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Lot 138*

WISE (THOMAS JAMES)

23 May 2012, 14:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £312.50 inc. premium

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WISE (THOMAS JAMES)

Autograph letter signed ("Thos J. Wise"), to [E.H.] Coleridge, enclosing a transcript of Wordsworth's letter to Southey, announcing the death of Sara Hutchinson, from the Dowden Sale, lot 96 (present), and going on to announce the death of Theodore Watts-Dunton: "yesterday came the terrible news which Clara Watts-Dunton so thoughtfully conveyed to us: and the letter by Wordsworth which I transcribed for you this morning – all seem to create a feeling of acute depression. The death of Watts Dunton is really a blow. I had not expected the end to come so soon, & I was genuinely fond of the – to me – at all times sweet and friendly old man. When last I say him, only 6 days ago, I reminded him of his engagement to have me dine with him on his 90th birthday; he replied, his dear old face wreathed in one big, beaming smile, – 'Tom, I mean to keep that appointment!'", Wise's letter 4 pages, minor dust-staining, 8vo, 8 June 1916

Footnotes

Theodore Watts-Dunton, the man who had looked after Swinburne in his later years, died at The Pines on 6 June. On publication of Wise's A Swinburne Library of 1925, the TLS reviewer was to write: 'there was nothing Swinburne would not keep and nothing Watts-Dunton would not sell – provided Mr Wise with such an opportunity as perhaps no collector ever had before. In these pages we see how he took it; watching and waiting and striking, immensely resourceful, like some beneficent bird of prey' (Collins, p. 225). See also Wise's letter to Watts-Dunton above.

Additional information

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CALEPINO, AMBROGIO. 1435-1511. [Dictionarium.] Calepinus Ad librum. Mos est putidas.... Venice: Peter Liechtenstein, January 3, 1509.

HEARN, LAFCADIO. 1850-1904. [Japanese Fairy Tales.] Philadelphia: Macrae-Smith, [But Tokyo: T. Hasegawa,] [c.1931].

HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. 1899-1961. PUTNAM, SAMUEL, translator. Kiki's Memoirs. Paris: Sign of the Black Manikin, 1930.