ABSTRACT
If Mitford is to be believed, Thomas De Quincey was somewhat of a reluctant epistolary partner. She had been in contact with James Fields, De Quincey’s American publisher, who had passed on the author’s compliments and intention to write. Mitford noted, however, that “no letter came . . . and so I wrote to him.”1 Instead of a reply from De Quincey, Mitford received a letter from his daughter Margaret. With profuse apologies for her father’s silence, Margaret assures Mitford that his tardiness does not signal lack of interest or that he “undervalues the honour you have done him,” but rather that “he rates it so highly that he determines to do it, not by proxy, but personally.” Unfortunately, knowing De Quincey’s penchant for communication in the abstract, as it were, Margaret suspects a reply might not be forthcoming. Hence the need for this letter, as she explains to Mitford:
But as experience teaches us that delays if not hindrances undreamed of by all but De Quincey philosophy [sic] will occur before the time when it can be “signed sealed, and delivered” to the post, we have begged that we may be allowed to send a sort of harbinger to explain why the answer is so long in making an appearance.2
