E.B.Jones / My Dear Ellis / The day is too / cold and my throat & chest / are so bad there I daren't / go out - it is unlucky & / I am thoroughly sorry / but it cant be helped / You couldnt put it off / I suppose - if I stay / in for 2 or 3 days I / shall mend but a / fresh access would be / a bore for I am finishing / a picture against time / - I told Foord & Dickenson / to fetch Temperance & / Faith - tomorrow - if / you would kindly leave / word so that they / might not bring the / wrong pictures - / I had looked forward / to fun to night - but / it is denied me. / Yours affectionately / EBJ

Foord and Dickinson were framers at 129 Wardour Street, London

Elizabeth Mary Foord’s husband, George, died in 1842, leaving her to manage Foord’s, the well-known picture framemakers in Wardour Street, Soho, until her death in 1856. Most unusually, she left her daughters the business, which then traded as Eliza & C. Foord, but evidently she had reservations since she stipulated that the business was ‘to be carried on under the entire and sole management of William Dickinson, her foreman. If her daughters were to marry, the business and stock would pass to their brother Charles Foord and to Dickinson, as apparently happened in 1859 when the firm became Foord & Dickinson. Eliza & C. Foord supplied several frames to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery in 1857 (fig. 3), and the firm did much work for the Pre-Raphaelites and other leading artists.