WARREN
saying that "As a Welshman, I shall feel great pleasure in seeing my name among the patrons of your contemplated Eisteddford, but I entertain doubts whether it will be in my power to attend. If I can, I will and I wish your undertaking splendid success.", 1 side 8vo., Inner Temple, 24th October Warren was recorder of Hull, 1852-1874, and M.P. for Midhurst, 1856-1859. Among his novels are 'Ten Thousand a Year', 1839.
[WINDSOR
"Filets de St Pierre Meunière, Roti de Boeuf, Petis Pois au Beurre Salade, Glace Pralinée, Petis Gateau.", 6" x 3½" on gold edged card with Wallis's monogram at the head, no place, 11th November 1974 together with a printed card for another dinner that reads "This is to remind you that The Duchess of Windsor expects you on Saturday September 22nd for Dinner at 8:45 o'clock, Black Tie", 4½" x 3½", no place, no date, From a collection of material addressed to addressed to "Monsieur Claude Roland, 3, Av. Matiguon VIII", a frequent dinner guest with the Windsors.
asking what had become "of your May weekend at Fontwell? I have (all being well) to be guest at a Foyle Bookshop tea party to meet a bunch of South African School children on Monday. and I was wondering if there might be any chance of meeting, say for lunch, beforehand? Somewhere quiet and peaceful, and assessable by car and wheelchair, if such a place exists? It's a long time since November and it would be pleasant to meet again." with a postscript that she "could tell you all the sad story about the houseboat!.", 2 sides 8vo., Swallowshaw, Walburton, Arundel, BN18 0PQ, 30th May Although she was primarily a children's author, some of her novels were specifically written for adults. In a 1986 interview she said, "I would claim that my books are for children of all ages, from nine to ninety."
WOLFF
saying that he has just noticed "that an envelope containing your address accompanied your request for an Autograph and as I observe that I have not directed your letter exactly I execute[?] a second autograph.", 1 side 8vo., 44 Mission House, Wellclose Square, E. London, 22nd April At the age of 11, a conversation with a Christian neighbour led to Wolff's decision to leave home in order to find truth for himself, resulting in six years of travel, visiting various Christian establishments and learned theologians and teachers. He became a Roman Catholic near Prague in September 1812, taking on the name Joseph. Four years later, he arrived in Rome, where he began training as a missionary at the seminary of the Collegio Romano. During his time in Rome, Wolff had met Henry Drummond, and he received an invitation from Drummond to join him in England. Through Drummond Wolff was introduced to Lewis Way, whose conviction that Christ's Second Coming was imminent influenced him. He decided to become a member of the Church of England, following which Drummond and Way persuaded him to train as a missionary at Cambridge University, at the expense of The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. Later Joseph embarked on a search for the Lost Tribes of Israel and second missionary journey to the east which lasted from 1827 -1834, and involved visits to Anatolia, Armenia, Turkestan Afghanistan, Simla, Calcutta, Madras, Pondicherry, Tinnevelly, Goa and Bombay, returning via Egypt and Malta.
probably Philip L. Sclater (1829-1913, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London), asking him if he "can come to us on Monday the 18th for a few days it will suit us very well. On Tuesday the 19th is a meeting of the 'Malvern Naturalist's Club' on Bredon Hill near here, to which I shall be happy to take you if you like to go. I shall be much obliged for Parra gallinacea as I believe I have not got it.", 2 sides 8vo., Apperley Green, Tewkesbury, 11th July Strickland was the grandson of Edmund Cartwritght, the inventor of the power loom. He accompanied W. J. Hamilton on a geological tour through Asia Minor, and traversed several countries in Europe in 1835. He drew up rules for zoological nomenclature in 1841 and was killed by a train when examining a railway cutting at Clarborough on the 14th September 1853, just a couple of months after this letter. He wrote The Dodo in 1848 and Ornithological Synonyms in 1855 and had a large collection of over 6000 birds which went to Cambridge. The Description of the egg of Parra Gallinacea was an article by John Gould.
