COSTLY LETTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22778, 14 January 1936, Page 11

COSTLY LETTER

TEN POUNDS A LINE

Does the literary market for autograph letters unconsciously award an order of merit? The safest answer (the London Daily Telegraph says) is that sometimes the auction verdicts arc surprising. In the Daily Telegraph on December 9, an interesting letter by Mr Bernard Shaw on film production was given, in which it was said that some producers were “ encouraged to spend £IO,OOO on two penn’orth of effect.” Yet the last bid for the letter was £l. As for the lines _ which Garrick w'rote to Lady Giya, playfully reproving her for having laughed at him as King Lear, the last bid was £O, although in that manuscript “boom” year, 1928, the lines had fetched £7B. On the other hand, a rare letter which Warwick, “ the King-maker,” addressed to Louis XI early in 1471, denouncing the accursed Burgundian, Charles the Bold, realised £9O (Exton). Any letter by Wellington on Waterloo is in much demand. Not long ago one written at 3 a.m. on the day of the battle fetched £2OO at Sotheby’s. One of five lines, dated Juno 2, 1815, briefly thanking Robert M’Kerrell for sending him a “book of maps and plans through the Secretary of State’s office,” was sold for £54 —over £lO a line. It is believed that the maps were _ used by Wellington at Waterloo. M’Kerrell, a business man in Frankfurt, was often consulted by the English Government on Continental affairs.

A volume of 60 prints of portraits of famous Dutch admirals and navigators realised £295.

In a sale at Christie’s, totalling £3442, a William and Mary bracket clock by Tom Tompion brought 260 guineas.