GASKELL, Elizabeth Cleghorn (1810-1865). Novelist.
Autograph Letter Signed ('E.C. Gaskell') to [Ann] Procter, wife of Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), 4 pages small 8vo, 42 Chester Terrace, no date (watermark. 1850 or 1856). Proposing to visit her for a few days and mentioning the encomiums heaped on her husband.

'... Now if you have thought in the contrary direction, and have on reflection come to the conclusion that you would rather not have me at all, will you let me know? I myself so often remember a hundred reasons against some place I have proposed in the heat of conversation. ... Pray remember me most kindly to Mr Procter. If his ears have any sense of modesty or gratitude in them they ought to have tingled unmercifully at the praise that was heaped upon him with heady good will the other evening. When my back is turned may I experience a tythe of his good fortune?'

Ann Procter's was one of London's most prominent literary hostesses. Thackeray praised her 'tremendous energy and genius for gossip'.

Not in The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. Chapple and Pollard (1997), nor Further Letters (2000), and apparently unpublished.
[No: 26022]