[Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, radical politician ruined by the Crawford Scandal.] Autograph Card Signed (‘Charles W. Dilke’), explaining to an unnamed painter the reason he was not able to visit his studio.

See Dilke’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Lurid claims of three-in-a-bed adulteries put a paid to his political ambitions (he had been touted as a future prime minister), and rendered him the butt of musical hall jokes. The recipient is not named. On one side of a plain 11.5 x 9 cm postcard. In fair condition, lightly aged, with the two right-hand corners creased. He explains that ‘We [presumably Dilke and his wife] started to reach you this morning but the wood pavement was so bad that we were afraid to go on, being on horse back, and we are both of us engaged at other things this afternoon and unable to see any pictures so that we shall have to wait till we see your pictures in the Exhibition. [i.e. at the Royal Academy]’