From the registers of St. Saviour's, Southwark, it is clear that Wilson's marriage took place there on Sunday, November 2, 1617, about eighteen months after Shakespeare's death. Dowton, like Farren, is an hereditary theatrical name, and the Wilson letter reveals another actor Dowton, probably an ancestor of the Dowtons of a later time. Dr. Wallace, the erudite discoverer of the new Shakespeare document at the Record Office, writes me that he considers the letter of William Wilson an excellent specimen of the epistolary style of Shakespeare's time, and of singular interest to Shakespearean students.
Some of my most interesting "finds" are now placed in my Napoleonic collection, which I have almost doubled in extent since the publication of "Collectanea Napoleonica."[23] For £5 I obtained, some five years ago at Sotheby's, the letter of 24 4to pages in which Sir Stamford Raffles describes his visit to St. Helena and his interview with Napoleon. As I received a very substantial sum for permission to reproduce a portion of it in a daily paper, this interesting and valuable MS. cost me nothing. At the Bunbury sale a great many letters of historical importance fetched a comparatively low price. It was at this sale that Mr. Frank Sabin bought the second and more lengthy letter from George Crabbe to Edmund Burke now in my possession. It was at the Bunbury "dispersal" that the late Mr. Frederick Barker bought for me the extraordinary official letter and holograph proclamation to the Vendéans penned by Louis Larochejaquelein on June 2, 1815, an hour or two before his death. These documents would certainly have fetched five times the price I paid for them in Paris, where I had to pay £10 for a letter of his more famous brother Henry, killed in 1794. I also purchased at the Bunbury sale two long letters of C. J. Fox to his uncle, General Fox, and a confidential letter of Earl Bathurst giving Bunbury his opinion of Gourgaud, and enclosing four sheets of a private letter from Sir Hudson Lowe. The companionship of autographs is curious. In a letter of the Marquis Montchenu, the garrulous French Commissioner at St. Helena, I found an autograph of Sir Hudson Lowe, written in 1780 at the London Inn, Exeter, when he was a boy-ensign in the Devon Militia! It was Montchenu who caused a sensation at the Courts of the Allied Powers by declaring that Lowe was about to make Napoleon the godfather of his son, who in 1857 was one of the garrison in the Lucknow Residence. In June, 1906, M. Noël Charavay bought for me at the Dablin sale a number of Napoleonic rariora, amongst them the Longwood Household Expenses Book kept by Pierron, the maître d'hôtel, between March, 1818, and April 30, 1821. The entries are always countersigned by Montholon, and in many cases are controlled by Napoleon, who frequently made calculations as to the relative value of pounds and shillings in francs. All these papers will, doubtless, be useful to some one who desires to say the last word on the Last Phase, and I am very grateful to Mr. Frank Sabin, who procured for me the original copy of the elaborately-bound "Last Reign of Napoleon," which Mr. J. C. Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, sent out to Sir Hudson Lowe for presentation to Napoleon, but which was never given to him. On the flyleaf the author copied out a suggestive quotation from Tacitus. The romance of these volumes belongs rather to the subject of extra-illustration, which I hope to deal with in a future work. I have already pointed out the utility of this interesting pursuit for the proper preservation of valuable autographs. In America, where so many collectors believe that "the political is ephemeral and the literary eternal," thousands of autographs are inserted in as many books, to which the special charm and value of "association" is thus given. I need not say that I have placed a characteristic John Cam Hobhouse letter in the second volume of this unique copy of "The Last Reign of Napoleon." Some two years since I obtained through Messrs. Maggs, of 109, Strand, two very interesting MSS. connected with the Irish Rebellion of 1798. One of these is the Camolin Cavalry Detail Book, May 25-October 8, 1798, and the other is made up of a collection of the letters written between 1796 and 1815 by Arthur, Earl of Mount Norris, a Royalist leader. With the new light obtained from them and the MS. journal of a lady who was an eye-witness of the occurrences she describes, Mr. H. F. B. Wheeler and the writer have endeavoured to again deal with the story of the "War in Wexford." I have by no means completed my list of "finds." I trust, however, I have said enough to illustrate the utility of autograph-hunting and the pleasurable excitement derivable from the unexpected running to earth of some long-since forgotten letter or document which is not only of money value, but can help to throw new light either on the life of the writer, or the far-off times in which it was written.
[V]
ROYAL
AUTOGRAPHS
PAST AND
PRESENT
BULLETIN ISSUED A WEEK AFTER THE BIRTH OF KING EDWARD VII. AND SIGNED BY THE MEDICAL MEN IN ATTENDANCE, NOVEMBER 16, 1841.