CHATS ON
AUTOGRAPHS

[BOOKS FOR COLLECTORS]

With Coloured Frontispieces and many Illustrations.
Large Crown 8vo, cloth.

CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD PRINTS.
By Arthur Hayden.

CHATS ON OLD SILVER.
By E. L. Lowes.

CHATS ON COSTUME.
By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.

CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK.
By E. L. Lowes.

CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA.
By J. F. Blacker.

CHATS ON MINIATURES.
By J. J. Foster.

CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
By Arthur Hayden.
(Companion Volume to "Chats on English China.")

CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS.
By A. M. Broadley.

A.L.S. OF WILLIAM WILSON, AN ACTOR OF THE "FORTUNE" THEATRE, TO EDWARD ALLEYN, OF DULWICH, 1620.

Frontispiece.

Chats on Autographs

BY
A. M. BROADLEY

AUTHOR OF "DR. JOHNSON AND MRS. THRALE," JOINT AUTHOR OF "NAPOLEON AND THE INVASION OF ENGLAND," "NELSON'S HARDY," "DUMOURIEZ AND THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND AGAINST NAPOLEON," ETC., ETC.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

"An Autograph Collection may be made an admirable adjunct to the study of History and Biography."

L. J. Cist
[Preface to Tefft Catalogue, 1866]

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
MCMX

To
SIR ISAMBARD OWEN,
D.C.L., M.D., F.R.C.P.
HON. FELLOW OF DOWNING COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
FIRST DEPUTY CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WALES,
AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL,
A ROYAL AND FREE CITY, RENOWNED FOR THE
RICHNESS OF ITS ARCHIVES, AND ITS CLOSE
ASSOCIATION WITH MEN OF LETTERS,
THIS VOLUME IS, WITH HIS PERMISSION, INSCRIBED
BY THE AUTHOR.

The Knapp, Bradpole, May 6, 1910.

[All rights reserved.]

[PREFACE]

"Life is a leaf of paper white
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two—then comes the night."

Lowell.

Mr. T. Fisher Unwin has asked me to "chat" on autographs and autograph collecting. Fifteen years ago the late Dr. George Birkbeck Hill "talked" on the same subject in compliance with a similar request. Still more recently Mr. Adrian H. Joline, of New York, has given the world his "meditations" on a pursuit which another American unkindly describes as "that dreadful fever," but which Mr. Joline, as well as the present writer, regards in the light of "the most gentle of emotions." Mr. Joline expressed, on the first page of his interesting book, a profound conviction that nobody could by any possibility be persuaded to read it unless already interested in the topic with which it so effectively deals. One of the principal objects of the causeries I have undertaken to write is to reach, if possible, a public to which the peculiar fascination and indescribable excitement of the autograph cult are still unknown, and to demonstrate (to a certain extent from my own personal experience), the practical utility, as well as the possibilities of material profit, inherent in this particular form of literary treasure-trove. For the benefit of the uninitiated (and in this case the uninitiated are in a vast majority) it is necessary at the onset to differentiate between the "Autograph Fiend" (the phrase is, I believe, American in its origin), who pesters, often with unpardonable persistence, well-known personages for their signatures in albums or on photographs, and the discriminating collector who accumulates for the benefit of posterity either important documents or the letters of famous men. "Nothing," writes Horace Walpole, "gives us so just an idea of an age as genuine letters, nay history waits for its last seal from them."

Adopting the words of one of the most gifted letter-writers who ever lived as a text, let me clearly define an autograph for the purposes of these pages to be:—

A letter or document written or signed by any given person.

An autograph collector, as I understand the term, is one who acquires and arranges documents of the sort now described. A collector of autograph signatures has nothing in common with the scientific autograph collector. Those who deliberately cut signatures from important letters are in reality the worst enemies both of the autograph collector and the historian. Vandalism of this kind (often committed in happy unconsciousness of the consequences) brings with it its own punishment, for detached signatures are almost worthless. Many years ago a dealer was offered sixteen genuine signatures of Samuel Pepys, their owner naïvely remarking that "he had cut them from the letters to save trouble." As a matter of fact he had in the course of a few seconds depreciated the value of his property to the extent of at least £150. The letters (if intact) would have fetched from £15 to £20 each! "Album Specimens"—the results of the misplaced energy of the "autograph hunter," are of very little value as compared with holograph letters, and collections of this kind, although often elaborately bound up and provided with a lock and key, generally prove a woeful disappointment to the representatives of those who bestowed so much time and trouble on their formation. Collections of "franks," or the signatures in virtue of which Peers and Members of the House of Commons prior to 1840 could transmit letters through the post free of charge, must not be classed with those of "clipped" or isolated signatures. "Frank Collections" were often very interesting, and in the early years of the nineteenth century many well-known people devoted much time and trouble to their completion. The subject will be further alluded to in my text.

Although a personal element must of necessity pervade to some extent, at least, my chats on autographs, it is obvious that the subject is one which necessitates the greatest discretion. I shall carefully refrain from using any letter which has ever been addressed to me personally, although I have ventured to reproduce the signature of H.R.H. Ismail Pacha, one of the most remarkable men of his time, and that of Arabi Pacha, for whom I acted as counsel before the court-martial held at Cairo on December 2, 1882. Between 1884 and 1889 I was in constant correspondence with the late ex-Khedive Ismail, and from 1883 down to the present day I have frequently exchanged letters with my once celebrated Egyptian client, who returned from exile some five years ago to spend the rest of his life in Cairo. Nor shall I, with one or two exceptions, give in extenso the letters of any living person, or letters which can possibly give pain or concern to others. Those who carefully study, as I do, the catalogues issued from time to time by dealers in autographs, both in this country and abroad, must often be astonished at the rapidity with which the letters of Royal and other illustrious personages "come into the market." At the death of a well-known authoress a few years ago the whole of the letters addressed to her were sold en bloc. I was not surprised to learn that the appearance of these "specimens" was the cause of much consternation and many heart-burnings.

SIGNATURES OF THE EGYPTIAN CLIENTS OF THE AUTHOR, 1882-1888, H.R.H. THE KHEDIVE ISMAIL; H.R.H. PRINCE IBRAHIM HILMY, HIS SON, AND ARABI PACHA.

(The latter in both Arabic and English.)

The present age is essentially one of "collecting," and I hope to convince those who are interested in collecting generally, but have not yet included autographs in their sphere of operations, that a great opportunity awaits them, and that no form of collecting, either from a literary or antiquarian point of view, possesses greater charm or greater possibilities. In his recent works on the private life of Napoleon, M. Frédéric Masson has shown the inestimable value of autograph letters to the historian, and it is from unpublished and hitherto unknown MSS. in public and private collections that Dr. J. Holland Rose has obtained much of the new information which will give exceptional value to his forthcoming "Life of Pitt." If there is, as Mr. Adrian Joline points out, an abundance of "gentle emotion" to be found in the cult of the autograph, there is also no lack of pleasurable excitement. If autograph frauds, forgeries, and fakes are abundant, autograph "finds" are equally so. There is an indescribable pleasure in the detection of the former, and an amount of enjoyable excitement connected with the latter, which none but the keen collector can entirely realise. Having convinced the antiquarian of the quite exceptional value of the autograph as a collecting subject, I shall hope to show my readers how they may most rapidly and most economically obtain that special knowledge necessary to become an expert. The autograph market, as at present constituted, is a very small one, but it is growing rapidly, and there is at this moment no better investment than the highest class of historical and literary autographs, provided one exercises proper discretion in purchasing and is content to wait for opportunities which often occur. The truth of my assertion as to the possibilities of profit in autograph collecting was never more clearly demonstrated than at the sale, in December, 1909, of the library of Mr. Louis J. Haber, of New York City, which was conducted by the Anderson Auction Company. Two days were exclusively devoted to autographs, and Mr. Haber has subsequently communicated to me a complete list of the prices at which he bought and sold the literary rariora now dispersed. The sensation of the sale was the selling of a letter of John Keats for £500. For this letter (an exceptionally fine and interesting one) Mr. Haber originally paid £25. Nevertheless, as I shall have occasion to point out, the English collector might have picked up some bargains at the Haber sale. An autograph poem by Edmund Burke, written in 1749, was sold for £4 8s., and I envy the purchaser of the characteristic letter of Lord Chesterfield, knocked down to some fortunate bidder for £3 8s. I do not hesitate to say that the Burke poem and the Chesterfield letter would have fetched double the prices realised at Sotheby's. A letter of Mrs. Piozzi's (not improved by inlaying) fetched £8 12s. Mr. Haber gave £2 8s. for it, and I have bought a dozen equally good Piozzi letters at considerably less than that.

The bonne camaraderie which exists amongst autograph collectors is exemplified by the ready assistance rendered me in the preparation of my "chats." Dr. H. T. Scott, who has devoted the greater part of his life to the practical study of the subject, has given me many valuable hints; Mr. Telamon Cuyler, the future historian of Georgia, has rendered me important help in the matter of American autographs and autograph collecting; Mr. Charles De F. Burns, of New York, has given me (through Mr. Cuyler) most interesting data concerning the development of a fondness for autographs in the United States; while Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet has sent me the catalogue of his unrivalled collection of American MSS. now in the Lenox Library, New York. I tender my best thanks for the aid in various directions which I have received from Mr. Bernard Quaritch; Mr. Turner, President of the Anderson Auction Company, New York; Mr. Goodspeed, of Boston; Monsieur Noël Charavay, of Paris; Messrs. Maggs, Mr. J. H. Stonehouse, of Messrs. Sotheran, and Mr. W. V. Daniell; while Professor M. Gerothwohl, Litt.D., of the University of Bristol, has kindly translated the important letter of the Empress Catharine of Russia, and one or two other difficult examples of eighteenth-century French. My acknowledgments are also due to Mr. John Lane and Messrs. Harper Brothers, who have kindly allowed me to use certain illustrations, originally given in my books published by them; as well as to the proprietors of The Country Home for allowing me to reproduce some of the autographs which first appeared in connection with the articles I have had the honour to contribute to that journal.

If I succeed in awakening an extended and more intelligent interest in autographs and autograph collecting, I shall have done something in my generation to help future historians, whose task must, of necessity, become increasingly difficult as time goes on. When I "commenced" collecting on my own account, to borrow an old-world, eighteenth-century phrase, I was literally groping in the dark, and necessity compelled me to buy my experience. I do not think I purchased it dearly. M. Noël Charavay thinks all good judges of autographs are near-sighted, and possibly this helped me in the early stages of my collecting career to distinguish the genuine article from a forged imitation. By attending to the hints which I shall give in the proper place the young collector will soon be able to recognise the original from the counterfeit. As the values of autographs increase (as they are sure to do) the temptation to forgery becomes greater, and consequently the application of the maxim caveat emptor more urgent. Respectable autograph dealers guarantee the letters they sell, but even experts are occasionally mistaken. Quite recently I lighted on a letter of Archbishop Fénelon in America, and thought I had secured a bargain. The source from which it came was unimpeachable, but M. Noël Charavay immediately confirmed my opinion that it was a lithographic forgery. There is, at any rate, one privilege that the autograph collector alone enjoys. It is difficult to say that any particular piece of china, medal, coin, print, or postage stamp is unique. There is always the danger of a duplicate turning up. With autograph letters, on the other hand, each specimen may fairly be described as "absolutely unique." I have only once met with an exception to this rule. Some twenty days before his death Charles Dickens wrote a letter in duplicate to Buckstone the actor. To avoid the possibility of its miscarrying one was addressed to the theatre, and the other to Sydenham. I have the former and should much like to know what has become of the other, but even in this case the letters are not precisely identical.

