HIDDEN WEALTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18754, 6 January 1923, Page 10

HIDDEN WEALTH

IN LEAVES OF OLD MUSIC. "A literary find has been the subject oi much discussion in legal circles recently,” says -the Daily News. “Early in the summer a -London book-' 5 seller purchased a pile pf papers and music from a -well-known firm of auctioneers for £l. These were re-sold for £lO to the owner of an old bookshop in the provinces, and he discovered, hidden between the leaves of the music a 16-page pamphlet of the early works of Shelley, ‘‘Posthumous- Fragments of Margaret Nicholson,” Oxford, 1810. “He submitted it to a London expert, and learned that only five other copies were known to be in existence. Then ha sent it to the auctioneers from whom the first purchaser had bought his bundle of papers, and the pamphlet realised £l2lO. “The point in which the interest of booksellers and collectors centres is whether the original owners of the papers have any legal claim either againset the bookseller who made £I2OO profit on his lucky purchase or against the auctioneers. “The music and. papers in which the Shelley pamphlet was hidden were, it is stated, part of the library of a well-known collector, and were placed in the hands of the auctioneers for sale.” ' , —Fortune in an Old Chest.— "Tt was reported in Cobham that the oil paintings bearing the signature of John Hoppner, the eighteenth century artist, which were discovered accidentally in an old chest of drawers :in the possession of Mr H. Rogers, labourer, of Albert Cottages, Tartar Hill, have been sold, together with one or two other pictures, for several thousand pounds,’ says the Daily News. “Rogers declared that he received a dealer’s offer by telegram of over £3OOO for certain of the treasures, but this telegram he ignored. “The treasures include a Hoppner landscape, the portrait of a cavalier by the same artist, and an oil painting said to be by the Dutch artist, Van dor Neer, which was knocking about in the coal cellar for years. “The dramatic note about the whole discovery is that Mr- Rogers, who has been out of work, and lie and his large family in receipt of Poor Law relief, was on the point of selling the old chest of drawers ’ lor 10s to pay the rent. ‘We were almost starving at the time I made the discovery,’ he said. “Mr Rogers explained tliat the chest of drawers came originally from Cornwall. His grandfather was a farmer in the St. Austell neighbourhood, and the father of John Opie, the painter, was a carpenter and wheelwright). When he died the chest, which was made for John Opie when he went to London, seems to have passed into the Rogers’s family.”