MANUSCRIPT

An interesting collection of material relating to a significant school, including thirteen items of correspondence from a notable headmaster, and four printed items, two of them scarce. Founded by Benjamin Franklin’s friend Dr John Fothergill in 1779 (see his entry in the Oxford DNB), Ackworth is the second-oldest of the seven English Quaker schools. (See Fothergill’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Franklin could ‘hardly conceive that a better man ever existed’.) Originally a co-educational boarding school, it is now a Girls’ boarding and day school.

See Mackenzie’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Gauntlett was later appointed Professor of Cello at the Royal Academy of Music. See Sir Anthony Lewis’s appreciative Times obituary. 2pp, 4to. On bifolium of good paper, with letterhead printed in black with the College’s arms in red. A very good facsimile of Mackenzie’s autograph and signature, with twenty-five lines of text. Addressed in manuscript to ‘A. Gauntlett, Esq. / 12 Fairholme Road / W Kensington / W.’ Begins: ‘You will doubtless have heard of our intention to celebrate the centenary of the R. A. M.

1p, 4to. Twenty-three lines. Large sprawling signature ‘Lawrence G. Blochman’. In fair condition, worn and creased on lightly-discoloured paper. The recipient, an enthusiastic autograph collector, has evidently asked him to sign a bookplate to be stuck in his latest book ‘’Recipe for Homicide’. Her note has finally reached him ‘through channels (via my English publisher through my London agent to my New York agent)’. He is glad she finds the book entertaining, ‘even though you had not yet, at the time of writing, discovered the culprit’.

See his entry, and that of Colburn, in the Oxford DNB. Campbell agreed to edit Colburn’s ‘New Monthly Magazine’ in 1820, his first number in the post being that of January 1821, and the letter was presumably written between this period and Mrs Campbell’s death in 1828. The reference to ‘Mr Ollier’ would close the dates even further: the Oxford DNB’s entry for Charles Ollier (1788-1859) stating that, after financial difficulties, ‘by the autumn of 1825 he returned to the publishing trade as the chief literary reader and adviser to Henry Colburn in New Burlington Street’. 1p, 12mo.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, small 4to. On laid light-brown paper. In good condition, with fold for postage. Reads: ‘Dear Miss Cond, / Your nice letter was mislaid in my flitting from the Whitehall to the Victoria Palace, hence the delay in acknowledging it. / Many thanks for your good wishes / Sincerely / Greer Garson.’ Eileen Cond was an enthusiastic autograph collector.

Jane Aiken Hodge was author of many works, mainly romantic fiction. Her most popular book was a study of Georgette Heyer, and she was also responsible for a biography of Jane Austen. 1p, landscape 12mo. In fair condition, lightly aged and creased. Folded once for postage. Signed in type ‘Jane Hodge’, with the following in type: ‘Mrs. Alan Hodge’.

Blackwood’s entry in the Oxford DNB quotes H. P. Lovecraft’s opinion that he was the author of ‘some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age’. On post card with printed stamp. In good condition, lightly worn, on light-brown card. Addressed to ‘Miss Cond, / Deer Park, / Honiton.’ Apart from the signature, Blackwood has added quotation marks and dealt with two typing mistakes in autograph. Good firm signature. Reads: ‘Savile Club, 69 Brook St, W. 1.

Written within days of his consecration at Lambeth on 24 June 1865. See his entries in the Oxford DNB and Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The former states that his diocese ‘covered 2 million square miles of territory, with headquarters at Winnipeg, then a hamlet with a population of 150. To assist him in the administration of the diocese he had only eighteen clergymen. In 1866 he made a difficult tour of inspection of the Native American missions’. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium. Signed ‘R. Rupert’sLand’ and addressed to ‘My dear Covoin’. With embossed letterhead featuring a bishop’s mitre.

Singh was deposed by the British in 1889, with accusations of misgovernment, disloyal dealings with the Russian Empire, and a plot to murder his brothers and the British Resident, but as this was deemed contrary to the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar he was reinstated, but with a new ruling council was forced upon him, under the supervision of the Resident. Two slips of paper cut from a letter for display in an album. Both somewhat discoloured and a little ruckled. All the writing is in the same ink, but it is not clear whether the text of the letter is in a secretarial hand.

