Beschreibung:

ALBUM - WRITERS & SCIENTISTSAlbum of over 150 autograph letters from eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers, scientists, and other notables, from the collection of Lady Maria Theresa Lewis (née Villiers) (1803-1865), to Lady Lewis, Mary Berry and others, some loose, including:
Horace Walpole, three autograph poems, the first titled "To/ My Pen/ on my cessation of our correspondence/ by her...", 10 lines beginning "Here rest thou faithful servant of my heart!", signed "O", one page, affixed to an album leaf, 98 x 160mm.; the second "To Miss Mary Berry", 8 lines beginning "Thine Beauty, Learning, Eloquence/ With wry Grace of social sense...", one page, affixed to an album leaf, 115 x 165mm.; the third titled "An Apology for her paleness", 9 lines beginning "True, on her cheek the damask Rose/ Too seldom, or two faintly blows...", signed beneath "By the Honble Horace Walpole/ December 1789", one page, loose, 120 x 194mm.
Johann Wolfang von Goethe, two-line couplet from Angedenken an das Liebe ("Angedenken an das Liebe/ Glücklich! Wenn's lebendig bliebe!"), signed beneath ("Goethe"), one page, 100 x 170mm., Weimar, March 1826; presented on an album leaf with a printed notice of his death
Edward Gibbon, unpublished autograph letter signed ("E.Gibbon") to Horace Walpole, thanking him for his "...elegant and entertaining present..." [Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting] and complimenting him on the contents, 2 pages, 4to (216 x 185mm.), Sheffield Place, 22 October 1780
Charles Babbage, two autograph letters signed ("C. Babbage") to Mrs Lister, the first an invitation "...Lady Lovelace, Faraday and a few friends are coming to drink tea with me...", the second on the difficulties of translating his On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers into Spanish ("...they have adopted a very curious arithmetic...") and sending her a book, 2 pages, the second letter affixed to the second leaf of the first, 8vo, Dorset Place, 2 May and February/March 1836
With many others including: Sheridan (regarding a legacy left by Edward Drakeford); Walter Scott (introducing Major Price Gordon); Sara Coleridge ("I am in sorry and anxiety now about dear Mr Wordsworth" March 1850); Thomas Moore; Thomas Talfourd; George Grote (2); James Mackintosh (3); Macaulay (4); Francois Guizot; Robert Ker Porter (2, regarding collection of rare seeds of the vegetable cow or Palo de Vaca "when an incision is made in the bark, the milk flows very rapidly"); Joseph Dalton Hooker (2); William Empson (3, "glad to kill a fatted calf for Macaulay on his return"); Robert Bunsen (2); Alexander Humboldt (autograph envelope addressed to George Cornewall Lewis); William Rowan Hamilton; Humphry Davy ("...The analyses have been made by Mr Faraday the operator of the Royal Institution upon whose accuracy Sir H. Davy can depend..."); John Horne Tooke (receipt for The Diversions of Purley); William Harrison Ainsworth; archaeologist A.H. Layard; the Duke of Wellington; Robert Southey (to Henry Taylor, "...I danced a solo round my room on Saturday upon writing end of the Second Volume...", October 1833); William Wilberforce (2, one sending an autograph); Frederic, Lord Leighton
Group of correspondence to and from Mary Berry, including John Wilson Croker (anxious to know why she had not included Horace Walpole's "Miscellaneous Antiquities" in the Works, "...I presume they were omitted for some good reason which if it lingers in Miss Berry's memory I should be anxious to know..."); R.D. Sharp (regarding the "charlatan" Dr James Graham, "...he puffs his 'Celestial Bed' as the altar of health..."); Joseph Wolfe (listing places on his travels and wishing to talk about Jesus and the "...restoration of the Jews to their own land..."); Thomas Hope (asking for the return of his notebook); Benjamin Constant (3, in French); William Roscoe (2, discussing the four volumes of Madame du Deffand's letters, his visit to the real Castle of Otranto, offering fulsome praise of Horace Walpole); Mary Berry (2); two-page manuscript account, in French, on reading Mary Berry's works, published in Lady Lewis's Extracts, under the title 'Criticisms by M. Benjamin Constant' (Vol.3, p.375-376), with pencil annotations for the printer, etc.; interspersed with portrait prints and annotations by Lady Lewis, index titled 'Authors' on several loose pages of blue paper at front, c.300 leaves (some blank, some excised), half maroon roan gilt, decorative spine gilt stamped 'Autographs', worn, 4to (235 x 280mm.), [late eighteenth-/nineteenth-century]FootnotesLADY LEWIS' ALBUM OF GREAT WRITERS INCLUDING HORACE WALPOLE'S VERSES ADDRESSED TO MISS MARY BERRY.
All three verses by Horace Walpole come from the collection of Mary Berry, and were published in Lady Theresa Lewis' Extracts of the Journals & Correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783-1852, Vol.1, pp.155-156, 429. The first verses "To Miss Mary Berry" and "An Apology for her Paleness" were part of an exchange in verse between Mary Berry and Horace Walpole in 1788. "To My Pen" was written in December 1793 when 'this active correspondence closed between Lord Orford and the Miss Berrys' (Lewis, p.429). Walpole became attached to Mary and her sister Agnes (in his opinion 'the most perfect creatures of their age') when their family moved to Twickenham and he soon established them in Little Strawberry Hill. Walpole began an intimate correspondence with the sisters, referring to them his 'twin wives' (even calling his letters to them 'bigamy letters'). Mary, however, was his particular favourite: '...Within weeks 'Albion's old Horace' was exchanging verses of high-flown compliment with her. According to a story passed on by Macaulay and Thackeray among others, Walpole offered marriage to both sisters in turn, but Mary herself denied this. The relationship appears to have been one of amiable badinage and warm affection laced by a characteristic sexless flirtation on Walpole's side...' (Charles Kent & Pat Rogers, ODNB). On his death in 1797, Walpole bequeathed his literary manuscripts to the Berry sisters and, although her father was named as editor, it was Mary who edited the posthumous collection of The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, published in five volumes in 1798, drawing from items in her own collection. She has, until recently, lived in the considerable shadow of Horace Walpole but increasingly '...scholars have now drawn attention to her letters and journals, for the light they throw on women's history...' (ODNB).
Provenance: Lady Maria Theresa Lewis (née Villiers) (1803-1865); her son Sir Thomas Villiers Lister (1832-1902); thence by descent.
The collection of Lady Maria Theresa Lewis (1803-1865) was initially formed through the amalgamation of two significant collections of letters: royal and political correspondence from that of her mother the Hon. Theresa Villiers (1775-1856), and that of her close friend, the writer Mary Berry (1763–1852). Impressed by Lady Lewis' writings, Mary Berry bequeathed her papers to her so that she could edit them for publication, and the three volume Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry was published in 1865. Mary Berry's bequest included correspondence from Horace Walpole, most notably his correspondence with Thomas Chatterton and David Hume, hitherto thought lost, and three poems dedicated to her. To this inheritance Lady Lewis subsequently added her own correspondence and collection of autographs gathered through her wide circle of social, political and literary connections entertained at her home, Kent House, St James's. Not seen outside the family until now, the collection is a remarkable survival and tells the story of a family at the heart of English society. An intricate web of connections and alliances is revealed, bringing together the worlds of royalty and politics, the arts and literature. It is also a story of influential women both as collectors and as correspondents: Theresa Villiers as keeper of royal secrets, Mary Berry and her circle of intellectuals, and, importantly, Lady Lewis as collector and salonnière bringing them all together in one extraordinary collection.