So vast is the range of autographs (taking the subject as a whole and the term in its broadest sense) that the collector of the rising generation will do well to limit his sphere of operations to one particular subject or locality. It is only by doing this he can hope to arrive at anything like finality, or to make his acquisitions really useful from an historical point of view. Let him make the worthies of his own county, or birthplace, or calling the objective of his researches, and he will soon feel encouraged to go further afield. As long ago as 1855 a writer in the Athenæum remarked that "the story of what history owes to the autograph collector would make a pretty book." The present and future possibilities of autograph collecting as the handmaiden of history-making cannot be more forcibly illustrated than by the perusal of the marvellous catalogue issued by Messrs. Pearson, of Pall Mall Place, while these pages were going through the press. Here we have a collection of autographs by English sovereigns valued at £1,600, one of musical composers priced at £2,500, and another of 105 letters by great artists, beginning with Antonio del Pollajuolo (born in 1426) and ending with Corot, who died in 1875, for which £3,500, or an average price of £35 each is asked. Modern historians will possibly be more interested in the portfolios of unpublished letters by Marlborough, Burke, and Pitt, of which the House of Pearson is at present the custodian. Without reference to them it will be impossible to say that the last word has been said about these three great men, who played in turn so important a part in our national annals. Their ultimate owner may have the opportunity of assisting the historian in the manner I have ventured to indicate.

A. M. BROADLEY.

[CONTENTS]

[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]

[I]
ON AUTOGRAPH
COLLECTING
GENERALLY

LAST PAGE OF A.L.S. OF ELIZABETH CHUDLEIGH, DUCHESS OF KINGSTON, AT ST. PETERSBURG, TO MISS CHUDLEIGH, AT BATH.

WARRANT SIGNED BY WARREN HASTINGS, PHILIP FRANCIS, EDWARD WHEELER, AND EYRE COOTE, MAY 31, 1780.

[CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS]

[CHAPTER I]
ON AUTOGRAPH COLLECTING GENERALLY

Autograph collecting in relation to kindred hobbies—The genesis of the autograph—Examples of the alba amicorum of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—The conscript fathers of autograph collecting—Franks and their votaries—Album specimens and their value—The autograph-hunter and his unconscious victims—Anecdotes of some recent autograph "draws"

There can be no doubt that the handwriting of a man is related to his thought and character, and that we may therefore gain a certain impression of his ordinary mode of life and conduct.—Goethe to Cardinal Preusker.

My friend Judge Philbrick, for some time President of the Royal Philatelic Society of London, tells me that the stamps known to collectors as the Post Office Mauritius "fetch anything." In his opinion a pair of fine examples of the 1d. red and 2d. blue would easily make £2,500. He believes the King, when Prince of Wales, gave £1,500 for a single specimen. A set of the rarest issues of Sandwich Island stamps would be worth from £1,500 to £2,000, and there are at least twenty or thirty varieties which sell at something between £50 and £100. As a matter of fact, I believe the single "Mauritius Post Office" referred to exchanged hands in January 1904, at no less a figure than £1,950, and that at a moment when much excitement was caused in autographic circles by the appearance at Sotheby's of thirty-three pages of the MS. of "Paradise Lost," once the property of Jacob Tonson the publisher. The ultimate fate of this precious MS. will be referred to in connection with the subject of Milton's autographs, but it may be noted that in the same month a series of seven superb folio holograph letters of Napoleon, written during his first campaign in Italy, when his handwriting was still legible and his signature not the perplexing variation of scratches and blots of later days, was knocked down at the comparatively modest figure of £350, or less than one-fifth of the sum paid for the "Mauritius Post Office"! Before me lie several of the priced catalogues of the Sotheby autograph auctions of six years ago. Very few of the totals realised at these sales approached the price paid for this single stamp. At one of them Nelson's original letter-book of 1796-97, including the original drafts of 67 letters (many of them of first-rate importance) failed to fetch more than £190, while a two days' sale (that of December 5 and 6, 1904) brought only an aggregate sum of £1,009 16s., notwithstanding the fact that the 416 lots disposed of comprised a splendid series of Johnson and Thrale letters, a series of S. T. Coleridge MSS., and fine examples of letters by Pope, Richardson, Marvell, Burke, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Nelson, and Lady Hamilton, together with historical documents signed by Queen Elizabeth, the two Charleses, Oliver Cromwell, and Queen Anne. The items thus disposed of would in themselves have made a fine collection if acquired by any one owner, for they represent the most interesting phases of our national annals, and they might have been acquired en bloc for £940, less than half the cost of that one most expensive stamp. Far be it from me to disparage a sister "hobby." All I seek to prove is that autograph collection has moderation in price to recommend it, as well as that inherent interest which Mr. Joline alludes to as "the gentlest of emotions."

In theory, at any rate, the lover of autographs can claim for his favourite pursuit an antiquity of origin which no print collector or philatelist, however enthusiastic, can possibly pretend to. In some shape or another MSS. were highly prized by the ancient Egyptians as well as the Greeks and Romans. The word "autograph" first occurs in the writings of Suetonius. We learn on good authority that Ptolemy stole the archives of the Athenians and replaced the originals with cunningly devised copies; Pliny and Cicero were both collectors after the manner of the time in which they lived; Nero recorded his impressions in pocket-books, and manuscripts of untold importance are supposed to lie buried in the lava-covered dwellings of Herculaneum. The Chinese, too, at a very remote period of their national existence were wont to decorate their temples with the writing or the sign-manuals of their defunct rulers. The Emperors Justinian and Theodoric are both reputed to have affixed their signatures by the aid of a perforated tin plate; and the mystery which attaches itself to the Epistles of Phalaris still awaits some definite solution. These, and a dozen other similar topics, may concern the history of writing in the abstract, but they are strange to the question of the genesis of the modern autograph in the sense already sufficiently defined and as considered from the collector's point of view.

By the irony of fate the origin of autograph collecting, as we now understand it, is clearly traced to the alba amicorum of the latter part of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century. Men and women of light and leading were accustomed to carry about oblong volumes of vellum, on which their friends and acquaintances were requested to write some motto or phrase under his or her signature. Several interesting examples of these alba are to be seen amongst the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum. The earliest of them (No. 851) bears the date 1579. It commences with the motto and signature of the Duc d'Alençon, the suitor of our Virgin Queen. He has attempted a sketch, something like a fire, under which are the words "Fovet et disqutit Francoys," and below, "Me servir quy mestre Farnagues."

No. 3,416 is bound in green velvet with the arms of the writers beautifully emblazoned on each page. On one of these the Duke of Holst, brother-in-law of James I., has written:—

Par mer et par terre
Wiwe la Guerre.

It was in the album amicorum of Christopher Arnold, Professor of History at Nuremberg, that the author of "Paradise Lost" wrote

In weakness I am made perfect.

To that most learned man, and my courteous friend, Christopher Arnold, have I given this, in token of his virtue, as well as of my good will towards him.

John Milton.

London, A.D. 1651, Nov. 19.

To the album of Charles de Bousy (No. 3,415) Edward Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, has contributed a motto neatly written in six languages. Late in the nineteenth century these ancient alba had their counterpart in the books of questions which, for a brief period, found favour in the eyes of the British hostess with a literary turn of mind. A page thus filled up by the late Duke of Coburg (Prince Alfred of England) is in my collection. In it the writer with perfect frankness discloses his ideas of happiness and misery, his favourite poets, painters, and composers, his pet aversions and the characters in history he most dislikes. The sheet of this modern album amicorum fetched one sovereign in the open market, and in many ways the views of the Duke are as interesting as those of the princes and poets who yielded to the entreaties of Charles de Bousy and Christopher Arnold.

In these early alba the interest of the handwriting formed the predominant attraction, but with the succeeding generations of collectors who gathered together stores of priceless MSS. the point of interest was almost entirely historical. It was reserved for the nineteenth century connoisseur to combine the interest which is purely historical with that which centres in the writer and the writing of any given letter or document. The value of the services rendered to the cause of history by men like Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631), John Evelyn (1620-1706), Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (1661-1724), Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford (1689-1741), and Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) cannot possibly be over-estimated.

Robert Harley purchased the papers accumulated by Fox, Stow, and D'Ewes, and the Harleian and Sloane MSS. form to-day a most important portion of the national collection in the British Museum. Thomas Hearne (1678-1735) laboured industriously at Oxford on the same lines as Robert Harley and Hans Sloane. He is said to have made each important discovery of autographic treasure-trove the subject of a devout thanksgiving.

Good work was done about the same time by Ralph Thoresby (1658-1725) and Peter Le Neve (1661-1729). Manuscripts entered largely into the "Museum of Rarities" formed by the first named, and the MSS. of the latter are now in the Bodleian Library and the Heralds' College. A little later came James West (1704-1772). Between 1741 and 1762 he held the office of Joint-secretary to the Treasury, and from 1746 till his death he was Recorder of Poole. Among other curiosities he got together a large number of valuable MSS. Born four years before West, James Bindley lived till 1818, thus becoming a contemporary of Upcott, Dawson Turner, and other early nineteenth-century collectors who prepared the way for the great work since accomplished by Mr. Alfred Morrison and others.

It now becomes necessary to say something of the "frank," which for more than an entire century exercised the minds of men and women in every condition of life to an extent it is now almost impossible to understand. The interest in the "frank" was philatelic as well as autographic, but no "frank" ever attained the high position now held by a Post Office Mauritius or early Sandwich stamp. The story of the "frank" is briefly thus: The right to send letters free of charge was claimed by Members of Parliament as far back as the reign of James I. It was fully discussed in the Commons immediately after the Restoration, and the claim was affirmed, although the Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimston, refused to put a motion which he stigmatised as "a poor mendicant proviso unworthy of the honour of the House." The Lords rejected the Bill, because apparently the privilege was not to be extended to them, but it was eventually conceded to members of both Houses. The grossest abuses were soon committed. Under the cover of the "frank" fifteen couple of hounds were sent to the King of the Romans; "two maid-servants going out as laundresses" were forwarded to "My Lord Ambassador Methuen," two bales of stockings found their way, "post free," to our representative at the Court of Portugal. The "frank" was continually used for the transit of live deer, turkeys, and haunches of venison. In Queen Anne's time its operation was limited to packets weighing two ounces or less, and in the fourth year of George III. it was enacted that the "franking" Peer or M.P. should write the whole address and date on each letter. In 1795 the maximum weight of a "franked" letter was reduced to one ounce, and in 1840, on the institution of Sir Rowland Hill's penny postage system, the privilege (except in one or two special cases) was entirely abolished. Mr. Bailie, of Ringdufferin, Killyleagh, Co. Down, was one of the last of the frank-collecting enthusiasts. About twenty years ago he thus wrote to the Archivist:—

"Although no further limitation or alteration was made between 1795 and 1840, great abuses still existed. Members supplied larger packets of franks to friends and adherents; some sold their privilege for large sums to banking and business firms; they also accepted douceurs for allowing letters to be directed to them, although intended for other persons, and servants' wages were frequently paid by franks, which were subsequently sold by them to tradesmen and others. It was computed that a banking house, having one of the firm an M.P., effected thereby a saving of £700 a year. In one week of November, 1836, about 94,700 franks passed through the London post alone, and in 1837 there were 7,400,000 franked letters posted. From 1818 to 1837 it was estimated that £1,400,000 had been lost to the Post Office through the franking system." The privilege was abolished on July 10, 1840, the only exception made being in favour of the late Queen's own letters and a few Government Departments.