Reading Cooperative Society Limited came into existence in the 1860s, as ‘Reading Industrial Co-operative Society’. A nice piece of ephemera from the high-tide mark of the co-operative movement. No other copy has been traced. 50 x 68 cm. A striking and attractive production in six columns, printed in red, olive-green and grey-black, and black, with border of raspberry leaves, calendar split between the outer edges. Large illustration of ‘Llandudno and the Great Orme’ beneath the heading ‘Each for all, & all for each.

The last paragraph of McKenny Hughes’s entry in the Oxford DNB deals with his marriage, noting that his wife was ‘a keen amateur archaeologist, a botanist, and a distinguished artist, and under his tuition she became a valuable geologist’, and that the couple ‘travelled together on field excursions’, being accompanied on a trip to the Balkans by an armed guard. Six boxes of her papers are among the rest of those of the Hughes family in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge. The present item is 64pp, 4to, mostly on the rectos of a ruled ‘Universal Exercise Book.

In addition to his pastoral duties, Newman was a noted orator and lecturer. In 1870 eleven thousand people crammed into the Salt Lake City Tabernacle, to hear him debate the question of polygamy with Orson Pratt, and transcripts of the debate were carried throughout the American papers. On a 14 x 7 cm slip of wove paper. The reverse bears traces of glue from its display in an album, and there is slight loss and a short closed tear at the foot from its removal. The signature and text are firm and clear: ‘John P. Newman / Chaplain of the Senate. / Aug 17 - / 69.’

Not, one would imagine, a particularly common signature. In good condition, lightly aged. On 20 x 16.5 piece of watermarked laid paper: the lower half of a document dated in another hand to 1806. Another (illegible) signature at top right. The Crown Prince’s signature as ‘Attester’ is an excellent one, good and clear, reading ‘Christian August [lel?] Holstein’. He would serve as Crown Prince of Sweden between 15 July 1809 and 28 May 1810. After his death the line of succession would pass to the Frenchman Jean Bernadotte. See image.

Scarce: no copies on WorldCat or JISC. 2pp, 8vo, paginated 1-2, with photographic portrait of ‘Colonel F. E. G. SKEY’ on art paper facing the first page. In grey wraps with printed title on front cover ‘Memoir / OF / COLONEL F. E. G. SKEY.’ In fair condition, lightly worn and aged, with two vertical creases. Describing Skey’s active career, the obituarist begins by noting that ‘It is not given to everyone to work as late in life as Skey did.’ Skey had been ‘promoted Colonel in 1912 and retirned in March, 1914, having been offered the Secretaryship of the R. E.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 12mo, 8vo, paginated 1-19 (originally pp.xxi-xxxix). Stitched into light-grey printed wraps. In fair condition, lightly aged and creased. This offprint is scarce: the only copy on WorldCat and JISC is at the Wellcome.

According to the Victoria County History, Jean Nicholas Voyaux de Franous (1760-1840), a Frenchman, is ‘traditionally seen as the father of Roman Catholicism in Chelsea’. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Signed ‘Abbé Voyaux de Franous’ and addressed to 'Dear Madam'. Indisposition is the cause of his delayed response. He was without ‘the least idea that Miss Harvey was without a place in the Chapel and gave immediate orders to have her accommodated with one.

As the Great Depression hit Gibbons found himself over-extended, and was forced into bankruptcy. The present item is scarce. The only copy on JISC is at the Paul Mellon Centre Library. 68pp, 8vo. In grey printed wraps, and with purchase slip tipped in. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. At head of title-page: ‘By Direction of Lieut.-Col. SIR WALTER GIBBONS, K.B.E., D.L. Following the Sale of the Freehold, and the proposed conversion of the Property into high-class Residential Flats.’ ‘Conditions of Sale’ on reverse of title. 974 lots.

1p, 12mo. In fair condition, lightly aged and creased, with one dog-eared corner. He writes that he has ‘had the engraving photographed’, and can ‘return it together with the casting’, with ‘very many thanks to you for being so kind as to lend it to me’.

For William Booth (1779-1840) of 32 Duke Street, Manchester Square [Portland Place], see the British Book Trade Index. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Neatly placed in remains of windowpane mount. Signed ‘Scott Portland’. With regard to the newspaper the Globe, he asks that it be ‘sent here till further orders - The Sun to be continued to be sent to Welbeck’. He is sending ‘the first volume of Horace Walpole’s private correspondence to be changed’, as it is incomplete: ‘It contains a portion of its pages twice over - & another portion wholly omitted’.

