RARE AUTOGRAPHS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19373, 8 January 1925, Page 11

RARE AUTOGRAPHS.

A FASCINATING HOBBY. HANDWRITING OF THE GREAT. In tho period since tho armistice it is calculated that tho dealers and private collectors of the United States have purchased in England nearly 1,000,000 dollars worth of rare autographic manuscripts and letters. Judging by tho results of recent sales in London, this ratio is being increased. . . Doubtless the vendors of such rantios ore encouraged iu their researches by the extravagant prices lhat are paid for their wares (says the Bun, Sydney). It is, however, satisfactory to know, in the interest of the nobler motive, that there does exist a very largo number of persons, not necessarily wealthy, who collect for the sake of the thing collected, rather than for tho pleasure of the chase, or tho elation that comes with a more saleroom victory over a rival. The present writer, for instance, owes his introduction to tho fescination of autograph collecting to the accidental discovery in the workshop of a East End cobbler of a largo parcel of letters and documents in the holograph of Iving Janies H, Samuel Pcpys the Diarist, John Evelyn, and Prince Rupert. They were the “cleaning up” of centuries of rubbish in an ancient house in Lincoln’s Inn, that had from time immemorial been the abode of lawyers, and tho cobbler vraa using _ the parchment and stout paper for repairing ladies’ shoes. TREASURES DESTROYED. An intimate letter of Dickens, dealing with his relations with his wife, was found in the .possession of the illiterate keeper of a low-class tavern, while an original poem in tho handwriting of Lord Byron liad been treasured for years by an old lady in humble circumstances iu tho fond belief that the author was her one-time lover, a village school teacher. An important letter by Lord Nelson was found pasted at Ihe back of a toilet mirror in a Yarmouth hotel, and a valuable Dickens’s manuscript had been used as a rough _ memorandum book in a Kentish hotel kitchen. Tho horror of “old papers” that is character istio of the housewife has been responsible for the destruction of much literarv treasure, and tho once popular Autograph Album has effected tho same wrong for the better educated. Hundreds of interesting letters by famous people have been destroyed under the mistaken notion that tho signature was tho really valuable portion. A lady once offered a collector for a charity bazaar a dozen Walter Scott signatures. "When asked their source she coolly stated that she had that morning cut them from some old letters which she had burned. Those letters were worth at current price at least £100; tho signatures would nave been clear at 5a apiece. _ A cultured London editor who had daring a long life received many valuable and historically interesting letters from, famous people confessed to have destroyed them. Iu his poor old age ho found a few letters from Dickens, Thackeray, and others, tho sale of which placed him in comparative comfort for a year or two. Tho realisation of what he"had so ignorantly destroyed is said to have hastened his death. A CHANCE FOR ROGUES. It is not surprising that the high prices realisable by rare manuscripts should have attracted and tempted the rougue.. Clover and successful forgeries have often, deceived the collector, whose enthusiasm has blinded him to their defects. The “loading case” is that of the Lucas frauds, the principal victim of which was M. Chasles, probably tho greatest of modern French geometricians. In the period between tho years 1862 and 1869. Lucas sold the enormous number of 27,000 documents, every one a glaring fraud. They comprised letters purporting to have been written by such improbable authors us Abolard, Alcbiades, Alexander the Great to Aristotle, Cicero, Cleopatra, aoan of Arc, Sappho, Anacreon, Pliny, Plutarch, St. Jerome, Juvenal, and Socrates, ami, most stupendous of joV.cs—Lazarus after his resurrection. Rut for the records in the French Court, this story might bo regarded as a frandTho forger received a sentence of two years’ imprisonment. Tho trim appeal of autograph collecting is well described by Lord Rosebery, who reminds us that the specious camouflage of history shows those men in full dross; but. their letters betray the kindly, vicious, bantering, spiteful, moan, generous, official, human real man beneath.