Monthly Archives: February 2017

They Asked For a Letter–An Unpublished Letter from Sir Walter Scott

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

Henry Raeburn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In the DeCastro Album, on the same page as the Leigh Hunt letter, is an unpublished letter from Sir Walter Scott, Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet, to Samuel Shepherd, a British barrister, judge and politician who served as Attorney General for England and Wales and Lord Chief Baron of the Scottish Court of Exchequer, dated 4 October, 1825.

Letter from Sir Walter Scott to [Samuel Shepherd], 4 October 1825, page 1.

Letter from Sir Walter Scott to [Samuel Shepherd], 4 October 1825, page 2.

Letter from Sir Walter Scott to [Samuel Shepherd], 4 October 1825, intergral address.

Letter from Sir Walter Scott to [Samuel Shepherd], 4 October 1825, integral address

The letter reads:

My dear [Lord]

Lady Shepherd & Miss Runnington as well as your Lordship gave us hopes that you would look in upon Conundrum Castle this year The season promises still a few fine days rather a bonus upon these we have had already which have for Scotland been an ample dividend. New Lord & Lady Gifford [under] the Solicitors pilotage propose us the honour of a visit on [friday] 7th and as they are I believe Friends of Lady Shepherds & yours Lady Scott & I would be much flattered by your meeting them under this roof and I hope Miss Runnington will do us the honor to accompany you Should you agree to this proposal your Lordship had better write a note on Thursday to secure horses

What a melancholy conclusion to our poor friend the Chief Commissioners final hopes and expectations I am sure your Lordship would feel it [surrely] [sic] He is I understand in general correspondence resigned though his firmness is broken occasionally—as who can wonder—with bouts of acute distress.

 

[Page 2]

Lady Scott & Ann give our respectful compliments to Lady Shepherd & Miss Runnington and am always my dear Lord

Most truly & respectfully yours

Walter Scott

Abbotsford Melrose

4 October

 

[Envelope]

OCT

5

1825

 

MELROSE

 

Right Honorable

The Lord Chief Baron

&c &c &d

Edinh

[Edinburgh]

In fact, Lord and Lady Shepherd did visit Scott in October of 1825, along with ” a large houseful” of others. (Scott, Walter et al. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott. Vol. 9. New York: AMS Press, 1971, 233-4.)

What was the “melancholy conclusion” to the “final hopes and expectations” of Scott’s “poor friend the Chief Commissioner”?

Does this letter add any names to the list of Scott’s acquaintances?

What is the story behind the “Castle Conundrum”?

Are there additions or corrections to the transcription?

They Asked For A Paper–“My Dear Child”–Leigh Hunt’s letter to his daughter

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Leigh Hunt to Julia Trelawney Hunt, 18 August 1857, p. 1.

Leigh Hunt to Julia Trelawney Hunt, 18 August 1857, pp. 2 & 3.

Leigh Hunt to Julia Trelawney Hunt, 18 August 1857, p. 4.

Among the items in the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection is a tender letter from Leigh Hunt to his daughter, Julia Trelawney. She is staying on the Isle of Guernsey with George Godfrey. Although the letter is published in The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt (Smith, Elder and Company, 1862, page 281) parts of the letter were elided, including the delightful line at the beginning of the postscript:

Many thanks for the newspapers with which I mean to make myself thoroughly and Guernsically acquainted.

A transcript of the letter is provided below; the unpublished parts are in bold.

Hammersmith — Augt. 18

My dear Child,

We were very glad to hear from you so soon again, — the more so, inasmuch as you will have been glad yourself at having written. And you very properly fill your letter with as many particulars about the place, and your movements in it, and way of life, as you can; for it is
[Page 2]
this that absent friends are enabled to find themselves still together, as much as is possible.
I should certainly exclaim as you say I should, in threading your “beautiful” lanes; and I should think the kindness which every body shews you still more beautiful; for charming as inanimate nature ^is,^ there is nothing so charming, after all, as the expression of kindness in the human countenance.
[Page 3]
Pray look at the “house to let” by all means, and at any other house to let, provided it does ^would^ not tax ^my^ old limbs to get up to it. And be particular as to their rents and their gardens. I rejoice in what you tell me of your sitting at the piano. Walter has not yet come; but we saw Mr. & Mrs. Hooper here again on Thursday evening. Mr. Ollier and Edmund spent the greater part of Saturday evening with us; and simultaneous with their appearance was that of Mary Sayer, whom Jacintha
[Page 4]
entertained at tea in the back parlour while we took ours in the front, but all with open doors and in good fellowship; only Mr. Ollier’s health, I am sorry to say, continuing to be much tried, and strangers trying it more, we remained as I describe. She is coming to tea again on Wednesday evening to play us some Beethoven, and repeat some verses of mine in a kind of recitative, occasionally touching the instruments. We are still looking anxiously for Mr. Lee; and the moment he comes I will let you know. I tell you of Wednesday evening in order that you may imagine yourself with us: [so] [now] you know ^as much of^ us, past and future, as we know ourselves.
Your ever loving father
L. H.
[Written on top of Page]
P. S. Many thanks for the newspapers with which I mean to make myself thoroughly and Guernsically acquainted. Jacintha’a love, and she will write tomorrow, in order that you may have two days’ accounts of us, instead of one. All the pictures you send us, are beautiful. I read in today’s paper, that the queen is at sea and is expected to touch at the Channel Islands. If you see her, I expect that you will shake half a dozen handkerchiefs at her, instead of one. I have re-opened the letter, on purpose to say so.