The Inspectors of Franks in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh were highly paid and important officials. Mr. William Tayleure, of Adelaide Street, West Strand, headed a long list of dealers in "franks." "Frank" auctions, prior to 1840, were as common as stamp auctions are to-day, and amongst the best known "frank" collectors were Lady Chatham (the daughter-in-law of the "Great Commoner"), Lord William FitzRoy and Mr. Blott, Inspector of Franks at the G.P.O. Mr. Bailie eventually became possessor of the Chatham and FitzRoy collections. He could boast of possessing the "frank" of every Peer since the Union, with the single exception of F. A. Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry.

For three generations at least one of the principal objects in life seems to have been the gratuitous acquisition of "franks." When James Beattie visited the Thrales of Streatham, his supreme delight lay in having secured six "franks" and the promise of a further supply; millionaires excused their epistolary silence on the plea of the difficulty to "get" a "frank," and even late in the "eighteen-thirties" Benjamin Disraeli wrote to his sister that he was sure that the sight of an unprivileged (i.e., unfranked) letter on the Bradenham breakfast-table would cause the death of his venerable father.

The witty letters of Joseph Jekyll abound in amusing allusions to "franks." One day he writes, "Don't go into histericks at a Radical frank of Burdett's"; on another occasion, "I have bribed the Attorney-General for this frank," and again, "I postponed payment till the immaculate electors of Stockbridge had agreed to save ninepence out of your pin-money." Writing to Lady Blessington the Nestor of beaux esprits says: "I trust this will reach you if the Post Office can decipher my friend Wetherell's hieroglyphical frank, but Tories always make a bad hand of it."

Collections of "franks" like those of Mr. Bailie must still have some value. It is now difficult to obtain isolated examples, and to my mind they are infinitely more interesting, from every point of view, than detached signatures of individuals, however celebrated, and the great majority of "album specimens."

An "album specimen" is a letter or signature obtained in answer to a request for an autograph. If the demand is made point-blank, the reply is rarely of any real value.

There are, of course, many exceptions to the rule. I have already alluded to the page of the "Confessions" Book filled up by the late Duke of Coburg. Bismarck is said to have been requested to add something on the page of an autograph album which already contained the autographs of Guizot and Thiers. The former had written, "I have learned in my long life two rules of prudence. The first is to forgive much; the second, never to forget." Thiers had placed below this the sentence, "A little forgetting would not detract from the sincerity of the forgiveness." Bismarck continued, "As for me, I have learnt to forget much, and to be asked to be forgiven much." I should not be surprised if the page of that album with the conjunction of these three great names yielded a record price.

It is the persistent seeker for "album specimens" who is known in America as the "Autograph Fiend," and on this side as the "Autograph Hunter." Possibly in the United States this type of collector is more aggressive than his English confrère. Longfellow was an early victim of the "A. F." In his diary he plaintively mentions the necessity of complying with thirty or forty requests of this kind. On January 9, 1857, matters reached a climax. On that day he made the following entry in his journal: "To-day I wrote, sealed, and dictated seventy autographs." Other celebrities were less complacent than the persecuted poet. "George Eliot" generally instructed Mr. Lewes to write a point-blank refusal, and an Archbishop of York intended to follow her example, but unintentionally delighted his tormentor with the signed reply, "Sir, I never give my autograph, and never will." Frowde was in the habit of replying after this fashion:—

Dear Sir,—Mr. Weller's friend (or perhaps Mr. Weller himself) would say that "autographs is vanity!"—but since you wish for mine, I subscribe myself,

Faithfully yours,
J. A. Frowde.

Mr. Joline shows little mercy to such applicants. Lord Rosebery replies to a similar application:—

Lord Rosebery presents his compliments to Miss C., and would rather not make her collection and himself ridiculous by sending it the autograph of so insignificant a person.

An exceptionally considerate type of autograph-hunter succeeded in extracting the following charming note from the late R. L. Stevenson:—

Vailima, Upolu, Samoa.

You have sent me a slip to write on; you have sent me an addressed envelope; you have sent it me stamped; many have done as much before. You have spelled my name right, and some have done that. In one point you stand alone: you have sent me the stamps for my post office, not the stamps for yours. What is asked with so much consideration I take a pleasure to grant. Here, since you value it, and have been at the pains to earn it by such unusual attentions—here is the signature,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

For the one civil autograph collector, Charles R.

Poe, like Longfellow, was merciful to his autograph-seeking correspondents, and their name was legion. In his opinion, "The feeling which prompts to the collection of autographs is a natural and rational one." Thackeray and Dickens were equally considerate in the matter of these autograph petitions. More years ago than I care to recollect a young cousin of mine wrote to the former, and received, almost by return of post, a signed and dated card with a clever little sketch of a young lady inspecting an album. At the present moment this particular "specimen" is worth at least £10.

The most successful type of "Autograph Fiend" is the man who is able, on some clever pretence, to extract a letter of real interest and importance from his unconscious victim. Since I began to collect I have carefully watched the operation of these pious frauds, and am often astonished at the ease with which political, literary, and artistic celebrities fall into an all too transparent trap. Portrait painters are ready to send estimates to persons they never heard of; grave theologians are led by impostors into discussions on abstruse questions of faith and belief; astute statesmen like Mr. Chamberlain are induced to enlarge on burning problems of the hour; and venerable artists like Sir John Tenniel are apparently ready to furnish two pages of reminiscences for the mere asking. In the "eighteen-fifties" a swindler named Ludovic Picard acquired a really valuable series of autographs by writing to men like Béranger, Heine, Montalembert, and Lacordaire letters in which he posed as one of "the odious race of the unappreciated who meditated suicide, and sought in his hour of sore distress for valuable counsel and advice." Lacordaire sent him ten closely-written pages of earnest appeal, and Charles Dickens, who happened to be at Boulogne, fell an easy victim to the wiles of "Miserrimus," who was finally unmasked by Jules Sandeau while carousing with a party of boon companions at a tavern. Dickens wrote as follows:—

Voici encore de bons remèdes contre votre affliction! Surtout, on doit se souvenir constamment de la bonté du grand Dieu, des beautés de la nature, et de si touchantes félicités et misères de ces pauvres voisins dans cette vie de vicissitudes. Voici encore une manière de s'élever le cœur et l'âme, depuis les ténèbres de la terre jusqu'à la clarté du ciel. Courage, courage! C'est le voyageur faible qui succombe et qui meurt. C'est le brave homme qui persévère, et qui poursuit son voyage jusqu'à la fin. Votre cas a été le cas d'une immense foule d'hommes, dont les cœurs courageux ont été victorieux, triomphants, heureux.

A.L.S. OBTAINED FROM CARDINAL NEWMAN BY AN AUTOGRAPH-HUNTER, SEPTEMBER 4, 1870.

A query sent to Sir John Tenniel on the subject of the private theatricals at Charles Dickens's elicited this interesting letter:—

October 13, 1903.

Dear Sir,—With many apologies for the delay, absolutely unavoidable, I have much pleasure in offering you such information as the only surviving representative of the "Guild of Literature and Art" and a memory of over fifty years may be able to supply in answering your polite letter of the 8th inst. received on Saturday.

The first performance of "Not so Bad as we Seem," at Devonshire House, in the presence of the Queen, the Prince Consort, and the Court, most certainly took place on the 16th of May, 1851, just five months after I had joined the Punch staff.

But there was also a second grand performance of the play on the 27th, to which the friends of the actors and distinguished people were invited by special invitation of the Duke.

Happily, after an almost hopeless search, I have found the bill of the play (which please to return when done with) of that performance, which is identical with the first except that the farce of "Mr. Nightingale's Diary," by Dickens and Mark Lemon, was not produced for the delectation of "Royalty"! Bill will also give you the names of the dramatis personæ, and you will see that the names of Maclise and Leech are not included in the list.

The last-named characters, some with only a line, some with none, were alluded to, and cheerfully, except by certain literary celebrities, and for myself "Hodge" was quite a good little part.

In the following year, however, owing to Forster's illness, the part of "Hardman" (a most important one) was at once assigned to me, and it is to that which Dickens alludes in his letter to Forster from Sunderland, August 29, 1852. I can hardly suppose that this letter can be of the least use to you, but

I am,
Faithfully yours,
John Tenniel.

TWO PAGES OF A.L.S. OF SIR JOHN TENNIEL, OF PUNCH, OBTAINED BY AN AUTOGRAPH-HUNTER, OCTOBER 13, 1903.

Within a month this letter figured in an autograph catalogue at the modest price of 12s.

A candid friend writes to the Earl of Rosebery that he is sorely troubled in conscience as to some difficulty which has arisen in connection with the Premier's patronage of the race-course. He obtains a reply, seemingly after some demur:—

October 13, 1895.

My dear ——, I did not the least in the world mean to imply the slightest shadow of blame to you for asking the question, which I do not doubt many other people are also asking. But for all that I am not able to answer it, and therefore you are unfettered in your treatment of it. It is strange, as regards my own position towards the Sporting League, Liberal candidates are abused on the ground that Liberals are opposed to sport, and then, on the other hand, the Nonconformist Conscience fires a broadside into him for what is thought to be too much allied to sport.

Yours very truly,
Rosebery.

Lord Rosebery's views on the elasticity of the Nonconformist conscience were sold for a crown, and the same price was asked and obtained for a letter most ingeniously obtained from Mr. Chamberlain in the very early days of Tariff Reform Agitation:—

September 18, 1903.

Dear Sir,—My correspondence is so enormous that I am compelled to dictate my letters even to my most intimate friends and relations, and the uncharitable suggestion that I am too proud to reply to workmen in my own handwriting is quite uncalled for.

I greatly appreciated your friendly letter and the compliment which you and your wife propose to pay me and which I readily accept. Tell me when the baby is to be baptized and exactly what you mean to call him, and I will see if I can find some little memento which may remind him in after years of his namesake.

