12,000,000 Packets Of Documents

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 8

12,000,000 Packets Of Documents

It is doubtful if ever before his day or after it, any man read more letters than Rawdou Lubbock Brown.

The story goes that as a young man he left England for a holiday in Italy. Finding his way to Venice, he fell head over heels in love with the Queen of the Adriatic, and when the time came for him to leave, ho simply could not tear himself away. He had gone for a few weeks. He stayed 50 years, dying there on August 25, 1883.

A man with charming ways, courteous, hospitable, he became the esteemed friend of two generations of scholars, and whenever his house was open to English people in Italy they flocked to see him. Browning wrote a poem about him, and Englishmen abroad made a bee-line for his study.

He is remembered chiefly, however, for his astonishing investigations of the relationships between Italy and England. The first of all historical students to discover the value of the news-letters sent by Italian ambassadors to Venice, he published a volume entitled. ‘‘Four Years at the Court of Henry the Eighth,” a collection of letters written by the Venetian ambassador at Henry’s Court.

No sooner was this book read in. England than Lord Palmerston and other influential people saw the value of such illuminating sidelights on our history, and Rawdon Brown was at once commissioned to search the Venetian archives for similar material.

Brown spent the rest of his life on that piece of work. Day after day for years he read letters and made extracts. He is reputed to have dealt with at least 12,000,000 packets of documents, a staggering number; and there is no doubt that he brought to light historical information of the greatest possible value.