36 11th February 2012 antiquarian books Letters and notes deliver
■ A personal touch from Byron and Browning to the Brontës
Ian McKay reports
A 19TH century literary review starts with a rare, probably unique Browning item from a January sale, but looks back also to some Brontë books and other high spots from sales held in the latter part of the old year. Queen Victoria, Piglet, Leonard Smithers, Harry the Hero Diver and a fold-out auction mart provide the supporting acts. A letter that Robert Browning attached
to an unpublished, proof copy of his 1873 poem, Red Cotton Night-cap Country, or Turf and Towers, offered by Dominic Winter on January 25 explains why it proved so appealing to bidders and sold for a higher than predicted £11,500. Most likely addressed to John Warren,
3rd Baron de Tabley, a would-be poet himself, the 1878 letter begins,“You care about ‘first editions of poems’; even (you were pleased to assure me) when such are mine, and not my betters. By a very sad event, the little thing which will accompany this letter, returns to me from the keeping of the friend who originally begged it of me. “When I wrote the poem, I inserted
all the true names of its persons and places, and, only on getting the printed ‘proofs’, was struck by the inconveniency of mentioning folks still ‘alive and (not unlikely) kicking’: so, I cancelled them altogether, substituting the imaginary
Above left: given by Charlotte Brontë to her dear friend Ellen Nussey, just weeks after her sister Emily’s death, this 1847 first of Wuthering Heights sold for £130,000 at Sotheby’s on December 15.
Above: the title page and frontispiece of a scarce work by the Rev. Patrick Brontë, The Cottage in the Wood…, sold by Bloomsbury Auctions sold for £3000.
Left: beautifully preserved in the original pictorial wrappers, the catalogues seen here are from a run of Nos.1-14 issued in the years 1895-98 by one of the more notorious 19th century publishers and booksellers, Leonard Smithers, who published works by
Wilde, Aleister Crowley, Ernest Dowson, Max Beerbohm, Arthur Symons and, of course, Aubrey Beardsley. Five of the latter’s designs feature on the covers and his work also to be found in four Smithers prospectuses that made up the lot. Sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on October 27 for £4200.
ones which were published – even then, under the protest of the Attorney-General Coleridge, who considered them still ‘libellous’: but I ran the risk – preserving the ‘proofs’ which you see – and, I hope, are pleased to accept. “May you live til they become a
curiosity, if nothing else! Ever truly yours, Robert Browning”
The poem, a tale of conflicting duty
and passion, religious obsession and a bizarre death, was inspired by the real life “affaire Antoine Mellerio” in 1870. The curious title stems from the
poem’s opening, which sets the scene in a Normandy village, amid countryside that his friend Anne Thackeray (eldest daughter of Wiliam Makepeace and the dedicatee
The 3D saleroom
BOOKS from the RICS library sold by Bloomsbury Auctions on October 20 included A Detailed Prospectus of the Auction Mart instituted in 1808. It is illustrated with seven engraved plates and plans, one of which has flaps that fold up to form a 3D representation of the saleroom. There was some staining to this half morocco bound copy, but containing some related
autograph material, a mounted image of the mart and a bound-in memorandum of costs, it sold at £2600. A second copy, in original wrappers but lacking one plate, a view of the building, made just £400.
of the poem) has had jokingly named “White Cotton Night-Cap Country”, from the somnolence of the Calvados district and the white caps worn by the locals. Browning’s change of colour to red
may be his way of pointing up the passion of the story about to unfold, and of course has revolutionary associations. In the poem, the heir to a jewellery
business, Léonce Miranda, who is torn between the demands of religious devotion (the Towers of the title) and the sensual side of his nature (the Turf), sets up his mistress, Clare de Millefleurs, in a luxuriously renovated priory. Miranda’s scandalised mother plays so
successfully on his guilty feelings that he tries, unsuccessfully, to drown himself in the Seine. Later, his mother’s death leads him to abandon his mistress, but while trying to burn her letters he manages to badly burn both his hands. He then resumes the affair, but tries to
assuage his guilt by making donations to the local church, and finally, believing he will be miraculously borne away by angels, throws himself from the belvedere of the Priory as an act of faith.
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