WEBB
saying that he fears "you must be wondering at my very long silence. But it has arisen in the first place from my wish to see your. of Cass; which was frustrated by bad weather for a long time - and then I became much engaged & distracted in various ways. But before leaving for Birmingham, where I hope I may have an opportunity of going next wee, I must just send you a line to apologise, & to thank you for pointing out a very pretty object - I have examined it twice with considerable care, to find its colours ruddy to blue or bluish purple - but I have not been able to detect any changes in it, such as I have seen in some minutis comites - especially a Piscium. I don't know whether may be any hope of meeting you. I shall be there - if at all - on Thursday & Friday - & if you are there shall be much disappointed if I do not see you.", with a postscript that he hopes the October Observatory "will contain a good many pairs of interest.", 3 sides sm. 8vo.,Hardwick Parsonage, 30th August Webb went to Oxford where he attended Magdalen Hall. In 1829 he was ordained a minister in the Anglican Church. Through his career T. W. Webb served as a clergyman at various places including Gloucester, and finally in 1852 was assigned to the parish of Hardwicke in Herefordshire near the border with Wales. In addition to serving his parish, he pursued astronomical observation in his spare time. On the grounds of the vicarage or parsonage he built a small canvas and wood observatory that was home to instruments including a small 3.7" (94mm) refracting telescope. Webb acquired progressively larger refractors and reflectors, the largest was a 9-1/3" (225mm) aperture silver on glass reflector used from 1866 until his last observation in March 1885. It was at Hardwick that he wrote his classic astronomical observing guide Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes in 1859 for which he is best known today.
(Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville, 1903-1989, Classicist and Medievalist who held senior chairs of Latin at Oxford and Cambridge) saying that he would "be most grateful for your ruling on a point that has given me a lot of trouble over the Oxford Press shield. I cut the design in wood, as enclosed proof, and the Clarendon Press were delighted with it for a month when my division of the word ILLUMINATIO was noticed, and condemned as unthinkable in the 1st century. If it is possible to conceive a letter cutter in the classical era being faced with the problem of dividing a word into 3 parts in this way can one say that he would have found it unthinkable to cut it as I have? The point is that if I have to revert to MINA-TIO all my letters will have to be much smaller and there will be ugly gaps. As I have cut it one avoids the awkward tendency to read across the word domina or dominina. Ideally also, from my point of view DOMINUS would be happier DOM-INUS. If you say my divisions are impossible and a hopeless solecism I shall re-cut the shield without feeling that I am a victim of of pedantry or plain conservatism. The Latinists among my friends are not outragesd but then they are not palaeographers.", with an autograph postscript on the verso about their last meeting, The Old Rectory, Litton Cheney, Dorchester,headed paper, 22nd February Stone said of his work: "One bold flourish is usually better than a larger number of small twiddles, which are not worth doing anyway. But the final danger is to do too much because the eye, delighted by a small mouthful, is soon surfeited."
WINGATE
Secretary of the Royal African Society who retired from the post in 1938, saying that "by some extraordinary lapse, I entirely missed the inclusion of your name in the New Year's Honours List and it was only when I got the African World on Saturday that I saw your name was included in the List for a C.B.E. I cannot tell you what sincere gratification this gave me and I am sure all your friends will rejoice with me that your splendid services while Secretary of the Royal African Society have been recognised in this way. I hope you will live long to enjoy this honour and perhaps other which may follow. I do not know whether you saw a letter published in the 'Times'. from my son, dealing with the Refugee and Palestine questions and strongly recommending the adoption of British Guiana as a home for them. As you have had a good deal of experience in that part of the world perhaps some day we can arrange a meeting between yourself, my son and myself to talk the matter over, that is to say, if you are free, but I suppose you do not come to London more often than you can help. I do hope your general health has improved.", 2 sides 4to., Queen Anne's Mansions, St James's Park, 9th January In 1917, Wingate succeeded Sir Henry McMahon as High Commissioner in Egypt, a post he held until 1919. He was not a successful administrator in the very different political climate in that country, and was made a scapegoat for the riots incited by Saad Zaghlul and his party that spread across Egypt. Angry at his treatment, Wingate refused to actually resign, even after he was officially replaced by Lord Allenby, and threatened to embarrass the British Government. He was refused a peerage or another appointment, although he was created a baronet in the 1920 King's Birthday Honours, gazetted as a Baronet, of Dunbar, in the County of Haddington, and of Port Sudan. He never held another public or military office, retiring from the Army on 1st February 1922, but became a director of a number of companies. He continued to hold honorary positions in the army: as Colonel Commandant, Royal Artillery and Honorary Colonel of the 7th Battalion Manchester Regiment, of the 57th Medium Brigade, Royal Artillery, and of the 65th Anti-Aircraft Regiment Royal Artillery. For many years he was the senior general of the British Army.
