FAKED MANUSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1927, Page 20

FAKED MANUSCRIPTS

PAPERS DIPPED IN COFFEE

Forgery is a crime common in .England, but it is forgery not of cheques or bank notes, but of literary documents, which attracts the greatest attention and stimulates tho most vigilance. Recent high prices realised "in salesrooms for old books, manuscripts and pictures have revived anew the activities of literary fakers. One forger recently made the same mistake Achilles's mother made and found that it brought equally sad consequences. A purported Byron manuscript . was sent to Thomas J. Wise perhaps the foremost living 1-authority on tho life- and work of Shelley and Byron, for appraisal. The . paper he discovered had been soaked in coffee to give it the yellow appearance of age, but the ingenious author held the manuscript by one corner when ho dipped it into the coffee and omitted to dip tho tiny corner ho held, which gave him away. Within a short time Wise has exposed forgeries of Keats, Buskin and-Dickens. Ho.believes an organised gang is at work on a scale that is not 1 at present realised by booksellers ami collectors, and that they are particularly successful in making country dealers their victims.

_ There is only slight chance of bringing the culprits to legal punishment as the original authors, of course, cannot bring action for forgery, being Ions: m their graves. Practically the only legal resort is the somewhat unsatisfactory charge of "wilful damage to property." The "Morning Post," is doing some excellent work oxposing these activities of mnnuscript formers A clever gang seems to have been at work lately, and many unfortunate collectors have been rlccoivcd. Shelly manuscripts appear to bo tho favourite iiehJ, but imitations of the work of Byron, Keats, Anatolo France W H Hudson, and Rudyard Kipling' are also" Known to have been circulated. The most brilliantly immoral effort of the forgers is, perhaps, tho signature ot General Wolfe in a copy of Gray's "Elegy » Tho fraud was, of course, inspired by the well-known story that Wolfo recited tho poem when dying, after the capture of Quebec, saying "I would rather havo written that poem than have taken Quebec." Tho book bearing the forged signaturo is reported to have been bought by a well-known American dealer for £1000 and afterward resold in the States at a greatly enhanced price. This ingenious method of exploiting one celebrity's reference to another offers interesting possibilities^ How many collectors, more enthusiastic than experienced, might not bo snared by the bait of Keats's signature in a copy of Chapman's translation of Homer? The idea certainly sffords scope to the unscrupulous