[‘So much for vaccination!’: Charles Mathews, celebrated actor-manager.] Autograph Letter Signed to ‘Harley’ [distinguished actor], indignant at a doctor after his son the actor Charles James Mathews’ attack of small pox following inoculation.

See his entry, and that of his son, in the Oxford DNB. The topic of this letter is referred to in the second volume of Dickens's edition of the son's life, 1879. 3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged, with strip of tape from mount adhering at edge of blank second leaf and two folds for postage. Addressed to ‘Dear Harley’ and signed ‘C Mathews.’ He begins by thanking him for his ‘kind enquiries’, and (with regard to his son the actor Charles James Mathews) writes that ‘Our dear good Charles thank God! is recovered, and writes in excellent spirits from Florence. His disorder has been small pox! So much for vaccination! for of all the victims I have ever witnessed to that system, he was the greatest - as his face was covered with frightful blotches for two years after inoculation.’ He claims that the ‘English Physician’ who attended the boy ‘hand no hesitation from the first in pronouncing it to be Small Pox’, but that ‘this was concealed from us’. ‘He accounts rationally for 3 weeks of silence - namely that he was blind. “The first reason will do.”’ He has had ‘irksome work to play comforter to an almost broken hearted mother - and six nights per week to mimic gladness when the heart was sad’. He ends with renewed thanks for the ‘kind note, which my wife equally appreciates’.