Meanwhile I am glad to know that the tariff question is being discussed in your workshop. The time will come before long when all the working men will see how seriously their employment is threatened, and how necessary it is for them that the Colonial Markets should be kept open. The future of our trade depends on our relations with our kinsfolk across the seas, and if we do not seize the opportunity offered to us by them of increasing our trade with them we may not have another chance, but when we desire it may find that they have ceased to be willing. The Big Loaf cry is a sheer imposture. Nothing that I have proposed would increase the cost of living to any working man, and on the other hand it would give him the certainty of better trade and more employment. Wages, which depend upon employment, would tend to rise, and labour would gain all round.

We have had wonderfully good trade during the last two years, but there are signs approaching at present, and if they are fulfilled and every trade in London suffers from the free import of the surplus of foreign countries, the most bigoted Free Trader will regret that he was not wise in time and content to make preparation against the evil day.

Truly yours,
Joseph Chamberlain.

The "Autograph Fiend" in this case certainly deserves his name. He not only succeeds in obtaining an interesting letter, signed and carefully corrected by an ex-Cabinet Minister, which he is able to convert into five shillings, but he receives with it a promise that the writer will become the godfather of his real or supposed child!

Mr. Ruskin's total lack of sympathy with the autograph-hunter was notorious. He was also known to entertain a strong antipathy to a certain conventicle. The following response to a demand for subscription elicited a very characteristic reply, which was promptly converted into ten pounds. In the presence of such recent examples of successful autograph "draws" as these, there is no need to repeat the old story of the Duke of Wellington's reply to a fictitious demand for the payment of a washer-woman's bill said to be due from Lord Douro.

Mr. John Ruskin to a correspondent:—

I am scornfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the world, the precisely less likely to give you a farthing. My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is, Don't get into debt. Starve and go to heaven—but don't borrow. Try first begging—I don't mind, if it's really needful, stealing. But don't buy things you can't pay for. And of all manner of debtors, pious people building churches they can't pay for, are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can't you preach and pray behind the hedges—or in a sand-pit—or a coal-hole first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me. And of all sects of believers in ruling spirit—Hindoos, Turks, Feather Idolaters, and any Mumbo-jumbo, Log and Fire Worshippers, your modern English Evangelical sect is the most absurd, and entirely objectionable and unendurable to me. All which they might very easily have found out from my books—any other sort of sect would—before bothering me to write to them. Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant,

John Ruskin.

FROM THE PRELUDE OF "GERONTIUS," MS. BARS SIGNED BY SIR EDWARD ELGAR, SEPTEMBER, 1900.

Autograph-hunting on the basis now exposed is only pursued in the hope of gain from the sale of the letter thus obtained. To attempt to form a collection in such a manner might lead to very unpleasant consequences. The only innocent form of autograph-hunting is that so frequently witnessed at concerts and musical festivals, and the albums thus filled are ultimately sold for a price which would sadly disappoint the original owner. In the next chapter I shall endeavour to give the beginner in autograph collecting such information as will enable him not only to purchase genuine letters at the lowest possible price, but to arrange and classify them when so arranged to the greatest possible advantage. My firm conviction that at the present moment the judicious buying of autographs is one of the best possible investments, does not lessen the pleasure which we feel in examining those still-speaking relics of the past which enable us to say with Thomas Moore—

Thus shall memory often in dreams sublime
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus sighing look through the waves of time
For the long faded glories they cover.

[II]
THE MODERN
AUTOGRAPH
COLLECTOR
AND HIS
EQUIPMENT

[CHAPTER II]
THE MODERN AUTOGRAPH COLLECTOR AND HIS EQUIPMENT

Useful books on autographs—Collections of autograph facsimiles—The autograph markets of London and Paris—Variations in price—Autograph catalogues and dealers—The treatment and classification of autographs

Letters are appendices to History—the best instructors in History and the best histories in themselves.—Lord Bacon.

Scripta ferunt annos.—Ovid.

The modern autograph collector has certain advantages over his predecessors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which will compensate him in some measure for the difficulty of procuring choice specimens at the prices which ruled twenty and even ten years ago. Foremost amongst these advantages is facility of access to such autographic treasure-houses as the British Museum, the Record Office, and the National Library at Paris. It was as recently as the late "eighteen-fifties" that the priceless archives of the old India Office were ruthlessly sacrificed by the lineal successors of "John Company." Amongst other valuable MSS. the archives of the Indian Navy went en bloc to the paper-mills. A single letter, blown accidentally from one of the carts used by the contractors who carried out this work of desolation, turned out to have been written in the reign of James I. by the Duke of Buckingham, and brought £5 to its finder. To-day it is probably worth at least five times as much again. The Record Office, in which such State documents and official correspondence as have survived the ignorance, carelessness, or iconoclasm of the past, now find a home, is, comparatively speaking, a modern institution. Notwithstanding the havoc wrought by the sans-culottes of the Terror and the Communists of forty years ago, the National Library in Paris is to-day the home of one of the most interesting collections of autographs in the whole world, including, it is said, something like ten thousand letters and documents written or signed by Napoleon. It is probably the result of the social upheavals of the past, and the wholesale dispersal of the contents of public and private muniment rooms towards the close of the eighteenth century, that autograph "finds" are more frequently made in Paris than anywhere else. It was there that I acquired the marriage settlement of Pamela FitzGerald,[1] executed at Tournay on December 26, 1792, and a sixteenth-century deed in which mention is made of a Royal Commission for the further exploration of Canada—La Canadie. Both of these documents cost less than 10s., and one of them, presented by me through Mr. Ross Robertson to the Public Library at Toronto, has now been framed, and is shown to visitors as a curiosity of the greatest interest and rarity. These great public institutions carry on in the twentieth century the good work commenced long ago by men like Evelyn, the Harleys, and Sloane.

The first thing I should advise an intending collector to do is to procure the "Guide to the MSS., Autographs, &c., exhibited in the Department of MSS. and in the Grenville Library of the British Museum."[2] This useful little volume contains no less than thirty plates of various descriptions, ranging from the articles of the Magna Charta and a page from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to Nelson's last letter to Lady Hamilton, and examples of the handwriting of Marlborough, Wellington, Washington, Chatham, and Keats. At the end is a list of the different series of autograph facsimiles issued at intervals since 1895, and sold at a very moderate price. Next to the careful study of original MSS., nothing is so important to the collector as the careful and constant examination of well-executed facsimiles like those obtainable at the British Museum, where, at the cost of 7s. 6d., you can get thirty plates. The first in order contains facsimiles of autograph letters by Queen Catharine of Aragon, 1513; Archbishop Cranmer, 1537; Bishop Hugh Latimer (marginal notes by Henry VIII.), about 1538; Edward VI., 1551; Mary, Queen of Scots, 1571; English Commanders against the Spanish Armada, 1588; Queen Elizabeth, 1603; Charles I., 1642; Oliver Cromwell, 1649; Charles II., 1660; James, Duke of Monmouth, 1685; William III., 1689; James Stuart, the Pretender, 1703; John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, 1706; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1759; George III., 1760; George Washington, 1793; Horatio, Viscount Nelson, and Emma, Lady Hamilton, 1805; Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, 1815; General Charles George Gordon, 1884; Queen Victoria, 1885; John Dryden, 1682; Joseph Addison, 1714; S. T. Coleridge, 1815; William Wordsworth, 1834; John Keats, 1820; Charles Dickens, 1870; W. M. Thackeray, 1851; Thomas Carlyle, 1832; and Robert Browning, 1868.

Numerous collections of facsimiles have been published in England, France, and Germany, and the prudent collector must secure one or more of these invaluable aids to the identification of MSS. Most of the best catalogues issued, both in London and Paris, contain several facsimiles, but that does not lessen the utility of books like "Autographs of Royal, Noble, Learned, and Remarkable Personages conspicuous in English History from the Reign of Richard II. to that of Charles II., with some illustrious Foreigners; containing many passages from important letters" (engraved under the direction of Charles John Smith and John Gough Nichols: London, 1829, 1 vol. 4to); or "A Collection of One Hundred Characteristic and Interesting Autograph Letters written by Royal and Distinguished Persons of Great Britain from the XV. to the XVIII. Century, copied in perfect facsimile from the originals by Joseph Nethercliff" (London, 1849). Several useful facsimiles are to be found in "A Guide to the Collector of Historical Documents, Literary MSS., and Autograph Letters," by the Rev. Dr. Scott and Mr. Samuel Davey, published in 1891. Dr. H. T. Scott is also responsible for a handy little volume, entitled "Autograph Collecting, a Practical Manual for Amateurs and Historical Students," brought out three years later than the larger volume by Mr. Upcott Gill.

It must be confessed, however, that our French neighbours are far ahead of us in the matter of facsimiles, as well as in other details connected with autograph collecting. With us the subject is only now beginning to receive the treatment it merits. In the opinion of our neighbours the cult of the autograph has for some generations held rank as a science. I cannot too strongly impress upon beginners the expediency of carefully watching the Paris autograph market, and giving special attention to the catalogues issued monthly by M. Noël Charavay, of 3, Rue Furstenberg, and Madame Veuve Gabriel Charavay, of 153, Faubourg St. Honoré. At the Fraser Sale (April, 1901) I purchased three huge volumes forming an extra-illustrated copy of a portion of the famous "Letters of Madame de Sévigné," compiled quite a century ago at the cost of several hundred pounds, and finally acquired by Miss Eliza Gulston. In it, in addition to an enormous number of prints and portraits, were several genuine autograph letters, supplemented by a large number of facsimiles. Under the genuine letters the maker of the book wrote their source and history; he divided the facsimiles into "tracings," "imitations by hand," and so forth. A copy of the "Isographie des Hommes Célèbres," in two 4to volumes, is now worth between £3 and £4, and the late Mr. Étienne Charavay prepared two supplements to it which are also extremely valuable. Between March, 1888, and December, 1894, the late Mr. Davey published a quarterly journal—the Archivist—which bid fair to become as indispensable to the English collector as the Amateur d'Autographes, founded in the early "eighteen-forties" and now admirably edited by M. Noël Charavay, is to his French colleague. Every true lover of autographs must deplore its untimely end, and the young collector is indeed fortunate if he can obtain a set of it. In it Dr. Scott, who was from the first its principal contributor, places quite a mine of information at the disposal of his readers. I regard the two bound volumes of the Archivist in my possession as one of the most useful books of reference obtainable in the matter of autographs. In the forty odd volumes of the Amateur d'Autographes[3] the student will discover a liberal education, as far as his special subject is concerned, ready at hand. The Charavay Sale-catalogues are of great value in the matter of arrangement and description, as well as for the facsimiles they give in abundance. One of the finest is that of the Alfred Bovet Collection, dispersed during the spring and early summer of 1884. It was prepared by M. Étienne Charavay, and fills over 800 4to pages plentifully illustrated with sketches and numerous facsimiles. A very useful book for beginners who read French is "Les Autographes en France et le goût des Autographes en France et à l'étranger" (Paris, 1865), by M. de Lescure. It contains a useful list of the numerous books on autographs published up to that date, together with the various collections of facsimiles, many of which can now be picked up on the bookstalls by the side of the Seine or the adjoining streets for a few francs. As far back as 1820 the Maison Delpech commenced the publication of their various "Iconographies," of which the "Isographie des Hommes Célèbres" was the natural successor. There are one or two German books of facsimiles, like the "Album von Autographen" (Leipzig, 1849) and the "Sammlung histor: berühmter Autographen" (Stuttgart, 1846-47). There is also a collection of five hundred facsimiles, published in 1846 by F. Bogaerts. I do not, of course, pretend to provide my readers with a complete autographic bibliography, but amongst the works I have mentioned he will find all that is necessary to set about collecting in earnest, and without fear of making many initial blunders.