2pp, 4to. Bifolium, annotated on second leaf ‘Mr Sargt. Frere’. Watermark: ‘STAINS & CO | 1819’. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. Folded for postage. Addressed to ‘Captain Munby &c &c’, and signed ‘William Frere’. He apologises for not answering sooner ‘the communications I have been honored with from you respecting a house at Yarmouth’. He has been in London, where he has suffered ‘some uncertainty as to accepting or declining the offer’.

2pp, foolscap 8vo. On grey laid paper with mourning border, brittle and lightly creased, with chipping and closed tears to edges. Addressed in Archibald’s hand to ‘The President of the Albion Society of New York’, and signed ‘E M Archibald / HM Brit Consul Genl’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 4to. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded for postage. Whatman watermark of 1838. Sixty-nine lines of text, addressed to ‘My dear Sir Charles’ and signed ‘Thomas Hastings’. Begins: ‘I have been thinking that the difficulty of giving mathematics instruction to the Lieuts of R[oyal]. M[arine]. A[rtillery].

The recipient is not named, but can be identified as the Strand bookseller John Nourse, from Notes and Queries, 3 September 1881, which has as its first article a transcription, with commentary of five long letters from Mills to John Nourse, the noted scientific bookseller in the Strand, and the present item clearly belongs to the same correspondence, predating the first, which is dated 15 May 1765.

3pp, 12mo. On bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once for postage. Signed ‘Lauriston . E . Shaw / Dean of the Medical School & Asst Physician to Guy’s Hospital’. Begins: ‘Mr A. K. Matthews M.R.C.S LRCP has been known to me as a student at Guy’s Hospital during the last five years.

2pp, 12mo. On grey paper. In good condition, lightly aged, in neatly-trimmed remains of windowpane mount. Headed ‘Private’, addressed to ‘My dear M. D [M. P?]’, and signed ‘H. Brougham’. Thirty-four lines of text, in a somewhat challenging hand, resulting in the following tentative reading. (In his 1995 biography of Brougham’s later life, Trowbridge H.

On one side of a 12mo a piece of grey-green paper; creased, worn and torn at the bottom. A fifteen-line poem in five three-line stanzas, titled ‘REST’. At end: ‘JOHN GAWSWORTH’. Proof directions in pencil to convert a full-stop at the end of the fourth stanza to a comma. While the poet's attempt at direct simplicity verges on triteness, one should recall that he served manfully in the RAF: ‘Beneath the oaks the soldiers lie / Staring at the open sky / Drowsily, lazily. / Like England is this plot of green / But in the mountains all unseen / The guns’ complaint affects the scene.

An interesting letter casting light on the Victorian provincial press. Scott’s entry in the Oxford DNB states that, while he was living in Birmingham, ‘H. J. Palmer offered him a staff appointment on the Birmingham Gazette; but he had to leave when he stipulated that, as a Liberal, he should write nothing in support of the Conservative cause. He was working again as a freelance when, in 1887, he was invited by W. T. Stead to join him on the Pall Mall Gazette. He worked for six years on that paper under Stead and then Edward T. Cook.’ 4pp, 12mo. On bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged.

6pp, 12mo, on two bioliums. A long letter, neatly and closely written. In stamped envelope, with stamps and postmark, addressed to ‘Miss Sprott / Magavelda / Blakeney / Holt [Norfolk]’ and signed ‘John Bacon’. The letter and envelope are in fair condition, on slightly discoloured paper and with short closed tears along the folds made for postage. He begins: ‘Dear Miss Sprott.

See the articles on Antes by Donald M. McCorkle in the Musical Quarterly, 1956, and Richard D. Claypool, in the Moravian Music Foundation Bulletin, 1978. Seven copies listed on JISC (only three in deposit libraries); now scarce. 8pp, 12mo. Disbound. In fair condition, worn and discoloured. Vignette on cover shows Osman Bey sitting cross-legged while two of his followers whip the unfortunate Antes, while a third looks on. Drophead title, p.2: ‘Anecdotes in the Life of John Antes, A Moravian Missionary.’

Weld and Vaughan both have entries in the Oxford DNB. The notice is printed in copperplate on the recto of the first leaf of a 4to bifolium. In fair condition, aged and lightly worn, with short closed tear to one edge, and slight damage to the second leaf from the cutting of the seal, which is present on the verso, with a good impression, in red wax, together with two postmarks and the address, in Weld’s hand, to ‘W. Vaughan Esq - [F.R.S.] / 70 Fenchurch Street / [Royal Society.]’ The notice, signed ‘C. R.