£1,360 FOR A BURNS LETTER

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 3

£1,360 FOR A BURNS LETTER

FIRST EDITION OF ‘CHRISTMAS CAROL' BRINGS £4BO A superb letter written by Burns to Clarinda and a letter written by lier to the poet wore sold at Sotheby’s to Messrs B. F, Stevens and Brown tor £1,360. The record price of £2 ? 000 for a letter by Burns was obtained in London two years ago, A first edition of Dickens’s ‘ Christinas Carol.’ inscribed by Dickens as a gift to Mrs Tocho, was sold to Messrs Maggs for £4BO. The price caused quite a stir among collectors, for three years ago, in the boom period in New York, a copy in the Kern sale brought only £5lO. Seven letters of Charles Dickens brought in a total of £893. Thackeray’s manuscript of ‘ Dcsseins ’ sold at £7Bo—£7o a page—and will be taken by Mr Gabriel Wells to America. ‘ Dcsseins ’ is a .story of a dream wherein Thackeray meets Sterne at the Hotel Dessein and Sterne discusses Goldsmith. The story was one of the ‘ Roundabout Papers,’ first published in the 1 Cornhill Magazine 5 seventy years ago. _ Dickens in 1844 wrote criticising the National Temperance Society. Ho said: “ The position that beer,, spirits, and wine are nob natural to men is poor and unfair. Show mo any total abstainer at his dinner and I will show you fifty things making their way into his digestive organs which are as foreign to his natural condition as the clothes ho wears.” This letter was sold for £l7 10s. An oil painting of Dickens bowling the first ball at a charity match

at Gads Hill in ISGB was sold for £3l. Sir Henry Dickens, the Common Sergeant, has stated that he was Ihc captain of tlie village elnb, and that his father used to bo tbo scorer of the game.