[Envelope]
Postmark:
LONDON
AU 18
57
Miss Hunt —
Care of Geo: Godfrey Esqre
Claremont House,
Rohais,
Guernsey.
Channel Islands
L. H.

The tiny letter (3.5″ x 4.5″) is tucked into an envelope mounted on the same page as a letter from Sir Walter Scott to Right Honorable The Lord Chief Baron &c &c Edward.

Page from the Henry DeCastro Autograph Album

The letters are collected into an album which belonged to “Henry De Castro / Cramlington Villa — Putney.”

Why is Leigh Hunt’s daughter on Guernsey? Who are the people she is staying with? Who are the other people mentioned in the letter? How did this letter get into Henry DeCastro’s collection? What are the “houses to let” he mentions? Why is the letter written on mourning paper? Is there a copy of the newspaper with which Hunt “Guernsically acquainted” himself?

They Asked For A Paper–Notes in Hartley Coleridge’s Poems

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

Poems by Hartley Coleridge With a Memoir of His Life by his Brother, 2 Vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1851.

These two volumes of the poems of Hartley Coleridge, the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a biography written by Derwent Coleridge, the third child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also contain markings on many passages and several notes apparently written by an acquaintance of the Coleridges.

“Add – A copy of [Barnes] Works & Such we found in the kitchen of the Nab – with pencil annotations during summer of 1850 R. S. (ccxiv)

Mrs. Richardson told me in 1851 that Hartley often thought many of Wordsworth’s pieces “too [poetic]”. 1857. Was it so? (19)

No such thing as Annihilation in Nature! R. S. 1857. (59)

I had this once to translate into Latin at Rugby, but did not know then it was H. C.’s. (65)

I think this [Elizabeth] was the daughter of Sir R. Fleming I had the pleasure of dancing with at the [Sunblinde] Ball in summer of 1850. R. S. (98)

Mrs. Richardson spoke to me of this as very beautiful. H. C. had read it to her. (114)

Cf: Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” Sonnet –

The volumes bear a bookplate of William John Robertson, a translator of French poems of the nineteenth century.

Who is this R. S. and how did he know the Coleridges?

They Asked For A Paper

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Borrowing its title from a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, this series, “They Asked For A Paper,”  highlights interesting items from the Armstrong Browning Library’s collection and suggests topics for further research.

By Melinda Creech
Manuscripts Specialist, Armstrong Browning Library

In 1962 C. S. Lewis published a collection of twelve essays simply entitled They Asked For A Paper. It would be his last publication. He died the following year. I have borrowed Lewis’s title for this blog series which will suggest research topics for scholars interested in mining the treasures of the Armstrong Browning Library.

As we have processed the books, letters, and manuscripts here at the ABL, provocative questions and fascinating details have come to light. The faculty and staff are often heard repeating, “Somebody should write a paper about that.” Because that task has proved monumental for our small staff, we are inviting you to tackle some of the questions that have been unearthed.

Over the next few months I will be offering suggestions for research projects based on the holdings at the ABL. Please feel free to contact us for more details, or, better yet, come and visit us at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and have a hands-on experience with the books, letters, and manuscripts in our archives. The topics will include not only the Brownings, but also many other figures from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Be sure to “SUBSCRIBE!” to the blog on the right-hand side of the screen to keep up with all the possibilities.

So, since you asked…

 

Making Connections: Literary Networks in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

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In fall 2016, students in Dr. Kristen Pond’s upper-level English course, “Literary Networks in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” explored the relationships between writers of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist Periods and the influences they had on each other’s works. “Authors did not, in fact, work alone,” Dr. Pond argued, “but often collaborated, either directly by each person contributing something to the final piece or indirectly through the influence of conversations, interactions, or from reading one another’s works.” Utilizing the letters, manuscripts, rare books, and other collection materials at the Armstrong Browning Library, the students ended their semester by curating an exhibition that uncovered connections between one particular literary figure and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—the centers of the literary network for the course—or another significant literary figure.

The exhibition Making Connections: Literary Networks in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries is on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room, Armstrong Browning Library, until April 21, 2017.

The Armstrong Browning Library would like to thank Dr. Kristen Pond and the students who made this exhibition possible:

Marcus Appleyard, Rebecca Causey, Victoria Corley, Annie Dang, Taylor Ferguson, Casey Froehlich, Madelynn Lee, Mollie Mallory, Anne McCausland, Emily Ober, Shannon Ristedt, Chris Solis, Alexander Stough, Alex Ueckert, Baylee Versteeg, and Jonathan White.