JOSEPH BANKS' LETTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

JOSEPH BANKS' LETTERS.

A PRIZE FOR SYDNEY. The librarian of tho National Library, New South Wales, was able to beat allcomers in the auction struggle for the Sir Joseph Banks' papers, wlncb took place at Sothebys this week. To win those records precious to overy Australian citizen —writes Mr. A. C. R. Carter in tho Daily Telegraph—Mr. Ifouid had to lay out £B6OO. but, as he had been deputed to make the voyage and to return with tho manuscripts in his possession, he was caileu upon to repeat the eliort which ho wade in 1923, when lie won, contra munUum, Captain Cook's manuscript diary of tho lirsi voyage m the Endeavour at 4.5000, which tiad been found id a cottage oti the Bolckow Estate, in Yorkshire, uot far from the great navigator's birthplace Some years beiore the Sydney Library had acquired a manuscript account of this voyage written by Banks himself, who fitted out Endeavour foj Cook's first, voyage in 1768-71 That voyage was meinoiaUJe also because then Cook was the lirsi European to set foot on New Zea land. Tin' early Governors of New South Wales maintained close touch with such an inlluential savant as Banks, and a dossier ol letters from King, Hunter, Flnllip and Paterson on every conceivable subject ol interest was one ot the chief fiydney prizes at £2BOO. At mis similar amount Mr. Ifouid also won tne remarkable racy and interesting set ot letters which Admiral Bligh, ol Bounty mutiny fame, wrote to Banks. Bligh succeeded King as Governor, and had a lively time of it. He had the sailor's style of blunt speech, and in a letter, dated from Government House, November 5, ibO?, he began uis report thus: ' This sink of iniquity, Sydney, is improving m its manners and its concerns. Government is securing its substantive dignity, and producing the consequent good effects on tho whole. The police is regulated in a more mild and decent manner, and the Irish convicts are, at present, quiet."

Another batch of Bligh letters was annoxod by Mr. Ifould at £llOO, and a second collection of, letters to Banks from early governors fell to him at £I9OO. When these ptecious papers duly arrive 111 Syd 11 ey they will be doubtless eagerly inspected by students, who will find that there wore always droughts in Australia. Thus, on June 1, 1799, Governor Hunter wrote to Banks describing one which endured for nearly ten montns, followed appropriately by «evero Hoods. Altogoth# these Banks' papers totalled £9255 A fifth portion of the Edmund Gosse library added £3855, the chief prizes being the R. L. Stevenson rareties. Thus, tho 1875 " Appeal for the Clergy of the Church of Scotland," a tract on six leaves, accompanied by a long letter from Stevenson to Gosse, realised £620, and '' A Martial Elegy for Some Lead Soldiers," 13 lines of verse, published at Davos Platz about 1882, at " Price 1 Penny," brought £2OO. Whatever Stevenson thought about the verdict ot posterity. Whistler had 110 doubts about his own ultimate successs, and at Christie's one of his nocturne etchings of palaces brought as much as 500 guineas; a " furnace nocturne realising 290 guineas.