[W. H. Smith, newsagent and politician, the ‘Sir Joseph Porter’ of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.] Autograph Letter Signed to George Townsend Warner, discussing a request to fish in his private stream.

From the first Smith has been considered as the model of the ‘Sir Joseph Porter’ of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘HMS Pinafore’, and Disraeli himself is said to have referred to him as ‘Pinafore Smith’. See Smith’s entry in the Oxford DNB. The present item is signed ‘W. H. Smith’, addressed to ‘Mr Townsend Warner’, and headed ‘Private’. The recipient is the historian and Harrow housemaster George Townsend Warner (1865-1916), father of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Smith, who has evidently been applied to with a request to fish in a private stream, asks Warner to ‘do me a favour in saying whether the writer of the enclosed is one to whose request I might assent without being open to similar requests all round’. He does not know the writer. ‘The stream is a very small and short one, and I am anxious to reserve it for private friends as far as possible, as I have given up my rights in the Teign to the Fishery Association’. At the time of writing Smith was Leader of the Commons, but one is still surprised to see such a letter written on a Downing Street letterhead.