KING’S LETTER FOR SALE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 84, 7 January 1928, Page 22

KING’S LETTER FOR SALE

The letter written by the King at the age of 24, when he was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, which has been exhibited for sale in a shop window in Piccadilly, W., was bought by Mr. Henry C. Hall, of St. Andrew’s Road, Stoke Newington, N., for £lO 10s. (reports the “Daily Mail”). Mr. Hall was at breakfast when he read that the letter was for sale. Believing that its exhibition would cause annoyance to the King he at once decided to buy it. The letter is a manuscript message signed “George,” written on three pages of notepaper and addressed from Admiralty House, Portsmouth, in July, 1889, to a Mrs. Williams, who was apparently a friend interested, as the writer was himself, in stamp collecting. It concludes with kind regards to “Mr Williams, -your two daughters, and your mother.” Mr. Hall, who is a fine art publisher and a connoisseur of old masters, said when interviewed:—“lt seems to me that the exhibition of the letter

was in questionable, taste and that it might cause annoyance. X wasted no time in getting to Messrs. Henry Sotlieran and Co.’s shop in Piccadilly where the letter was, for I was determined to be the buyer. I could ill-afford to buy the letter, but it seemed to be my duty as a loyal subject. Now I intend that the letter shall be returned to'the King. No one will be allowed to see it.” Mr. Hall, who is nearly 70, joined the City of London Rifles during the war, but was invalided out. • ■

All day groups of people were continuously at Messrs. Sotheran and Co.’s sliop, and from their remarks after they found that the letter had been withdrawn from the window it was apparent that many had intended to buy the document to return it to the King. Numerous autograph and manuscript collectors went to the shop, and none could recall a previous case of a private letter from a reigning monarch to a friend having been publicly exhibited and offered for sale. It was stated bv Mr. G. D. Hobson, of Messrs. Sothebv and Co., .New Bond Street, W., who sell famous people’s letters and manuscripts which come on the market, that his firm always refuses to deal in the correspondence of men and women still alive. At Messrs. Christie’s salerooms it was stated that it was a rigid rule of the firm never to offer the "letters of living persons for sale, because commercial transactions of the kind were regarded as being “neither good form nor in good taste.” Within the last few months a manuscript which Mr. Rudyard Kipling had given manv years ago to a personal friend was put up for sale at a West End auction-room notwithstanding a remonstrance form Mr Kipling, who objected to the sale of the manuscript and a letter from a London editor which ic.companied it.