for which the payment of 15 shillings can wait until they next meet.
Annotated on the reverse of the conjugate leaf by Mrs Combe 'photographs by Mr Dodgson of my dear husband Hunt & Cyril'.
Mrs Combe is probably the wife of Thomas Combe (1796-1872, printer and patron the arts, especially the pre-Raphaelites) The reference to 'Hunt' probably means either a son of that name or the painter William Holman Hunt, for whom Thomas Combe's entry in Oxford DNB includes the following:
'The Combes met Hunt in 1851 and invited him to Oxford. It was the first of many visits: 'Hunt saw little of his family now,' his granddaughter wrote later, 'the Combes had taken their place' (D. H. Hunt, My Grandfather, his Wives and Loves, 1987, 92). In 1853 Combe bought Hunt's The Light of the World, perhaps the most famous of all Victorian paintings, for 400 guineas. Other paintings bought from Hunt include The School-Girl's Hymn (1860) and a small version of The Afterglow in Egypt (1861). Combe bought just one painting by Rossetti: Dante Drawing an Angel, purchased in 1855.' [Colin Hughes in Oxford DNB]
[No: 23310]