Having handled and carefully examined a number of genuine autographs and having, by the study of facsimiles, familiarised himself with the handwriting of many famous men and women, the collector in embryo may begin to buy, but it must be a case of festina lente. How cautiously he should proceed he will realise when, in the next chapter, I come to consider the critical question of autograph frauds and forgeries. All respectable autograph dealers are ready to guarantee any specimen they offer for sale, and to take it back if found to be "doubtful." It is from the careful reading of the catalogues[4] issued from time to time by dealers like Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Grafton Street, Dr. Scott, of 69, Mill Lane, West Hampstead, Mr. W. V. Daniell, of 53, Mortimer Street, Messrs. Sotheran, of 37, Piccadilly, Messrs. Maggs, of 109, Strand, Messrs. Ellis, of 29, New Bond Street, and Messrs. Pearson, of Pall Mall Court, that one obtains an insight into the current value of autographs of every description. Mr. Frank Sabin, of 172, New Bond Street, does not, as a rule, issue catalogues, but he possesses one of the most valuable stocks of autographs in existence. His Thackeray, Civil War, and Nelson collections are alone worth many thousands of pounds. While this volume was going through the press Mr. Sabin paid the record sum of £8,650 for a collection of seventeenth-century MSS. relating to America belonging to Mr. R. W. Blathwayt. In the provinces autograph catalogues are published now and then by Mr. W. Brown, of Edinburgh, and Messrs. Simmons & Waters, of Leamington Spa. All these gentlemen will readily send their catalogues on application. I have already mentioned the two excellent catalogues issued monthly in Paris. That of M. Noël Charavay, entitled Bulletin d'Autographs, has appeared ever since 1847. The Revue des Autographs of Madame Veuve Gabriel Charavay dates from 1866. It is only right to say that autograph collecting is pursued so keenly just now in France, that unless they can arrange to obtain advance copies of these catalogues, the best items in them will probably be sold before their order arrives. Catalogues are sometimes published by Herr Émile Hirsch, of 6, Carl Strasse, Munich. The American dealers will be spoken of in the chapter devoted to the subject of autograph collecting in the United States.

English autographs of exceptional interest are often obtained abroad at far lower prices than in London, and that fact makes it very necessary to look carefully through the foreign catalogues. The same remark doubtless applies to French and German autographs in England. I obtained in Germany a fine autograph letter of Charles I. for £10. It would have fetched three times that amount in a London auction-room. The same remark applies to a fine letter of the Young Pretender, which came from Paris and was priced only at 55 francs. On the other hand I obtained in London for 15s. each letters of Madame de Geoffrin and Madame du Deffand, which would have cost twice or thrice as much in Paris. In one of the latest French catalogues which reached me, an English letter was priced at 20 francs. In an English catalogue, a less lengthy letter by the same writer was offered for sale at £5. For 12 francs I once succeeded in purchasing in Paris a letter of Lord Shelbourne, covering ten pages and throwing quite new light on the relations between the French and English Courts at a certain epoch. The prices for fine autographs in London are far higher than in Paris and Germany. A Paris dealer could hardly realise the possibility of a Keats letter fetching £500 (12,500 francs), as at the Louis J. Haber sale. It was thought quite wonderful when a phenomenally early letter of Napoleon—I believe the earliest known—was sold for 5,000 francs. This figure is, I believe, the highest ever given in Paris for a single letter. In any case this unique relic of the young Napoleon only fetched about one-tenth of the price obtained for the Post Office Mauritius stamp which caused so much excitement in the philatelic world six years since.

FACSIMILE OF THE HISTORIC LETTER FROM GEORGE CRABBE TO EDMUND BURKE.

(See also [p. 210].)

In the case of MSS. of every description it is necessary to read them carefully. It is only by so doing that you can hope to ascertain anything like the real value. This remark applies particularly to holograph letters. The cataloguer often omits the name of the person to whom it is addressed, or some sentence or allusion which adds materially to its value. Thus a letter of Franklin addressed to Washington, or letters by any of the French marshals written to Napoleon, would be far more valuable than ordinary letters of any of these personages. A letter signed by the Russian Emperor Paul would not be intrinsically valuable. But one addressed to Nelson was lately priced at £14. The time at which a letter is written is often an important factor in determining its price. An ordinary letter of Wellington, who wrote at least a hundred thousand letters during his public career, can be bought for 3s. 6d. A note written on the evening of June 18, 1815, not long since realised £105. Then again, letters acquire additional value when forming part of a series. I purchased a letter of Sir Joshua Reynolds to the poet Crabbe, mentioning a communication he was sending him for Dr. Johnson. Years after I secured the precious enclosure. The two together are obviously worth more than when taken singly. I possess the splendid letter of George Crabbe, appealing for help to Burke, which once belonged to Sir Theodore Martin. I failed to secure Burke's reply, which went, I believe, to the British Museum. I gave a few francs in Paris for a letter of Anne Darner's asking Madame de Staël to meet her at Miss Berry's (the friend and literary executrix of Walpole). Quite accidentally, in turning over a pile of autographs in London, I came across the reply, and a very characteristic one it was. At the present moment both letters face the account of the reunion in question in my extra-illustrated copy of "The Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry."

THE AUTOGRAPH OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

(See [p. 257].)

Dr. Scott hopes I will impress upon my readers the necessity of mending autographs as little as possible. To clip or trim them is rank heresy, and gives them at once the appearance of counterfeits. Autographs must be treated with the greatest tenderness. You can best strengthen decaying paper by the careful application of diluted solution of gelatine. There are several methods of rendering faded writing again legible. According to one authority the most effective agent is very finely powdered chlorate of potash added to a decoction of galls, dabbed, not rubbed, over the MS. When dry, the surface should be sponged with lime-water. Another expert advises that the paper should be moistened, and a brush passed over the faded portion wetted with a solution of sulphide of ammonia, an infusion of galls, or a solution of ferrocyanide of potassium slightly acidulated with hydrochloric acid.[5] Personally I have found the "A.P." brand of transparent adhesive tape invaluable both in mending and hinging autographs, but worthless imitations must be avoided. It can be bought of all stationers, and with it I always use Higgins's Photographic Paste. This may possibly be a little extravagant, and an expert gives me the following recipe for a useful paste in connection with autographs:—

"Take a tablespoonful of Glenfield's Patent Starch and mix with a little cold water in an ordinary jam-pot, then fill with boiling water. When cool it will be ready for use."

The classification of autographs has given rise to endless discussion. On this subject I am at issue with Mr. Joline. Personally, I regard extra-illustration as the most effective and interesting plan of arranging and preserving autographs. Mr. Joline, on the other hand, "meditates" upon extra-illustration as only an incident or contingent possibility in autograph collection. I hope to deal with (to me) the most fascinating subject of Extra-Illustration or Grangerising in a separate volume. In an article in The Country Home I have given examples of the effective use of autographs in extra-illustration,[6] and I can conceive no form of "the gentle emotion" more enjoyable than that which one experiences when one sees an appropriate autograph placed in apposition to a fine portrait facing some text which they combine strikingly and felicitously to illustrate. In my "Chesterfield's Letters" I have a letter in English from the Sage of Ferney to the Hermit of Blackheath, together with a portrait of the same date, opposite Chesterfield's account of his meeting with and friendship for Voltaire. In an "extended" Clarke and McArthur's "Life of Nelson," in immediate contiguity to the account of one of his most daring adventures, and the honours it brought him, may be seen Nelson's original letter of thanks to George III. (as touching an epistle as he ever penned), together with a contemporary portrait in water-colours. There is no better way of preserving autographs than to house them between the leaves of well-bound and carefully tended volumes. There is no worse method than to frame them as a picture, and expose them to the fading influence of a strong light. I have seen autographs actually gummed to a glass before being framed! If an accident occurs the autograph generally shares the fate of the glass. For the orderly keeping of the autographs and MSS. which I have not utilised in the forty or fifty books I have extra-illustrated since 1900, I employ a deep folio-sized receptacle known as a Stone's "filing" cabinet, with alphabetical divisions.[7] It enables me to find any given paper at a moment's notice.

I have made the necessities of extra-illustration the mainspring, as it were, of my autograph collecting. If the young autograph collector has no specific object of this kind in view (and in the course of ten years' hard work in the vineyard of grangerising there are few kinds of autographs I have not required) I should strongly recommend him to begin with some specific line, be it soldiers or sailors, painters or poets, actors and actresses, men of letters, worthies of a particular city, county, or college, and so forth. If this course is adopted an interesting collection can be formed without incurring enormous cost, and the value of good autographs is sure to rise. It is given to few men in a generation, or even in a century, to form collections of a cosmopolitan and all-embracing character like that made by the late Mr. Alfred Morrison between the years 1865 and 1882, the catalogue of which, prepared with the utmost care by M. A. W. Thibaudeau, fills six folio and seven imperial octavo volumes, and costs £60. French collectors pay great attention to classification, and each letter is generally placed in a chemise or cover bearing some heraldic or other appropriate device. In the case of a small collection like that which Sir George White, Bart., has acquired, of letters and documents relating solely to Bristol, an alphabetical arrangement is preferable. If, however, one gathers autographs of all conceivable kinds, and "of all nations and languages," subdivisions become absolutely essential if you want to find any particular specimen without difficulty. I have already referred to the Alfred Bovet Catalogue, prepared on scientific lines by M. Étienne Charavay. In this collection the many thousand items of which it consisted were divided into—(1) Heads of Government; (2) Statesmen and Political Personages; (3) The French Revolution; (4) Warriors; (5) Men of Science and Explorers; (6) Actors and Actresses; (7) Writers; (8) Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, and Architects; (9) Huguenots; and (10) Women. There was a further subdivision according to nationalities, and these were finally arranged chronologically. The preface to the Bovet Catalogue, admirably written by M. Étienne Charavay, has been published separately under the attractive title of "The Science of Autographs." It deserves to be translated and published in English, for no more thoughtful essay on the value of historical letters and the cult of the autograph has ever appeared. It is now time to consider the application of the legal maxim of caveat emptor to the acquisition of MSS. of every description. The presence of a forgery will often discredit an otherwise interesting and valuable collection. Not long ago I was shown an album of autographs which represented the gleanings of two or three generations of a highly respectable county family. The moment I opened it I recognised my old friend the Byron-Galignani facsimile, which is offered to dealers as a rare specimen at least once a week. The owner, who had paid several pounds for it, declared he could vouch for its genuineness beyond the shadow of a doubt! He never quite forgave my taking down the Paris edition of Byron's poems to convince him of his error.

