[Harry Duncan O'Neill, Secretary of the Clerical, Medical and General Life Assurance Society.] Autograph Letter Signed ('H. D. O'Neill') to 'Hay', with copy of his privately printed 'Clerical Verses. 1889-1910. By H. D. O'N.', containing 28 inserts.

For more about O'Neill (son of the Victorian artist George Bernard O'Neill) see his obituary in The Times, 15 June 1946. LETTER: 4pp., 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Begins: 'My dear Hay, | Will you honour the humble author by accepting the enclosed copy of "Clerical Verses"?' Regarding the poems he writes: 'You will at any rate be amused at the Vanity which threw them into type and bound them in cloth.' The book is, he continues, 'strictly limited to Clericals in its circulation', but he is making an exception in the case of 'an old Clerical such as you, for you have always encouraged my Muse'. He has 'only printed "proper" verses, but you'll find one improper one on a loose sheet'. He concludes: 'All the verses are strictly founded on facts.' BOOK: 31pp., 8vo, with the 'loose leaf' mentioned in the letter to Hay tipped in at the end, carrying a poem titled 'A Moment', with explanatory text. In blue cloth binding with title in gilt on front cover. In fair condition, on aged and worn paper, shaken in worn binding. The poems are humorous, and many are preceded by explanatory texts, the first, for example, to a poem titled '76 pro 27', reading: 'The following verses were sent to me, when Leeds Branch Manager, by Mr. Besant, in return for an acceptance letter rating a man of 27 up to age 76. The life in question, now a distinguished member of the Colonial Civil Service, would be "office age 91" to-day (1911) if he had been fool enough to complete.' Laid down on the front pastedown is a reproduction of a cartoon. The volume is excessively scarce, with no copy traced on either COPAC or OCLC WorldCat. The volume contains 29 inserts, including two Autograph Letters Signed from A. D. Besant (son of Annie Besant), General Manager of the Clerical, Medical and General, to 'Raynes'. Both are on the letterhead of 9 Hampstead Hill Gardens, NW3, and they date from 28 February and 2 March 1953. In the first Besant mentions, among other matters, 'O'Neill's verses': 'I have various odd ones stored away somewhere and if I can dig them out I will send you copies.' In the second he states that he is sending 'the poem by O'Neill on which I could not put my hand when I wrote to you last week. He dashed it off, impromptu'. The poem referred to appears to be present among the other 28 inserts, in O'Neill's autograph and titled 'Impromptu' and beginning 'When the Bobby's on his beat'. The other inserts include four more leaves carrying manuscript compositions, one of them a holograph 'Copy' of a twenty-line poem (1p., 8vo) by O'Neill, dated at the end 'H. D. O'N. | 24.12.12.' The poem is untitled and begins: 'This is the Saga of Digby | The Saga of Digby and Christmas | Tells how he carried the parcels, | Numerous brown-paper parcels | Tied up with string by a lady, | [...]'. Also present are a manuscript prose text headed 'The late George Gould Churchward, and 21 cuttings of poems, extracted from the Post Magazine and Insurance Monitor, from 1927 and 1928 and one from 1931. Nineteen of the poems are by O'Neill, and the other two are addressed to him, one from 'L. H.' and the other from 'I. B.'