YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

For Room 331A

Notes on dating C 841, Courtenay to JB.

"Send me -- a Scotch tongue, and you will oblige Yrs J.C.
Memorandum to Sunday...Morng...1:1th"...

From

I have finally decided that the note should be dated: 11 [October 1789].

Reasons: I found in James Bruce's Housebook (Auch.I. phot. no.659), "Dec. 2, 1789. To two Barrels for Apples and Tongues for London. 3s4d." -- This shows that it was a physical tongue Courtenay was writing about, and not a metaphorical one as I had suspected. Bruce's Housebook further records: 7 Dec. 1789 he paid for the carriage of Barrels and a Box to Mauchline for Glasgow and from there (by Carron) to London. The above dates are not the dates the barrels were obtained or the tongues were sent; payment, especially of the various carriers' charges from Mauchline, to Glasgow, to London, would have been on a bill submitted later. This is borne out by entries which show that carriers' charges for the muir-fowl which they ate at JB's dinner on 19 Nov 1789 (see JB to Sandy, 23 Nov 1789) are charged in the Housebook under Dec. 17, 1789. There are no further records of anything but eggs being sent to London after this.

Dating Courtenay's note in 1789 on the strength of Bruce's record: In 1789, Sunday the 11th could be either Sunday 11th January, or Sunday 11 October. 11 January 1789 is too early. For Sunday 11 October 1789 -- Mrs. Boswell had died the previous June. JB had taken his children to London, arriving at the Queen Anne Street West house on 6 October; they lived there until 19 Jan 1791, when they moved to Grt Portland street. The tongues would have arrived within a week of the family's arrival.

**No Abolition of Slavery.** Dating of the writing of the stanzas, etc. on Courtenay's note is very uncertain, and may be as late as 1791, before 14/16 Apr when *xhay* the poem was advertised as "This Day was published" in the *St. James's Chronicle*. There is a Journal from 1 Nov 1789, continuing into 1790. It shows JB meeting much with "The Gang", revising the MS. of the *Life*, carrying on an affair (which may have been a brief one in November 1789) with "C", and maintaining close connections with Lonsdale. It is possible that "C" was the mistress who figures in the poem, although there seems to have been a later, more serious affair in March-

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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

C 841 "Send me a Scotch tongue"

Memorandum to ....................................................

From ....................................................................

April 1790. The portion of _No Abolition_ written on the back of Courtenay's note consists of the last stanza, followed by a prose synopsis for other verses to be inserted; at the end is the admonition "Make Haste".

JB's letter to Sandy of 5 May 1790 (L 83) seems to express no sense of hurry, "My Slave Poem is not finished yet, I have added I believe a hundred lines since I saw you."

But in a letter to Temple (<u>Letters</u> ii.433), 6 Apr 1791, JB writes, "I am thinking to curtail my poem on the <u>slavery</u> Slave Trade and throw it into the world just before the great question comes on next Wednesday [i.e.13 Apr]."

As seen above it was advertised as published "this day" in the paper of 14/16 1791.

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