[III]
THE
CAVEAT EMPTOR
OF AUTOGRAPH
COLLECTING

FIRST PAGE OF A.L.S. OF DR. JOHNSON TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS ON THE SUBJECT OF CRABBE'S POEMS, 1783.

LINES OF THOMAS CHATTERTON ON HORACE WALPOLE, WHICH COST SIR GEORGE WHITE, OF BRISTOL, £34.

[CHAPTER III]
THE CAVEAT EMPTOR OF AUTOGRAPH COLLECTING

Forgeries and fakes—Cases of mistaken identity—Some famous autograph frauds—Practical methods of detection

The success of an imposture depends chiefly upon the receptive disposition of those who are selected as its victims.—Introduction to "Ireland's Confessions."

Oui, il y a de faux autographes, comme il y a de faux antiques. Mais est-ce-qu'on devra supprimer le musée des antiques parce qu'on a découvert de faux bronzes.—Étienne Charavay, "L'Affaire Vrain-Lucas."

I must resist a strong temptation to enlarge on such interesting topics as W. H. Ireland's wholesale manufacture of Shakespearean MSS.; Thomas Chatterton's ingenious fabrication of Rowley's poems, and James Macpherson's alleged translations from Ossian. The main object of Ireland and Chatterton was obviously to deceive the world of letters rather than the then little-known autograph collector with whose interests I am solely concerned. By the irony of fate, however, there are at the present moment very few rarer or more costly autographs than that of Thomas Chatterton, who might very well have lived for a twelvemonth on the price paid by Sir George White for four or five lines of his handwriting scrawled on the back of a letter. Chatterton died by his own hand, with starvation staring him in the face, but Ireland lived to make money by the "Confessions"[8] of his misdoings, and more than thirty years ago £50 was paid for the scathing letter addressed to Macpherson by Samuel Johnson. The forger of autograph letters for the purpose of entrapping the over-trustful or ignorant collector is the product of the nineteenth century, although some of the French imitations may possibly be a little older. The modern forger obtains important aid from photography, but by way of compensation the enlargement of any given specimen by the same means is invaluable for the purposes of detection. The earliest imitations of autograph letters I have ever seen are of French origin, and are contained in the extra-illustrated copy of Madame de Sévigné's Letters already alluded to. They are frankly labelled as "tracings," "engravings," "lithographs," and so forth, and many of them seem to have been executed on old paper in order to simulate more completely the originals.

A SPECIMEN OF IRELAND'S SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES ATTESTED BY HIMSELF.

(By permission of the owners, Messrs. Sotheran.)

The inexperienced collector must, in the first instance, beware of facsimiles of letters which have been published bonâ fide as illustrations of works of biography, and, having been extracted from them, are offered for sale (sometimes innocently) as genuine specimens. The most familiar instance of this is a letter of Byron's addressed to "Mr. Galignani, at 18, Rue Vivienne, Paris." A facsimile of this, with address, &c., was prefixed to an edition of Byron's poems published in Paris. Not long ago I saw this lithographed facsimile figuring as genuine in a valuable collection of holograph letters, the rest of which were above suspicion.

This letter commences with the words:—

"Sir,—In various numbers of your journal I have seen mentioned a work entitled 'The Vampire' with the addition of my name as that of the author. I am not the author, and never heard of the work in question until now," and ends with the sentence, "You will oblige me by complying with my request of contradiction. I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in question, and have the honour to be (as the correspondents to magazines say), 'your constant reader' and very obedient servant, Byron." To this is added the date, "Venice, April 27th, 1819." There is a well-known facsimile of a letter of Lord Nelson which occasionally does duty as an original. Some years ago I saw it in a catalogue priced at several pounds! It is inserted after the preface in T. O. Churchill's "Life of Nelson," published in 1808, and the paper is therefore not unlike that of the period at which the letter is supposed to have been written, and bears on the back the address, "To Thomas Lloyd, Esq., No. 15, Mary's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane, London." The original would be worth quite ten guineas. Buyers of Nelson letters should remember that this dangerous facsimile begins as follows: "Bath, January 29th, 1798. My dear Lloyd,—There is nothing you can desire me to do that I shall not have the greatest pleasure in complying with, for I am sure you can never possess a thought that is not strictly honourable. I was much flattered by the Marquis's[9] kind notice of me, and I beg you will make my respects acceptable to him. Tell him that I possess his place in Mr. Palmer's Box, but his Lordship did not tell me all its charms, that generally some of the handsomest Ladys at Bath are partakers in the Box, and was I a bachelor I would not answer for being tempted, but as I am possessed of everything that is valuable in a wife I have no occasion to think beyond a pretty face"—and so forth.

WILLIAM IRELAND'S ATTESTATION OF HIS FORGERIES OF SHAKESPEARE'S SIGNATURE.

If either of these facsimiles had been touched with the end of a sable brush moistened with muriatic acid and water the print would remain unaffected. In a genuine letter the writing if so touched would grow faint or disappear. The same test may be applied to photographs or imitations in sepia. I once purchased a quaint note written by Edmund Kean, of which a reproduction is now given. Nearly a year later I saw an autograph, identical in every particular, offered for sale. I sent for it, and on applying the dilution of muriatic acid test found it to be a copy in sepia of the note already in my possession. The owner of the genuine note had sent it to two or three applicants for inspection. It had been traced over and then worked up in sepia. I once discovered a letter of William Pitt the Elder to be a forgery by the mere accident of the sun falling on it, and showing a narrow rim round each letter. In this case the basis was a photograph, touched up with black paint.

The autograph collector soon becomes accustomed to the appearance of genuine letters, for the creases and stains of time cannot be perfectly imitated any more than the old-world appearance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ink. Watermarks are a good, but not an infallible, test of genuineness. The thick, gilt-edged letter paper of quarto size used by our ancestors cannot be satisfactorily counterfeited, and the inexperienced buyer should eschew documents of all sorts written on morsels of paper of irregular size, which may have been torn from books, and lack the usual tests of authenticity. Collectors of autographs should bear in mind the facts that "franks" ceased to be used after the introduction of the penny postage in 1840; that envelopes were first used about ten years earlier, and that the letters denoting the various London postal districts did not form part of the postmark till some time after the invention of the adhesive stamp. A forged letter of Thackeray was detected by the appearance of the letter W. after London in the counterfeit postmark quite ten years before it could have legitimately done so. If hot water is applied to a genuine watermark, it becomes clearer and stronger; if to a fabricated one it disappears. The autograph collector should carefully study a book which has quite recently been published on the subject of forgery and fabricated documents.[10] One chapter is devoted to the subject of forged literary autographs, but those who desire to acquire an expert knowledge of this important question should master the whole of its contents, and this is no difficult task, for the volume only contains seventy-seven pages. In proportion to the constant rise in the value of autographs the temptation to forgery increases, and the gradual absorption of genuine specimens is sure to bring into existence a number of shams. As the authors very rightly point out, "It is not surprising the profitable and growing autograph market should have attracted the fraudulent, for the prizes when won are generally of a substantial character, and amply repay the misapplied effort and ingenuity demanded. The success which has attended too many of these frauds may be largely accounted for by the fact that in many cases the enthusiasm of the collector has outrun his caution."

The letters of Washington, Franklin, Burns, Nelson, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Scott were the first to attract the attention of the autograph forger in England. Thackeray and Dickens have been recently the object of his unwelcome attentions. Most of the Thackeray forgeries, like the example reproduced, are the work of one man, who uses an ordinary pen and has a fondness for half-sheets of paper. His feeble attempts to imitate Thackeray's wit and style are alone sufficient to excite suspicion. If the counterfeit is carefully compared with a genuine specimen like the one given, deception will be impossible. I possess a small collection of forged autograph letters to use for detective purposes, and as a warning to others. There are five of these "duffer" Thackerays amongst them. The forger apparently finds the upright hand Thackeray adopted later in life more to his taste than the less angular calligraphy of his youth. A few years ago the London autograph market was inundated with forged letters of Thackeray and Dickens. At present they are kept out of the light of day, and sold to the unwary in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, often in shops at the sea-side. The Dickens forgeries are generally betrayed by the printed address at the top of the letter being lithographed and not embossed. The gentleman to whom Dickens is said to have addressed his last letter is supposed to have had a certain number of facsimiles made for distribution amongst his friends. These are now used occasionally like the Galignani-Byron or the Churchill-Nelson. It is here a clear case of caveat emptor.

FORGED LETTER OF W. M. THACKERAY, IN WHICH HIS LATER HANDWRITING IS IMITATED.

Very often a letter is offered for sale which is in no sense of the word a forgery, but which was never written by the person the buyer supposes. In nine cases out of ten the seller is as ignorant of the true state of the case as the buyer. I allude to letters written by persons bearing the same name, but whose autographs possess a very different value. In addition to the kings and queens whose names are identical, we have two Oliver Cromwells, two Horace Walpoles, two Sarah Siddonses, two Charles Dickenses, and many other "doubles." I have within the last few months seen a letter of the less-known Horace Walpole catalogued as one of the owner of Strawberry Hill, and a letter of Sarah Siddons the younger, whose usual signature is "S. M. Siddons," described as a "long and pleasing" specimen in the handwriting of her mother. In these cases there is no sort of resemblance in the calligraphy of the two persons. The error arises solely from the similarity of the name, and a lack of care or knowledge on the part of the cataloguer. As a matter of fact, the letter of Sarah Martha Siddons is an exceedingly interesting one, and was written about two years before her death under the tragic circumstances graphically described by Mr. Knapp in his "Artist's Love Story." I never saw any other letter of Sarah M. Siddons, and I give it in extenso to show how careful one should be in studying an autograph before purchasing it. It should be remembered that "Sally" Siddons promised her younger sister Maria, who died in 1798 at Bristol Hot Wells "all for the love" of the handsome painter, that under no circumstances would she ever marry him. The letter gives a striking picture of the Kemble-Siddons "circle" at Bath in the first year of the nineteenth century.

Miss Sarah M. Siddons at Bath to Miss Patty Wilkinson,[11] Blake Street, York.

Bath, July 19, 1801.

