[The Astor Place Riot, Manhatten, 1849.] Autograph Letter from William Charles Macready, asking Benjamin Nottingham Webster to entertain George Ticknor Curtis while he is in London, as he helped him against the 'brutality of the New York mob'.

An interesting letter from one great of the nineteenth-century stage to another. See the entries on Macready, Webster and Forster in the Oxford DNB. Curtis is a noted Federalist historian. 4pp, 16mo. Bifolium with mourning border. (His eldest daughter Nina had died at the age of twenty on 24 February 1850.) In good condition, lightly aged, with traces of tape from mount adhering to the second leaf. Two postage folds. Forty lines of text, addressed to ‘Benj. Webster Esq.’ and signed ‘W. C. Macready.’ With his daughter’s recent death in mind he begins: ‘It is only within these few days that I have been able to begin to turn my thoughts again to business, and I had it in purpose to write to you this week the letter respecting the alteration of the time of our mutual engagement: But as I do not have the exact date, at which after Christmas you might wish me to resume the course of my few remaining nights, Mr Forster has obligingly promised me, that he would settle it with you for me, and, by seeing you, the understanding can be perfectly clear & you can together note down the few words necessary for the business.’ A short paragraph follows on his ‘recovery’: ‘strength comes back very very slowly’. He then asks Webster to put the name of a friend of his - ‘an American gentleman’ - on his ‘free list’. He is ‘obliged to go to Brighton for the hot baths’, and wishes to show him in his absence from London ‘all the attention in my power’, as he owes much to his kindness, ‘under the [?] I encountered from the brutality of the New York mob. His name is George Ticknor Curtis’. (The Astor Place Riot in Manhattan the previous year, ostensibly over whether Macready or the American actor Forest was the best interpreter of Shakespeare, had resulted in the deaths of as many as 31 rioters.) The letter concludes with courtesies, and a post script reads: ‘Mr. Forster will probably not be able to call on you before next week.’