Antiques Trade Gazette 37


the desired results


“Eight of the 11 lots were presentation copies of first and other editions by the Brontë sisters acquired in 1889 from Ellen Nussey”


A will dividing his estate between the


church and his mistress is contested by his family, the “cousinry”, on the grounds of insanity, but is upheld by the courts, who declare his death an accident. Browning had followed the case


closely, even interviewing local residents, and wrote the poem while the lawsuit was still under appeal. On the advice of Lord Coleridge, however, he changed the real names of the main protagonists: Mellerio to Miranda, Anna de Beaupre to Clara and the real village of Saint-Aubin to Saint- Rambert. The poem, thus corrected, appeared


in May 1873 to mixed reviews. Carlyle is reported as saying “ingenious remarks here and there; but nobody out of bedlam ever before thought of choosing such a theme”. However, G.K. Chesterton later wrote, “Browning was one of those wise men who can perceive the terrible and impressive poetry of the police news which is commonly treated as vulgarity”. This unique, unpublished author’s


proof copy, bearing the real names of those whose story it tells, was in a period binding of red morocco gilt. When Bonhams sold the stock and


collections of the late Michael Silverman on November 22, an 1845 letter in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s hand, regarding a literary subterfuge on behalf of a friend to which she refers in one of the letters that she and Robert exchanged during their own secret courtship, was sold at £4800. Four letters sent in 1823 to the Greek


patriot Giorgio Vitali as Byron prepared to set sail for Greece, where nine months later he met his heroic end, sold at £8000 in the same sale. The letters were all written in Italian by Count Pietro Gamba, brother of the poet’s mistress, Teresa Guiccioli, but all are signed by Byron. Other 19th century items in the


Silverman sale included an 1872 letter from John Ruskin to Arthur Severn that sold for £5000 where just £300-400 had been suggested. The letter looks forward to a planned


trip to Rome at the end of Hilary term, a journey on which Ruskin would be accompanied by his pupil Albert Goodwin, his secretary Laurence Hilliard and his wife, Constance, and the newlywed Severns. The son of the painter Joseph Severn, the devoted friend who had tended to Keats during the poet’s last days in Rome and


still lived there as British Consul, Arthur had married Ruskin’s cousin, Joan Agnew, the previous year. Sold for £22,000 at Christie’s on


November 22 was a browned and stained 1821 edition of Hebels Allemanische Gedichte that on the front and rear endpapers bears autograph notes on the German poet’s dialect verses by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Most of his comments are a critical meditation on Hebel’s nature comparisons, but there is also a draft translation for a verse that includes a play on the words ‘pens’ and ‘pence’, which he admits is “an execrable Pun; but in a Pothouse Didactic Doggrel not the worse for that.” Sold for £580,000 at Sotheby’s on


December 15, a tiny autograph manuscript magazine, ‘Young Men’s Magazine No.2’, produced by the young Charlotte Brontë, was previewed and illustrated at length in ATG No 2018 and, then further reported in ATG No 2022, but that London auction included another major Brontë property. A group of 11 lots in Sotheby’s sale


were once part of the library of Sir George Armytage (1842-1918) of Kirklees Park in West Yorkshire, just a few miles from Hartshead, where the Rev. Patrick Brontë had been a curate of the local parish church before moving on to Thornton and then Haworth. Armytage’s own home, it has been suggested, may have been the model for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre. Eight of the 11 lots were special


presentation copies of first and other editions by the Brontë sisters acquired in 1889 from Ellen Nussey, Charlotte‘s lifelong friend and correspondent, and the chief source for Elizabeth Gaskell’s pioneering biography. Most bear a specially printed additional


provenance leaf, signed by Nussey, that was presumably added when the books were rebound that same year in polished red calf gilt by Zaehnsdorf. Today’s collectors would probably wish that Armytage had resisted the temptation to have them rebound, but the association and inscriptions more than make amends. Inscribed by Anne Brontë to Ellen


Nussey in January 1849, the month that Anne and Charlotte first divulged their secret roles as writers to Ellen, a three- vol. first (second issue) of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was sold at £26,000, but bid to £130,000 was the 1847 first of Emily Brontë’sWuthering Heights that Ellen was given around the same time. The presentation was probably


made by Charlotte, as poor Emily had succumbed to TB in December 1848. Sotheby’s hold the record for the 1847 issue, the £200,000 bid for a copy last summer. The three-decker in which Emily’s now famous, but at the time unloved


and unsuccessful, tale first appeared also contained Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey. Sales were so poor that neither sister received any payment from the publisher, T.C. Newby. The Reverend Patrick, their father, had


his literary moments as well, and in 1815 had published The Cottage in the Wood; or the Art of Becoming Rich and Happy. A copy sold for £3000 at Bloomsbury


Auctions on October 27 was in soiled, rubbed and scuffed but original boards, split at the upper hinge with some leaves working loose and a water stain on the engraved frontispiece, but it is only the second copy to have shown up in auction records in over 35 years. A copy that Tennants of Leyburn


offered in 2009 made £2400. Sold for £45,000 at Sotheby’s in


December was the complete autograph working manuscript of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel, The Wonderous Tale of Alroy. The Rise of Iskander, first published in three volumes in 1833. Written shortly after his return from an


1831 visit to Turkey and the Holy Land, a novel that the Sotheby’s cataloguer describes as one written in a distinctively highly-wrought and poetic style, retells the story of a 12th century Jewish leader who proclaimed himself the Messiah and promised a return to Jerusalem for the Jews, but was defeated and killed in an attack on the city of Amadiya, now in Iraqi Kurdistan. Disraeli, along with his siblings, had


converted to the Anglican Church at the age of 13 – at the request of his father, who was himself a religious sceptic but also recognised the practical difficulties that faced Jews in England at the time. Jews could not own land, attend university or hold political office. Disraeli admitted to having little


religious faith, but returned many times to the issue of Jewish identity in his writings. Bound as two volumes and bearing


the armorial bookplates of the 5th Earl Rosebery, it was last seen at Sotheby’s in 1975. At Dominic Winter on October 5-6,


one of just 58 copies of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus that in 1834 were privately “Reprinted for Friends from Fraser’s Magazine”, as the title proclaims, was sold at £2700. In a later binding, this copy was one


inscribed by the author to Edward Irving, a Scottish clergyman and friend who was at the time tutor to his future wife, Jane Welsh. Irving had, in fact, hoped to marry Jane himself, but was unable to free himself from a previous engagement. Also offered in that South Cerney sale was a collection of 47 autograph


continued on page 38


In which Piglet is entirely surrounded


by water “IT is a little anxious... to be a very small animal entirely surrounded by water”. This is one of my very favourite E.H. Shepard drawings from Winnie- the-Pooh, in which it appeared as a full-page illustration. Titled ‘Rescue of Piglet’ by Shepard


before quoting A.A. Milne’s text, this ink drawing, above, with minor gouache corrections sold for £28,000 at Sotheby’s on December 15.


The Sunderland Hero of Tay Bridge


SOLD for £1350 by Strides of Chichester on January 5 was an album of manuscript and printed material relating to Harry Watts, a Sunderland diver and lifeboat man, shown above, dubbed the Hero of Tay Bridge for his considerable efforts in recovering bodies following the infamous train wreck on the bridge in 1879. The album includes a 66pp manuscript


biography of Watts by an as-yet unidentified writer.


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