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Lot 39
PALMER (SAMUEL) Series of over forty autograph letters signed ("S. Palmer", "Samuel Palmer", "S.P. ", "Nogo", "Mr Fearing", "Blind Infancy", "Vanity of Vanities", "Nobody", "A good-for-nothing-little-baby-scamp who is ashamed to sign his name", etc.), one with a sketch, Furze Hill and elsewhere, 1866-1881
24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £9,750 inc. premium
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PALMER (SAMUEL)
Series of over forty autograph letters signed ("S. Palmer", "Samuel Palmer", "S.P. ", "Nogo", "Mr Fearing", "Blind Infancy", "Vanity of Vanities", "Nobody", "A good-for-nothing-little-baby-scamp who is ashamed to sign his name", etc.), one with a sketch, with substantial fragments of six other autograph letters, to the Rev John Preston Wright, his brother Thomas Howard Wright and other members of the family, the series representing Palmer in many moods, from the serious, the good-humoured to the ludicrous; touching a wide range of subjects including religion, the Blake Exhibition, music, a visit to Coleridge's house in Highgate, loneliness, and poetry; alluding to William Blake ("...was misled by erroneous spirits..."), Milton, Wordsworth, Crabbe Robinson, Shakespeare and others; and containing a wide range of meditations on art, life and philosophy ("...all the best poets are out of the body while they write though the bodily hand holds the pen. Yet on referring to most superhuman passages, we find the words simple: so placed however under the Divine frenzy that one word does duty for many. So in real music the simplest change of key, occurring at the right time in the right place, effects everything - as the 'Shadows brown' in Handel's setting of Il Penseroso are solemnized in a moment by descending one semi tone upon the adjective: going into the key of the 4th, if I remember rightly..."), some 200 pages, mostly 8vo, Furze Hill and elsewhere, 1866-1881
Footnotes
'ALL THE BEST POETS ARE OUT OF THE BODY WHILE THEY WRITE' – a fine extensive series of letters by Samuel Palmer. He had met the Wright brothers, then boys, when he moved to Furze Hill near Reigate. Palmer saw them during university vacations and spent long evenings with them, their conversations ranging over every imaginable subject, as in these letters. Lister, in his biography of Palmer, states that the visits of John Preston Wright at Furze Hill especially 'were among Palmer's greatest consolations'. Thirty-four of these letters, including the fragments, are published in The Letters, edited by Raymond Lister, 1974; the other sixteen are apparently unpublished.