(1869-1924, Spy, Art Historian, Entrepeneur) saying he "would like to meet you. I'm really a singularly unpatriotic person & even in the war I am pro Europe & pro civilisation rather than pro British. There is great danger of all the fine possibilities[?] of the war being swamped in purely natural passion. Could you come to me down here for the next week end August 28th-30th & talk?.", 1 side 4to., with original autograph envelope, Litttle Easton Rectory, Dunmow headed paper, no date, probably August Wells was an outspoken socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. In his later years, he wrote less fiction and more works expounding his political and social views, sometimes giving his profession as that of journalist. During August 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, Wells published a number of articles in London newspapers that subsequently appeared as a book entitled The War That Will End War. He coined the expression with the idealistic belief that the result of the war would make a future conflict impossible. He was married twice, briefly to his cousin Isobel Mary (1865-1931) from 1891 to 1894 when he fell in love with one of his students Amy Catherine Robbins (18721927, later known as Jane), with whom he moved to Woking, Surrey, in May 1895. Jane died on 6th October 1927, in Dunmow, at the age of 55, which left Wells devastated. He also had Wells had multiple love affairs. Dorothy Richardson was a friend with whom he had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and miscarriage, in 1907. Wells' wife had been a schoolmate of Richardson. In December 1909, he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves, whose parents, William and Maud Pember Reeves, he had met through the Fabian Society. Between 1910 and 1913, novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was one of his mistresses. In 1914, he had a son, Anthony West (19141987), by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, 26 years his junior. In 192021, and intermittently until his death, he had a love affair with the American birth control activist Margaret Sanger. Between 1924 and 1933 he partnered with the 22-year-younger Dutch adventurer and writer Odette Keun, with whom he lived in Lou Pidou, a house they built together in Grasse, France. Wells dedicated his longest book to her. Then, when visiting Maxim Gorky in Russia 1920, he had slept with Gorky's mistress Moura Budberg, then still Countess Benckendorf and 27 years his junior. In 1933, when she left Gorky and emigrated to London, their relationship renewed and she cared for him through his final illness. Wells repeatedly asked her to marry him, but Budberg strongly rejected his proposals.
WEST
(1908-2007, Social Advocate, Novelist and Playwright, niece of Somerset Maugham), apologising for not having written earlier "to thank you for that most consoling lunch. But I had another memorial service, and then Henry got gout, and I was given a new drug for a minor ailment which produce a major one, as I was allergic to it. But I have felt so grateful to you. Not only was I deeply fond of Pamela, but the thought of how much happier she might have been if things had gone differently, and how little I had seen of her lately, for stupid reasons (my being in American when she was here, and t'other way round) - all this depresses me, and you lifted the weight. It occurs to me that I may have sounded rather vague about the trustee business, and that it may interest you. The trustee business, I mean, that had made me see that Liza couldn't do anything but what she did. About fifteen years or so or more I was named as trustee of a trust fund by a woman who died leaving an adopted child, whom she had named as beneficiary of the trust fund. My co-trustee was an inoffensive solicitor of good repute. My solicitor discovered that the dead woman had induced this solicitor of hers to advance her money out of the trust fund which she had no right to have. My solicitor then explained to me that I must sue this solicitor, unless he replaced the money, because if I left matters as they were the adopted child would have the right to sue me for negligence, and so would her heirs! - and in time the sum claimed might be quite large, with interest added to it.", 2 sides 8vo., Ibstone House, Ibstone headed paper, 27th June Marr-Johnson was well known for her charitable activities on behalf of the poor. During World War II she opened a meeting place in London called Beauchamp Lodge, where poor women could find respite from the grinding poverty and shocking living conditions that surrounded them. It wasn't long before the lodge became a sort of women's club, then added a nursery center, youth shelter, and soup kitchen. Marr-Johnson devoted much time and effort to keep the refuge open by raising funds, delivering public lectures, and working at the centre itself. Eventually Beauchamp Lodge collected clothing and found housing for people displaced by wartime bombings during the Blitz; its founder's efforts were so successful that the lodge remains in operation today. In September 1912, West accused the famously libertine writer H. G. Wells of being "the Old Maid among novelists". This was part of a provocative review of his novel Marriage published in Freewoman an obscure and short-lived feminist weekly review. The review attracted Wells's interest and an invitation to lunch at his home. The two writers became lovers in late 1913, despite Wells being both married and twenty-six years older than West. Their 10-year relationship produced a son, Anthony West. Their friendship lasted until Wells's death in 1946. West is also said to have had relationships with Charlie Chaplin, newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, and journalist John Gunther. In 1930, at the age of 37, she married a banker, Henry Maxwell Andrews, and they remained nominally together, despite one public affair just before his death in 1968.
