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Letter from CHARLES JAMES FOX to JAMES BARRY, written post 6 October 1800 , at St. Anne's Hill, Surrey

Source: Fryer, Works of Barry, i. 288.

Charles James Fox (1749-1806), member of parliament since the age of 19, one of the outstanding orators of his time. [img] He was Secretary of State in the 1780s and headed a coalition Administration with Lord North formed in 1783; he opposed the American War in the 1770s and the war against France in the 1790s. He had been a member of the Dilettanti Society since 1769 (Lionel Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), p. 266). See also L. G. Mitchell, ‘Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. [go]

Barry had dedicated his engraving Queen Isabella, Las Casas and Magellan to Fox. On 5 October 1800 Barry sent him a copy of the engraving along with a copy of the second edition of his Letter to the Dilettanti Society (1799). Fox's reply is not dated, but comes shortly afterwards.

Sir,

I have received yours of the 6th Instant,1 together with the book and prints, for which I return you many thanks. The figures in the print 2appear to be in the grandest style, but I confess I do not yet perfectly comprehend the whole of the plan. I will certainly find leisure to read the book, which, as far as I can judge from the few pages I have as yet had time to look at, will give me great pleasure.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

St. Anne's Hill.3

Show/Hide other notes [why?]

1 ^
6th instant] 6th of this month, October. Fryer dates the letter of Barry to Fox as 5 October 1800, which is the same as that in the draft (Appendix A 2).

2 ^
figures in the print] This tall narrow engraving, entitled Queen Isabella, Las Casas and Magellan, measures 28 x 6 ins; [img] the figures were Bartolome de Las Casas (1484-1566), a Spanish Dominican priest who worked in America for the rights of the American Indians; Isabella of Castille (1451-1504), Queen of Spain who, 'by pawning her jewels, enabled Columbus to discover the new world' ('Account of the Pictures in the Great Room', Fryer, Works of Barry, ii. 345); Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), Portuguese explorer, 'the first Circumnavigator the intrepid Magellanus' (Barry to the Society of Arts, 31 March 1801); for a closer description of the print see the letter to the Society of Arts 1801. The engraving was an addition to his Elysium and Tartarus or the State of Final Retribution in the Great Room at the Adelphi; further on the engraving, see Pressly, Life and Art, pp.173-75 who states that Barry's renewed interest in the Americas was stimulated by his friend the Venezuelan revolutionary General Sebastian Francisco de Miranda y Rodrigues (1750-1816) who kept a substantial library in London. [img]

3 ^
St. Anne's Hill] Fox's country residence, near Chertsey in Surrey.