[The richest woman in Victorian England: Angela Burdett-Coutts, philanthropist.] Autograph Letter Signed to A. M. Broadley, regarding a concert by the pianist Linda Dutton Cook.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB, from which the scandalous recipient, a high-society fixer, is unaccountably absent. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Fifty-seven lines of text, sloping upwards. Addressed to ‘Mr Broadley’ and signed ‘Burdett Coutts’. The handwriting is difficult, and the following reading tentative. She begins: ‘We have been a good deal on the move and very much [occupied?] with special business’, so that a number of letters have gone unnoticed, including his concerning ‘the Concert Mrs Dutton Cooke [sic, the pianist Linda Dutton Cook (1854-1915)] proposes to give in December’. She explains that she will be unable to return to (her townhouse at) Stratton St, but will do what she can to ‘promote the Concert in some small measure by taking Tickets’. In a postscript she talks of being ‘miles away from London’. Broadley was a renowned autograph collector as well as barrister, author, company promoter and social figure. [Wikipedia]