Chapter 3

Thackeray to his aunt Charlotte Ritchie, on Isabella’s decline, 10 September 1840.

When Thackeray’s physician told him wife needed only a change of air to cure her depression following Minny’s birth, Thackeray took his family to the seaside at Margate, “where the sea air seemed to do my dear little invalid a great deal of good. We have been in London only 3 days, and now she is just as bad as ever she has been – there is something in the air of this dismal Coram Street that seems to give us all the blue devils. This being the case, we are all going off in a body to Mrs. Shawe at Cork.” Thackeray relates to his aunt that he hopes to send her better news “from Potatoland”.

MS Eng 881 (78). Gift of Herbert L. Carlebach, 1950.