FAMOUS SIGNATURES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19123, 18 September 1936, Page 9

FAMOUS SIGNATURES

A NOVEL COLLECTION AUTOGRAPHED SKETCHES Collecting autographs is by no means an uncommon hobby, as all who havo tasted fame or notoriety are aware. The motives activating autographhunters are'somewhat obscure; some, particularly the young, are no doubt goaded by the desire for personal contact with.the great, others by the pure passion for > collecting. Man ; shares many of .the instincts of the jackdaw, which likes to till its nest with bright but useless trifles; that is collecting for collectings’, sake. Others again collect. autographs as a commercial proposition; the signatures of great men of the past .may bo purchased for a price, and will increase in value with the pasage. of time, while many that arc to-day of little value may be much sought after to-morrow. There is. in. Wellington a collector of contemporary autographs, Miss Jessie M. Colley, who has evolved an original and. interesting method of carrying out her hobby. An artist of some ability, she obtains a photograph of her intended-victim, and on one half of a slip of paper deftly. sketches a pencil portrait of her subject. This she posts away, with a covering letter asking the. person in question to sign the blank half of tho slip. As-a rule the plot succeeds; back comes the slip, with the autograph alongside the .portrait. Miss Colley sticks it into her leather-bound book, and appends below a brief biography of the subject. She has been collecting since the early days of the Great; War and the volume now contains a very extensive gallery of signed portraits of celebrities. PEOPLE OF .IMPORTANCE Numbers, 'of course,-’ arc' not a primary consideration in a collection of this sort; it is a- matter "of standard. Miss Colley has about 1.70 autographs of stars sho- considers to ho of the first magnitude., They include, to name hut a’ few ns an indication of Miss Colley’s standards of greatness, Theodore .Roosevelt, President Wilson, Foeh, Poincare, Botha, . .Jcllieoe, Beattie, French, Allcnby, Edison, Shaeklctou, Oliver Lodge, J. M. Barrie, Eudyurd .Kipling, G. K. Chesterton, Bernard Shaw, Sir John Simon, Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, Earl Haig.<

Many .wrote personal letters to Miss (Jolley, -in addition to sending their signatures. .Beside her sketch of Sir fan Hamilton is written soldier’s handwriting “A libel!” “He wrote me a letter saying:. ‘lt grieves mo that you "chose so poor a photo to represent a . dashing. young spark like myself . said Miss Colley, /She therefore sent him another one, some time later, and on it, under , his , signature; Sir lan wrote “Wishing Miss Jessie a happy New Year.’.’ 1

John Ilassal, the artist, sent hack his own version of what ho looked liko; Raven-Hill the Punch cartoonist, sent a little sketch of Mr. Punch. “Harry Lauder—wi’ his bonnet on the wrong side,” was the’famous comedian ’» comment. A number of bearded men Miss Colley stated to be survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade, who in 1915, when the drawings were made, wore all between 82 and 92 years of age, and she .understood, were now all dead.

Of course, not all to whom Miss Colley has written answered her. For one thing, such letters to men in high places are liable to be intercepted by over-zealous secretaries, < and to end iu tho waste-paper basket without the addressees over knowing of them; for another,' many folk mistrust such requests from total ■ strangers. 'Lord Jellico’c, said' Miss Colley, only after receiving ilie fullest, written assurances •that his signature would licensed only for her own private collection, had consented to supply it. .She had received no reply at all from Paderewski. [And nbne from Ramsay MacDonald, but she intended to make a second attempt to abtain a sample of liis calligraphy.