AUTOGRAPHS OF CELEBRITIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1189, 12 September 1874, Page 19

AUTOGRAPHS OF CELEBRITIES.

A great collection of autographs (says the San Francisco Bulletin) has ju3t teen brought to the hammer ia London, and the result of the sale shows that even in these very special commodities prices are rising, America ia the great provoker of competition, and the increase of value, amounting to about 100 per cent., is due to the bids cf agents who have crossed the Atlantic It is a strange test of the popularity of a writer to watch the price that his mere handwriting will fetoh. It is a purely personal matter, a question of liking for the individual, for the works commited to print are of course immortal. As we look down the list of the sale, names the most incongruous jostle against one another. Here is Sir Peter Paul Rubens writing in Italian, and here is the caricaturist, Row* laudson, writing in English ; and London o*n not only find a purchaser foi both, but for both, at the same price, and that price £7. Here is a letter from Buckingham, the favourite of two kings, whose assassination was an historical event, whose life was the theme of poets, and whose death ha« such peculiar attractions for artists, the sheet which holds the handwriting of the murdered man fetches nearly £20. And here, too, is the mere signature of an Irish girl who, in her youth, sold oranges on the streets, and, while she was still young, directed the counsels of a king. A letter of Nell Gwynne, dictated by her to an amanuensis apparently as ignorant of spelling as herself, with her initials scrawled at the foot of it, is sold for £28. A manuscript is put up among the autographs "Dissertation on Roast Pig" — that condensation of the Chinese MS., which explains how the civilised people of the East, after eating their meat raw for 70,000 ages, at length contrived to mellow it by the incinerating and dulcifying influence of flame. It is in a small, crabbed handwriting, and bears at the end the norn de plume " Elia ; " bub at a sale by public auction a purchaser is declared at £34. Then there follows a letter in a scrawling yet legible handwriting. It is addressed to a great actor of the period, whose fame our street nomenclature perpetuates to the present day, while two London clubs also bear his name. This letter to Garrick is signed "Oliver Goldsmith," and its sale created no small excitement in the auction room. It was knocked down for £60 after a great deal of competition. It must awaken strange thoughts in the possessor if he reflects that for the copyright of "The Vicar of Wakefield" Goldsmith only received the same-sum.

Madame Georges Sand is said to be preparing for the press a memoir of the young and unfortunate Louis XVII., chiefly drawn from the personal recollections of her grandmother, Madame Aurore Dupin de Francueil, granddaughter of King Augustus 11. of Poland, and nearly related to Kings Charles X. and Louis XVIII. The memoir is to contain also historical documents and traditions, carefully preserved in the family of the great French novelist.