[Lord Roberts [Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar], British Boer War commander.] Autograph Letter Signed (‘Roberts.’), sending condolences to ‘Mrs. Tierney’, mentioning his time at 'Mills School' with Tierney and cricketer Alfred Torrens.

3pp, 12mo. Bifolium, folded once. In good condition. 29 lines of text. He thanks her for her kindness, ‘in the midst of your great sorrow’, in writing to inform the Robertses of her husband’s death. ‘We have often talked of you both, and wondered where you were living.’ He had thought it was ‘somewhere in the valley of the Thames, at least I thought you told me so when last I met you both walking in Regent Street - some 10 years ago’. After a brief comment on Tierney’s ill health, he recalls how ‘He, Alfred Torrens, and I sat next to each other at Mills School. Torrens died a few weeks ago, and now I am the only one left.’ He ends by sending his and his wife’s condolences, and in a postscript signed ‘R’ asks to be informed ‘should you come to London’. In his 1914 biography, Walter Jerrold writes that between 1842 and 1845 Roberts was ‘pupil of a Mr. Mills at Hampton’.