Indeed my dear Patty I am extremely concerned to hear of your mother's serious illness which you may believe is not a little augmented by the necessity I cannot but feel there is, for your staying with her if she does not soon get the better of this alarming attack, but you know my dear I am by nature (and heartily do I thank nature for it) dispos'd to see the fairest side of things, and I am flattering myself with the hopes that your next letter will bring me good tidings, and that I shall see my dear Patty arrive with my Mother[12] at Bath in less now than a fortnight. Heaven be prais'd, if I should but be well to receive you both, it will be one of the happiest days of my life. Did I tell you how sociable we all were while my uncle and Mrs. Kemble[13] were in Bath? dining every day together, either at our own or the Twiss's house. I never saw my Uncle so cheerful and like other people, and she was quite agreeable and did not overwhelm us with Lords, Ladies, Balls and Suppers. Mrs. Twiss[14] too is become quite kind, nay affectionate to me since I got well, but one smile, one tender word, or attention has more effect on me when I am ill and miserable than all the kindness and attention I can meet with, when I am well, and able (at least in some degree) to return pleasure for pleasure. I have heard Betty Sharp sing several times, and think she is very much improved in manner and I hope her voice will improve in power, at present it is often too weak to have much effect in a large room, crowded with people. She is good humour'd and unaffected as far as I have seen her, and her person as I told you before improv'd most astonishingly. While my uncle and Mrs. Kemble were here, we spent an evening at Mrs. Palmer's[15] which was rather dull, and one at Miss Lee's[16] which was a little better. I am sure they both would have been very tiresome to me if it had not been for my own people. Pray remember me very kindly to poor Mrs. Wilkinson, who is I hope recovering every day—and to your friend Miss Brook. I should like to see Cora in all her glory. I present by you a salute to her Ladyship's divine parts. George[17] will still be with us when you come. Cecy[18] will be gone to school and it is almost time she should, for she is got so riotous nobody can manage her when I am not in the way, for Patty is too good natured ... and tho' she continually threatens to tell me, she never does and Cecilia knows she never will. Adieu my dear girl. I shall hear from you surely in a day or two, till when, I am impatiently

Your ever sincere and affectionate
S. M. Siddons.

Of the forged letters in my private "pillory" that of Keats is by far the most cleverly executed. The facsimiles of Byron and Nelson were never intended to be used for the purposes of deception. The Keats and Thackeray counterfeits, on the other hand, are the work of a professional fabricator of spurious autographs. In the Keats letters (dated Wentworth Place, Hampstead, December 8, 1818) the postmarks, the creases, the faded colour of the paper, and the seal with the clasped hands and motto are all carefully imitated, but it would not for a moment deceive an experienced hand. Collectors should carefully examine all Keats letters offered for sale—particularly those addressed to "My dear Woodhouse." The same remark applies to correspondence by Burns, Scott, Shelley, and Byron, for those much-prized and eagerly-sought-after letters have been each in turn the subject of ingenious and carefully prepared forgeries. The Byron forger (who claimed relationship with the poet) escaped the punishment he richly merited, but the wholesale manufacturer of Burns and Scott MSS. was sent to jail for a twelvemonth.

The most extraordinary case in the annals of autograph forgery occurred in France—the country par excellence of cunningly devised facsimiles—on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War. It is known as the Affaire Vrain-Lucas, and an excellent account of it was published at the time by M. Étienne Charavay.[19] Vrain-Lucas was a needy adventurer; Michel Chasles was a scientist of European reputation. Incredible as it may appear, Vrain-Lucas, in the course of a few years, induced one Chasles to purchase from him at the aggregate price of about £6,000 no less than 27,000 autographs, nearly the whole of which were forgeries of the most audacious description. Vrain-Lucas bestowed on his counterfeits little of the care and attention to detail which characterises some of the Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Scott forgeries. Beginning with a supposed correspondence between the youthful Newton and Pascal, which Sir David Brewster proved conclusively to be impossible, he proceeded to fabricate letters of Rabelais, Montesquieu, and La Bruyère. Before he had finished M. Chasles became the possessor of letters in French and written on paper made in France of Julius Cæsar, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, and even of Lazarus, after his resurrection. On February 16, 1870, Vrain-Lucas was brought before a Paris Criminal Court (Tribunal Correctionnel). Amongst the forged MSS. produced on behalf of the prosecution were 5 letters of Abélard, 5 from Alcibiades to Pericles, 181 of Alcuin, 1 of Attila to a Gallic general, 6 of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, to say nothing of examples of the private correspondence of Herod, Pompey, Charles Martel, Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, Sapho, Pontius Pilate, and Joan of Arc. Another long alphabetical list of these fictitious rariora began with Agnès Sorel, Anacreon, and the Emperor Adrian, and ended with St. Theresa, Tiberius, Turenne, and Voltaire.

Here is a delicious example of this farrago of transparent fraud.

Letter of Queen Cleopatra to Julius Cæsar.

Cléopatre royne à son très amé Jules César, Empereur.

Mon très amé, nostre fils Césarion va bien. J'espère que bientôt il sera en estat de supporter le voyage d'icy à Marseilles, où j'ai besoin de le faire instruire tant à cause de bon air qu'on y respire et des belles choses qu'on y enseigne. Je vous prins donc me dire combien de temps encore resterez dans ces contrées, car j'y veux conduire moy même nostre fils et vous prier par icelle occasion. C'est vous dire mon très amé le contentement que je ressens lorsque je me trouve près de vous, et ce attendant, je prins les dieux avoir vous en consideration. Le xi Mars l'an de Rome VCCIX.(!)

And next came a safe-conduct pass written by Vercingetorix in favour of "the young Trogus Pompeus on a secret mission to Julius Cæsar"! Vrain-Lucas was promptly sentenced to two years' imprisonment for fraud, together with a fine of 500 francs and the costs of the trial. The only excuse for M. Michel Chasles, mathematician of renown and Member of the Academy of Sciences, is to be found in his numerous preoccupations and advanced age. He was seventy-six in 1870.

In England the Affaire Vrain-Lucas has to some extent its counterpart in the literary forgery carried out with consummate skill by Dr. Constantine Simonides, who managed to deceive that too ardent collector, Sir Thomas Phillipps, with such tempting rarities from a monastery on Mount Athos as part of the original Gospel of St. Matthew, the Proverbs of Pythagoras, or a copy of Homer written on serpent's skin. But enough has been said of these literary frauds.

There is, however, one more class of forged autographs. I refer to letters fabricated in order to injure another, or in furtherance of some political object. The Parnell letters, forged twenty years ago by Richard Pigott, belonged to this class, but they raised many of the questions which belong to forgeries of autographs. I was lately shown a forged letter of Napoleon III., supposed to have been written in 1848, which had evidently been fabricated many years later, possibly in 1865, in order to discredit him when the Second Empire began to lose its popularity. According to the document he had ordered the assassination of some associate suspected of treason. Not only was the imitation of the calligraphy of Napoleon III. faulty in many respects, but the signature, "Napoleon Bonaparte," at once betrayed the falsity of the document. It was, curiously enough, enclosed in an official envelope of Prince Jérôme Bonaparte's addressed to Jules Favre!

The best-known dealers in autographs always guarantee what they sell, and will readily take back any doubtful specimen. In the early stage of autograph collecting it is a manifest advantage to confine one's transactions to men of this class. Whenever the origin of an autograph is suspicious or mysterious, it is always safest to obtain expert opinion. As M. Charavay points out in dealing with the Affaire Vrain-Lucas, the question of the source from which an article comes is often of capital importance. Never omit to read carefully any given letter, and consider it from an historical point of view, as well as a mere specimen of handwriting. If M. Michel Chasles had done this he would have saved his 140,000 francs. If the first Newton letter he purchased had been submitted to the historical test, he would have discovered that at the time the philosopher was supposed to discuss problems of the greatest abstruseness he was only three years old. It was on this deal that Vrain-Lucas built up his mountain of successful fraud. Bear in mind all that has been said of watermarks, postmarks, the shape and quality of paper, &c. Avoid notes written on scraps of paper and ragged half-sheets. If you suspect a letter to be a facsimile of some sort, touch the writing gently with diluted muriatic acid. Forgeries effected by the use of water-colour paint yield at once to the application of hot water. As yet the application of the useful maxim of caveat emptor is only necessary in the case of comparatively rare autographs. Letters of no great intrinsic value have as yet not proved remunerative to the forger, but it by no means follows that this will always remain so.

[IV]
SOME
FAMOUS
AUTOGRAPH
"FINDS"

[CHAPTER IV]
SOME FAMOUS AUTOGRAPH "FINDS"

Personal reminiscences and experiences

No pursuit is more exciting than that of Autographs.—The Archivist, 1888.

If autograph collecting is, as Mr. Joline defines it, "one of the gentlest of emotions," it certainly gives its votaries occasional moments of harmless excitement. Many of my readers will doubtless remember the faded handwriting on the battledores of our childhood, which, it may be presumed, represented the periodical clearings-out of lawyers' offices; but it requires a considerable stretch of the imagination to credit the presence of a portion of one of the copies of the Magna Charta on a drum-head, although the anecdote finds its place in all autograph handbooks. Ample evidence, however, exists of the strong natural affinity which once existed between ancient documents and the callings of the grocer and the fishmonger, but the use for old paper in this connection has almost entirely gone out of fashion, and the greater part of the discarded MSS. go straight to the pulp-mills for the purposes of reconversion. I will not attempt to disguise my envy of the pleasurable sensations Dr. Raffles must have experienced when he picked up the original account of the expenses incurred at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, duly attested by Burleigh, for eighteenpence at a book-stall on Holborn Hill. Almost equally lucky was the discoverer, on a printing-house file at Wrexham, of the MS. of Bishop Heber's famous missionary hymn, which not very long ago fetched forty guineas at Sotheby's; and still more so the traveller who reclaimed the whole of the forty years' correspondence between James Boswell and the Rev. W. J. Temple from the proprietor of a Boulogne fish-shop.

As the value of autographs becomes more and more widely known, and the search for them becomes keener, chances of important "finds" become rarer, but the possibilities of this kind of treasure-trove are by no means exhausted. English MSS. of great interest and value continually come to light abroad. Letters of the early Reformers often turn up in Holland. Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, sent the whole of his MSS. to his friend Bullinger, and as yet only a single letter of Tyndall has ever come to light. Others, in all human probability, are hidden away in the bahuts and presses of the Low Countries, where letters of the Duke of Marlborough are not unfrequently offered for sale. Fine Stuart autographs constantly turn up both in Germany and Rome. It was in the Eternal City that the priceless MSS. of Cardinal York were offered for sale at the modest price of £20. The English collector cannot too carefully examine the catalogues regularly issued by foreign dealers. I have already alluded to my discovery of the marriage settlement of Pamela FitzGerald and the sixteenth-century deed relating to a French commission for the colonisation of Canada. It was in a Paris price-list that I came across the following extraordinary letter of Sir Humphry Davy on the subject of his quarrel with George Stephenson:—

Sir Humphry Davy to John Buddle, Esq., Wallsend, Newcastle.

London, February 8, 1817.

Dear Sir,—Newman appears dilatory and has not yet made the apparatus to my mind; but I hope soon to send it you and to give you your new right. I hope no one will try expts with platinum in explosive atmospheres till my paper is published for if fine wire is used and suffered to hang out of the lamp so as to ignite to whiteness in the external air explosion will follow; but by the most simple precaution security is absolute. Stevenson's Pamphlet has proved to the satisfaction of every person who has looked at it in London, that he endeavoured to steal from what he had heard of my researches, safety tubes and apertures: no one could have established his piracy so effectively as himself.

