Chats on Autographs

by Alexander Meyrick Broadley

My dearest Tyson,—The long absence of our dearest Nelson makes me apply to you. First I must tell you that what money I had in my banker's hands, I have laid out at Merton, and Lord Nelson thanked me in his last letter and said he would settle with me with thanks when he came home. Could you then my dearest Tyson either on my account or Lord Nelson's lend me a hundred and fifty pounds.

I lately saw, in possession of Mr. Sabin, Nelson's private banker's pass-book during the last eighteen months of his life. With two exceptions every cheque he had drawn was in favour of his "dearest Emma."

A one day's sale of 213 lots at "Sotheby's" on December 1, 1904, brought £582 17s. An account verified by Henry VII. with his royal initials realised £10, and a document with sign-manual of Henry VIII., £7 5s. A Privy Council letter from Whitehall (April 27, 1640) was sold for £8 15s. A series of official papers signed by Bonaparte averaged £3, but a certificate of service signed by Captain James Napoleon sold for more than twice as much. One of the features of this sale was quite a number of letters by Governors, Deputy-Governors, and Judges in Australia. Many of these fetched £10 each. A letter of Colonel William Paterson to Sir Joseph Banks (1805) went as high as £13 10s., and one of David Collins, founder and first Governor of the Van Diemen's Land Settlement, yielded the same price.

This was followed by the sale of December 5th and 6th, in which 4,116 lots brought £1,009 16s. Nelson's letter-book (1796-97) was sold for £150.

A series of six holograph letters from Dr. Samuel Johnson to his friend Sir Robert Chambers, afterwards a judge in Bengal, all said to be unpublished, and extending from October 22, 1762, to April 19, 1783, realised £125; the original galley and second proof sheets of "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," with numerous corrections and alterations in the handwriting of Mr. Gladstone, £10 10s.; an autograph letter of John Keats, June, 1819, to Miss Jeffrey, in which he says, "You will judge of my 1819 temper when I tell you that the thing I have most enjoyed this year has been writing an 'Ode to Indolence,'" 4 pp. 4to, £35 (Quaritch); and the autograph manuscript of W. Morris's "A King's Lesson, an Old Story Retold," on six leaves of paper, £27 10s.

The second day's sale included a remarkable series of autograph letters addressed to Mrs. Thrale and inherited by a descendant. Sixteen of the letters were written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, chiefly to Mrs. Thrale; two were from Boswell to the same, and there were others from Mrs. Siddons, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, and various other celebrities of the day. The Johnson letters for the most part possessed but little literary interest, but in the longest one in the series, written by Boswell and dated from Banff, August 25, 1773, he refers to his journey in Scotland, and says concerning their arrival at St Andrews: "The professors who happened to be resident in the vacation made a public dinner and treated us very kindly and respectfully. They showed us their colleges, in one of which there is a library that for luminousness and elegance may vie with the new edifice at Streatham. But learning seems not to prosper among them; one of their colleges has been lately alienated, and one of their churches lately deserted." The Johnson letters date from July 19, 1755, to April 15, 1784, and the entire series was sold en bloc for £300.[76] The sale also included an interesting series of five autograph letters from S. T. Coleridge to Thomas Poole, 1797-98, giving a history of his life, and covering 17 pages folio and quarto, which fetched £14 10s., and an autograph letter from Charles Lamb to J. H. Green, August 26, 1834, which sold for £6 2s. 6d.

Allusion has been made elsewhere to the excitement caused at the beginning of 1905 by the sale of January 25th, at which the 33 4to pages, described as belonging to the original MS. of "Paradise Lost," were bought in, the reserve price of £5,000 not having been reached.[77]

From the 2nd to the 4th of March following there was a three-days' autograph sale in Wellington Street, in which 905 lots brought £1,834 9s. 6d. A series of letters by General Gordon averaged £1 each; the Dickens letters disposed of sold better than in 1903 or 1904, realising from £2 to £6, and 52 letters of Gilbert White brought £150. Some splendid musical and dramatic letters collected by the late Mr. Julian Marshall realised high prices, showing a marked advance in this kind of autographs.