presumably a portrait painter, saying that "you will see by the address on this letter that I am out of England. We are giving up our Oxford house (which is let) & I shall be here till Sept & after that in Dublin. If I were still in England I would sit to you with pleasure.", half of 1 side 8vo., 4 Broad Street, Oxford headed paper, Thoor Ballylee, Gort, Galway stamped, 1st June no year, circa He was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. Yeats had his summer home at at Thoor Ballylee near Gort in County Galway since 1919. He leased Riversdale house in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham in 1932.
STEER
saying that it is "most kind of you to offer me your congratulations on an honour which is indeed rather overwhelming. My post-bag is large and ponderous with kind messages from all my friends so please excuse this scrappy reply.", 1 side A4, 109 Cheyne Walk, S.W.10, 3rd January Steer's sea and landscape paintings made him a leading figure in the Impressionist movement in Britain but in time he turned to a more traditional English style, clearly influenced by both John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, and spent more time painting in the countryside rather than on the coast. As a painting tutor at the Slade School of Art for many years he influenced generations of young artists. In 1927 Steer began to lose the sight in one eye but he continued to paint, although mostly in watercolours rather than in oils, and his compositions became much looser, at times almost abstract but by 1940 he had stopped painting.[9] In 1931 he was awarded the Order of Merit. Harwood C. Laurence (1869-1949) was a stockbroker and Art Collector so, despite the spelling of the surname, he is almost certainly the recipient of this letter.
sending "personal good wishes and pleasant memories of a few hours happy association in 'dark' Africa and your kind hospitality.", under a black and white photo of the State President and his wife, opposite a printed message of greeting in English and Africaans, 8" x 5" in folded card with crest on the front, December 1961- In 1959, Swart was appointed Governor-General, but like his predecessor E.G Jansen, he was a staunch republican. Despite this, he had earlier kneeled before Queen Elizabeth II and kissed her hand. In a referendum the following year, a small majority of White voters endorsed a government proposal to become a republic. In 1961, after signing the new republican constitution passed by Parliament into law, he asked the Queen to release him from office, and Parliament then elected him as State President, the new post which replaced the monarch and the Governor-General as ceremonial head of state. Nelson Mandela and other underground Black resistance leaders tried to protest against the change to the new system by planning a three-day general strike of non-White workers, but the government preemptively averted most of these plans through an extensive use of police force to persecute the dissenters.
WELLINGTON
regretting to inform her "not only that I have not yet got two [?] but not even one, now do I know when I shall get one, as I have really no interest with the Court of [?]. I have however asked for one for your son. and you may depend upon my not losing sight of the object, notwithstanding that I cannot hold to you any hope of success in it.", 1 side 4to., with integral autograph address leaf with various postmark, place illegible, 26th October Wellington's last military appointment was in Paris after the defeat of the French at the Battle of Waterloo. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Wellington was appointed commander of the multi-national army of occupation based in Paris. The army consisted of troops from the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia and Prussia, along with contributions from five smaller European states. Although the various contingents were administered by their own commanders, they were all subordinated to Wellington, who was also responsible for liaison with the French administration. The role of the army was to prevent a resurgence of French aggression and to allow the restored King Louis XVIII to consolidate his control over the country. The army of occupation was never required to intervene militarily and was dissolved in 1818, after which Wellington returned to Britain. It was his last active military command.
