Cromwell’s Watch

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 219, 15 September 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Cromwell’s Watch

IFor a IBng Prate© Over Two Hundred Pouncs

DY THE whirligig of time Oliver Cromwell’s silver watch, made for him at a cost of about £5 and engraved with his name in 1648, fetched 195 guineas at Christie’s on July 18, while a Frans Hals portrait of a boy, painted about the same time and just the kind of picture which used to be picked up for a five-pound not.e, was causing Messrs Agnew to bid up to £3500 for it at Sotheby’s. And Jest some people doubt this statement —as they remember only the huge sums given for great Hals portraits in recent years—says Mr A. C. L- Carter in the Daily Telegraph, let it be recalled that, in 1913, Lord Glanusk Hals portrait to Sotheby’s which eventually realised £9OOO, although in 18S4 it had been bought for only five guineas—with a still-life subject thrown in. The Cromwell watch, bought by Mr E. Wertheimer, appeared in the well-known Asprjey collection, and was accompanied by an alarm watch appropriately associated with the somewhat nervous James 1., for whom David Ramsay is hold to have made it. This realised 120 guineas. MORRIS AS A SCRIBE. There were other striking events, and two of them brought high auction renown to William Morris. Just before he died, in 1896, the last issue of the famous Kelmscott Press, which he established, the “Chaucer,” was completed, and one of the special thirteen copies printed on vellum of this brought the worthy sum of £4OOO at Sotheby’s, Messrs Quaritch being the purchasers. Edited by F. S. Ellis and printed in black and red, with a wood-cut

title and 87 wood-cut illustrations, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, This “Chaucer,” with its superb initial words, the designs of Morris himself, is still held to be by competent judges the finest printed book produced, even rivalling the first printed issue of the Bible, when printing seemed to spring into being fully armed. The second Morris event was even more personal because he proved himself to possess all that monastic zeal and patience of the scribes in a mediaeval scriptorium when he found time in his busy life to inscribe in wonderful caligraphy 177 pages of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” and actually to design floriated letters for the manuscript. Fairfax Murray did historiated miniatures for it, and Graily Hewitt was called in to write 193 more pages, but even then the work was not completed. SUPERB EXAMPLE OF ART. This superb example of art and devotion realised £1750, and in it there is a strangely ironical vindication of William Al orris’ pioneership in the appreciation of illuminated manuscripts. His own word for it would have been “jolly,” his favourite epithet in matters of gusto. Collectors of beautiful manuscripts to-day know that Morris garnered a noble array, and was never tired of showing them to his friends. Over £lO,OOO was realised by his collection when-sold in 1898, although the present value would be at least £lOO,OOO. Thirty years ago one of the higher-priced manuscripts was a fifteenth century Virgil, “Georgicia et Aencis,” at only £164, sc. that it seems almost poetic justice that Morris’ own manuscript should letch more than tenfold this amount.