SHAW AND KIPLING LETTERS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 80, 28 December 1929, Page 15

SHAW AND KIPLING LETTERS

£4O FOR “G.B.S.’s” VERSES TO ELLEN TERRY

A collection of some forty autographed letters, postcards, and notes written by Mr. G. Bernard Shaw were auctioned at Sotheby’s in London recently. They realised nearly £5OO. An unpublished poem of four verses composed by Mr. Shaw specially for the stage jubilee of Miss Ellen Terry fetched £4O. The first verse is as follows: —

Qh, Ellen, was it kind of late To make your youth so thrifty, That you are young at fifty-eight AVhilst we are old at fifty?

Forty-eight pounds was paid for a lengthy note written by Mr. Shaw on performances in Bayreuth of AVagner's “Ring” operas. On “Das Rheingold” Mi - . Shaw wrote: “The three Rhine daughters, pot being able to sing like salmon, sang like pheasants instead with amazing realism. First scene consequently ugly beyond words.” Most of the correspondence was addressed to Mr. J. E. Vedrenne, under whose management some of Shaw's most famous plays were first produced. The letter from which extracts were published recently recording Mr. Shaw’s impressions of a Salvation Army gathering in the Albert Hall was sold for £24.

Letters written by Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and Swinburne were also auctioned. A series of nineteen letters by Kipling to Fleet Engineer AA’. J. Harding, R.N., on speed trials of torpedo-boat destroyers and other fast vessels fetched £92. Most of the Shaw correspondence went into Mr. Gabriel Wells’s capacious bag for America, including the verses to Ellen Terry.

AVhat an expert described as an amazing price—£24s- —was paid for the manuscript of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” generally considered the favourite in the Sherlock Holmes series. Tho manuscript of “The Lost AVorld,” also by Conan Doyle, brought £l6O. First editions of Sir James .Barrie s works were also sold. A record price of £l2O for “A Window in Thrums” was paid by Mr. Gabriel Wells, of New York. The book was published in 1889 at six shillings. A first edition of Widowers Houses,” by Bernard Shaw, went to Mr. Gabriel AVells for £SO. In 1893 its published price was six shillings. Mr. AVells has the original manuscripts of the play.