It is stated in one of these malignant advertisements which are below my contempt that I was in the coal district in the end of September 1815. Whereas I left it two days after I saw you at Wallsend which I think was the 23rd or 24th of August and went to Bishop Auckland where I stayed only three days and I spent the greater part of the month of September with Lord Harewood and was in London working in my Laboratory early in October and had discovered several apertures and tubes in the middle of last month whilst Mr. Stevenson's absurd idea of admitting Hydrogen in undetached portions by a slider was fermenting in his mind. I certainly never thought of employing capilliary [sic] tubes. My tubes were merely safe tubes for I knew perfectly well and have proved by expts that no lamp could be fed on air through real capilliary tubes. To make a lamp that will burn on three capilliary tubes is as impossible as to make it burn in a closed decanter. Stevenson's capilliary tubes are evidently stolen from what Mr. Hodgson communicated early in November of my small safe tubes and made capilliary to suit Mr. Brandlings marvellous discovery that wire gauze is the extremity of capilliary tubes.

I am my dear Sir,
Very sincerely yours,
H. Davy.

A specimen of an advertisement suited to Mr. W. Brandling.

Aladdin should sign his name Assassin for he endeavours to stab in the dark. An assassin is a proper associate for a private purloiner. One may attempt to murder while the other carries off the plunder. Mr. W. J. Brandling must be ashamed of such friends as Aladdin and Fair play, at least he cannot wish to be seen in public with them even though he should love them as dearly as himself.

Truth.

One suited to Stevenson.

Mr. George Stevenson has changed his note from capilliary tubes to small tubes. No one can doubt that he pilfered these from Mr. Hodgson's communication of Sir H. Davy's discoveries. His original principle to admit Hydrogen in small detached portions (detached by a slider) is now kept out of sight. A man who in the face of the whole world and in open day light steals the safety trimmer and a safe top in Killingworth Colliery and in the dark may endeavour to steal safety apertures and tubes. But does he now know what is a safe aperture? Let those people who use his lamp, his capilliary tube lamp, look to themselves.

Vindex.

It is fit that great ingratitude and little malevolence should be united in the same cause, fortunately in this case they are associated with great ignorance.

From the same source came the correspondence between Lord Brougham and his friend Arago, in the course of which the ex-Chancellor of Great Britain proposed to abandon his own nationality, and, if elected, take his seat in the French Assembly.

TWO PAGES OF A LETTER BY LORD BROUGHAM TO E. ARAGO, OFFERING TO BECOME A NATURALISED FRENCHMAN AND A CANDIDATE FOR THE FRENCH CHAMBERS.

There is scarcely a country house or muniment-room in England which may not afford a happy hunting-ground to the collector. It is only quite lately missing originals of the Paston Letters (lost ever since 1789) were recovered in the library of the descendants of Pitt's friend and literary executor, Bishop Pretyman-Tomline. Although Moore, Murray, and Hobhouse burned one copy of Byron's MS. autobiography in 1824, a duplicate is supposed to be in existence, but its present whereabouts is unknown. In a quiet corner of the Harcourt Library at Nuneham, Whitelock's MS. was found quite unexpectedly, and Burckhardt's journal of the Euphrates Expedition of 1811, and the MSS. of William Oldys are still missing. A bundle of genuine Keats letters was disinterred at Melbourne, and the letters of the Rev. George Crabbe to Miss Elizabeth Charter, now in my possession, sojourned for many years in the Antipodes.

Within the last half-century letters of Addison, Prior, and Mordaunt Earl of Peterborough, and other MSS. of great value, were saved from imminent destruction in a manor house, near Llangollen.

It was only seventy years ago that a dealer in Hungerford Market, named Jay, purchased at £7 a ton a large accumulation of "waste-paper" from the Somerset House authorities. By the merest accident it transpired that amongst the MSS. thus unceremoniously treated were Exchequer Office Accounts of the reign of Henry VII., Secret Service Accounts signed by Eleanor Gwynne, and Wardrobe Accounts of Queen Elizabeth. Several bundles of parchments were sold by Jay to a Fleet Street confectioner, and turned into jelly, before any suspicion arose as to their possible value or importance. It was seventeen years later than this, in 1857, that three hundred tons of papers, including the records of the Indian Navy, went from the old India House to the paper-mill. Comparatively few of the Jay MSS. were recovered, for three tons of paper which remained untouched were accidentally burned.

There is no more picturesque incident in the annals of literary discovery than Sir H. Maxwell Lyle's account of his "find" in a loft at Belvoir, the clue to which was afforded by a faded label on a rusty key. "The disturbance of the surface," we are told, "caused a horrible stench, and it soon became evident that the loft had been tenanted by rats, who had done lasting damage to valuable MSS. by gnawing and staining them. Some documents had been reduced to powder, others had lost their dates or their signatures. The entire centre of a long letter in the hand of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had entirely disappeared. Those that remained were of a very varied character. A deed of the time of Henry II. was found among some granary accounts of the eighteenth century, and gossiping letters of the Court of Elizabeth among modern vouchers. Letters to Henry Vernon of Haddon from the Duke of Clarence, the Earl of Warwick, and Kings Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII., written on paper and folded very small, lay hidden between large leases engrossed on thick parchment."

SPECIMEN PAGE OF THE DUMOURIEZ MS. DISCOVERED BY THE WRITER.

By permission of Mr. John Lane.

The loft at Belvoir is certainly not the only place in the United Kingdom where autographic treasure-trove lies hid, and no opportunity should be missed of turning over collections of MSS., when the occasion presents itself. Some five years ago an entry in one of the catalogues of Mr. B. Dobell, of 77, Charing Cross Road, led me to become the possessor of the holograph project for the Defence of England drawn up in 1803-5 by General Dumouriez, on behalf of the last Pitt Administration. The MS. covers nearly four hundred pages, and is carefully bound in white vellum. Every page of it is in Dumouriez's handwriting. From first to last the work done by Dumouriez cost the Government quite £20,000. Only fragments of the scheme exist in the archives of the War Office. This book contains the project in its entirety. It cost me twenty-seven shillings, and formed the basis of a book written in collaboration with Dr. Holland Rose.[20] I have certainly been fortunate in acquiring a great many unknown documents relating to Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. While rummaging amongst the miscellaneous papers in the possession of Mr. George Mackey, the well-known Birmingham antiquary, I lighted on the whole correspondence between Lord Cawdor and the Duke of Portland relating to the landing in February, 1797, of the French "Black Legion" under Tate at Fishguard, then an almost entirely unknown Welsh fishing village, and now transformed by the Great Western Railway into an important port-of-call. By the kind permission of Mr. J. C. Inglis, General Manager of the G.W.R., a reproduction is now given of the important Cawdor letter first published in the Company's travel-books, "The Country of Castles." The unexpected recovery of these MSS. enabled me to give an exhaustive account of the romantic occurrence with which they deal in "Napoleon and the Invasion of England."[21]

ORIGINAL DISPATCH OF LORD CAWDOR TO DUKE OF PORTLAND DESCRIBING THE LANDING AND SURRENDER OF THE FRENCH AT FISHGUARD, FEBRUARY, 1797.

(By permission of the G.W.R.)

But these were not the only discoveries I made in Mr. Mackey's autographic store. I came upon a number of the original drafts of unpublished patriotic songs by Charles Dibdin, including three in honour of Trafalgar, of which the following is a specimen:—

When Nelson fell the voice of Fame
With mingled joy and pain
Lamented that no other name
So glorious could remain.

And worthily is Nelson loved;
Yet, ere a short month's dawn,
Fresh glory Britain's sons have proved,
Led on by gallant Strachan.

Pellew and Smith and Collingwood, fellows
Fine sailors yet exist;
But to name sailors good
I would take the Navy List.

Great Nelson's brothers called,
And who though for ever gone,
His spirit . . . . . . .
And such a tar is Strachan.

Then, Britons, be not out of heart,
Likewise of hopes bereft,
In twain did the sheet-anchor part,
Yet is the best "bower"[22] left.

Still Nelson's name inspires renown,
And though for ever gone,
His spirit shall in smiles look down
And point to gallant Strachan.

Great Nelson with his parting breath
Their character has drawn,
He called them brothers, and his death
They'll emulate like Strachan.

For some unaccountable reason the commonplace book of the unofficial laureate of the Navy had drifted to Birmingham. It was found by me in the same bin of literary odds and ends as the Cawdor dispatches, which obviously ought to have been in the Home Office or the Record Office. At the same time and place I lighted on the letters of Colonel Digby, the "Mr. Fairly," of Fanny Burney's Journal, to the beautiful sisters Margaret and Isabella Gunning, the first of whom he afterwards married, thereby (if the Court gossip of the day may be trusted) sorely disappointing the literary Assistant-Keeper of the Royal Robes.

MS. VERSES ON TRAFALGAR IN THE HANDWRITING OF CHARLES DIBDIN, 1805.

It was from Mr. Dobell that I obtained another of the MSS. in my collection which I specially prize—I allude to the holograph copy of Mrs. Robinson's "Memoirs," written nearly entirely on the covering sheets of old letters upon which one reads the signatures of such important and fashionable personages as the Duke of Clarence, Duchesses of Ancaster and Dorset, the Earl of Jersey, the Marquis of Lothian, the Duke of Grafton, and so forth. It is also curious to trace the frequent flittings of the unfortunate "Perdita," the early love of the Prince described in bitter irony as "the first gentleman in Europe." From Berkeley Square she moves to Clarges Street, and thence in rapid succession to Piccadilly, Curzon Street, St. James's Place, Hill Street, Stanhope Street, and South Audley Street. Now she is at the Ship Inn at Brighton; now at the Hôtel de Russie and the Hôtel de Chartres at Paris; now at No. 10, North Parade, Bath. One or two letters seem to have been addressed to Englefield Cottage, where she died. On an ivy-grown tomb in Old Windsor churchyard one can still decipher Samuel Pratt's lines beginning:—

Of Beauty's Isle her daughters must declare
She who sleeps here was fairest of the fair.

From this MS. the "Story of Perdita and Florizel" may some day be re-written or re-edited.

By the kindness of Dr. Scott I added to my collection a genuine letter of great Shakespearean interest, for it is addressed to Edward Alleyn, the Founder of Dulwich College, by William Wilson, one of the actors in Shakespeare's troop at the Fortune Theatre. It runs as follows:—

To my most dear and especial good friend Mr. Edward
Alleyn at Dulwich.

Right worshipful, my humble duty remembered hoping in the Almighty that your health and prosperity, which on my knees I beseech Him long to continue, for the many favours which I have from time to time received. My poor ability is not in the least degree able to give you satisfaction unless as I and mine have been bound to you for your many kindnesses so will we during life pray for your prosperity. I confess I have found you my chiefest friend in the midst of my extremities which makes me loth to press or request your favour any further, yet for that I am to be married on Sunday next and your kindness may be a great help and furtherance unto me towards the raising of my poor and deserted estate I am enforced once again to entreat your worship's furtherance in a charitable request which is that I may have your worship's letter to Mr. Dowton and Mr. Edward Juby to be a means that the company of players of the Fortune [may] either offer at my wedding at St. Saviour's Church or of their own good nature bestow something upon me on that day and as ever I and mine will not only rest bounden unto yourself but continually pray for your worship's health with increase of all happiness long to continue. I hope of your worship's favour herein. I humbly take my leave. Resting your Worship's during life to be commanded

William Wilson.

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.