LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PORTRAIT OF G. BIRKBECK HILL, from a crayon drawing in the Common Room of Pembroke College, Oxford, by W. R. Symonds . Frontispiece WINDOW OF JOHNSON'S ROOM, Pembroke College, Oxford. (The middle window in the tower was his.) Drawn by J. Fulleylove. 10 PORTRAITS OF THE EDGEWORTH FAMILY (Maria wearing a hat) from an original drawing in the possession of her niece, Mrs. Arthur G. Butler, Oxford 14 24 26 FACSIMILE LETTER OF CHARLES LAMB FACSIMILE LETTER OF W. E. GLADSTONE. (First and last pages) FACSIMILE LETTER OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE . FACSIMILE INVITATION TO M. CLARENDON PRESS FACSIMILE ADDRESS OF COWPER'S LETTER TO MR. JOHNSON 34 40 66 88 92 NAB'S COTTAGE, the home of Thomas De Quincey and Hartley 96 PORTRAIT OF MISS MITFORD, from the Hope Collection, Bodleian FACSIMILE OF BILL OF SALE OF THE LANDS OF THE LATE FACSIMILE LETTER OF ROBERT SOUTHEY FACSIMILE NOTE FROM THE KHEDIVE TO GENERAL GORDON. PORTRAIT OF D. G. ROSSETTI, drawn by himself and presented to FACSIMILE OF PORTION OF LETTER OF D. G. ROSSETTI RUINS OF THE COLUMN OF VENDÔME shattered by the Communards of 1871 FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ST. CECILIA, General of the Communards, 1871.. 134 138 150 158 164 168 FACSIMILE BILLET DE LOGEMENT . 180 FACSIMILE OF LAST PAGE OF LETTER OF W. L. GARRISON . 186 FACSIMILE ADDRESS OF BALLOON LETTER TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS I "March 23, 1854. A snowstorm. Write and send off twenty-four autographs." November 25, 1856. I have lying on my table more than sixty requests for autographs." January 9, 1857. Yesterday, I wrote, sealed, and directed seventy autographs. To-day I added five or six more, and mailed them." Such are the entries which from time to time. Longfellow made in his journal, — entries which surely must have stirred remorse in the heart of many a collector of autographs. Not a word of impatience, much less of indignation, seems to have escaped from the gentle poet. He took the evil with the good, - the fame of a poet and the trouble which it brought with it. Of his Hiawatha ten thousand copies were sold in the first few weeks after publication. A little later he recorded that the sale was going on at the rate of three hundred a day. A snowy morning given up now and then to writing his name was not, he may have thought, too great a penalty to pay for the fame which he enjoyed and for the dollars which came pouring in. Lowell had none of his brother poet's patience. He suffered under the infliction, and he made his sufferings known. An autograph book, he declared, was an instrument of torture unknown even to the Inquisition. When he did not recognize a correspondent's handwriting he would leave the letter unopened, till a great pile slowly accumulated on his desk. "I am thinking seriously," he wrote, "of getting a good forger from the state's prison to do my autographs; but I suppose the unconvicted followers of the same calling would raise the cry of convict labor." Collectors do not go to work the right way when they want to get an autograph out of their man. They should approach him dexterously, and come unto him as delicately as Agag came unto Samuel. Now and then there has been seen a man as methodical as the Duke of Wellington, from whom an answer could always be drawn by a letter which had about it an air of business. It is said that his son's tailor, or some autograph collector who passed himself off as his son's tailor, Mr. Snip I will call him, wrote to the old soldier to beg him make the young man settle his account. He received the following answer: once "F. M. the Duke of Wellington begs to inform Mr. Snip that he is neither the Marquis of Douro's steward nor Mr. Snip's debt collector." A feigned letter of business, however, would in general very rarely be found successful. If any answer were sent, it would almost always be in the hand of a secretary or a wife. Honester and gentler means should be used. The man to be hooked, like Izaak Walton's frog, "should be used as though you loved him." Dukes, no doubt, could not thus be caught; but then, fortunately, the signature of a duke, unless at the bottom of a check, with the rarest exceptions, is utterly worthless. If-which Heaven forbid! - I should wish to get an autograph out of a poet, I would address him after some such fashion as the following: DEAR SIR, My love for your writings finds no other vent for its expression but in a way which I trust will not offend you by its being less spiritual than I could have wished. Will you accept a barrel of oysters which I am venturing to send you as a slight proof of my admiration of your genius? I am, dear sir, Your ardent admirer, POET LAUREATE, ESQ. AUTOGRAPH HUNTER. |