20 Sep 2005
10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street
Printed Books, Maps and Manuscripts including Presentation Copies and Letters from T.S. Eliot to the Faber Family
Back to auction 11945
Printed Books, Maps and Manuscripts including Presentation Copies and Letters from T.S. Eliot to the Faber Family
Back to auction 11945
ELIOT (T.S.)
Hunting case pocket watch, the dial signed 'Hampden', case engraved 'C.W.C.CO./ Trade Mark/ Stirling/ 645', the stirling case repoussé with rococo flowers, shields and swags, minute hand lacking and other signs of wear, 40mm. across; in an envelope addressed to Dr T. E. Faber at Corpus Christi College, inscribed by Lady Faber "TSE’s first watch", [c.1900]
Sold for
£2,040
inc. premium
Footnotes
- The "silver huntingcase watch" given to the twelve-year old T.S. Eliot for Christmas 1900 and passed on by him to his thirteen-year-old godson, Tom Faber, son of his publisher and colleague Geoffrey Faber. On 20 August 1940, Eliot wrote to Tom's mother, discussing presents and thank-you letters: "He is, in any case, more effusive than his Gd. Fr. was at the same age. I remember, at the age of twelve, being given my first watch for Christmas (and in those days before Ingersoll the present of a watch, a silver huntingcase watch, was a matter of some solemnity) I still have it and he can have it if it can be made to go: but who wants a silver huntingcase watch nowadays?) I merely observed that I had also hoped to be given a new Stamp Album. I was reprimanded for this breach of courtesy" (see Eliot's letters to Enid Faber below). The Hampden Watch Company of Springfield and Canton, Ohio, traded between 1877 and 1930.
Category: Books / Books, Maps and Manuscripts
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