Autograph collecting (some notes)

There is a story behind every autograph. Idly fossicking about online I have retrieved a few such stories and added some of my own. It needs courage to be an autograph hound so much respect to those who have hunted down celebs and obtained signatures. The best collection I ever bought (about 2000+ inc Walt Disney, Ian Fleming, Bogart and Bacall, the Dalai Lama, Frankie Lyman (and the Teenagers) Tony Hancock and Lester Piggot) was from a very minor celebrity who was able to get into receptions and first nights etc., He had written jokes for the likes of Bob Monkhouse. The greatest groupies and name droppers are often slightly famous themselves and a minor name will often have accumulated a few major names. The most common type of autograph story usually ends ‘and he was a really nice guy…we had a good chat’. It seems to come as a surprise that celebrities are not monsters, although great scorn is reserved for those who refuse autographs. A star cannot disappoint his fans. Graham Greene had a good line when refusing to autograph a book–something along the lines of ” I would like to but it would devalue those I have already done and I don’t want that to happen, sorry.’

Rudyard Kipling received a note from a fan saying ‘…I hear you get paid $5 for every word you write. Enclosed is $5, please send me one word. Kipling replied with the one word “Thanks.” It is hard to imagine now how besieged Kipling was by autograph collectors–in this age only JK Rowling comes near to his fame.

George Bernard Shaw was more generous (and wittier). To fans writing to ask for his autograph he would often reply “Certainly not! George Bernard Shaw.”

The painter Utrillo could, after a few free drinks. be induced to sign canvasses that he had not painted. Caveat emptor!

Damien Hirst sometimes signs things (books, tee shirts) as David Hockney. They still have value as he is known to do this and, in its way, it is quite witty.

James Ellroy (above) signed every one of 65,000 first-edition copies of his 1996 memoir My Dark Places. You can buy a copy on ABE for $5, where there are over 180 signed copies for sale with a few over $100. As the signing progressed his signature degenerated to an unreadable, minimalist scrawl. One optimistic dude manages to make a virtue of this: “…wildly scrawled signature, as frantic and vigorous as the author’s crackling prose. £45”

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Rare book anecdotes from J. H. Slater’s Book Collecting

In Book Collecting ( 1892) J. H. Slater, that doyen of the rare book trade in late nineteenth century England, provides some wonderful anecdotes, the best of which  concerns a certain Mr Day, ‘ a well-known book hunter of the earlier part of the present century’:

‘One day, upon removing some books at the chambers of Sir William Jones, a large spider dropped upon the floor, upon Sir William with some warmth said “ Kill that spider, Day! Kill that spider!”  “ No”, said Mr Day, with that coolness for which he was so conspicuous, “I will not kill that spider, Jones: I do not know if I have a right to do so. Suppose, when you are going into your carriage to Westminster Hall, a superior being, who perhaps may have as much power over you as you have over this insect, should say to his companion, ‘ Kill that lawyer!’ Kill that lawyer!’ How should you like that? I am sure to most people a lawyer is a more noxious insect than a spider.” 

Slater evidently did not suffer fools gladly, and believe me back then, as now, there was a good deal of nonsense talked (and written) by so called bibliophiles. is chock full of Slater’s withering observations on his fellow dealers and collectors, of which one of the most withering can be found in his chapter on the venerable Elzevir Press.

 It seems to be an almost universal belief that all the works issued from the Elzevir press are small in bulk, and various terms, more or less foolish, have been invented by careless or incompetent persons to give expression to this idea. One of them, and perhaps the most hideous of them all, is “ dumpy” twelves. In the first place, works issued from the Elzevir press in 12mo are perfectly symmetrical in shape, and not at all dumpy; and, secondly, many books are in 4to and some even in folio…The amateur must avoid being misled by the poetical effusions which from time to time make their appearance, and which for the most part are written by persons who know nothing whatever of the subject…’

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Destroyed manuscripts— horror stories to chill the blood

 

1280px-George_Hamilton_Gordon,_4th_Earl_of_Aberdeen_by_John_Partridge

 

Found at Jot  HQ,  the pamphlet published by Winfred A. Meyers ,a well known dealer in autograph letters and manuscripts, containing  the talk she gave at the ABA Book Fair  at Albemarle Street, London, in 1961 on  ‘ How to Collect Autograph Letters and Manuscripts ‘.

 

Meyers sets off by making a good case for collecting autograph letters from a historical point of view. She argues that a letter or set of letters may help a ‘professional’ scholar piece together episodes in the life of a particular person, possibly solving a puzzle that has perplexed other scholars for years; letters can also immediately connect an amateur with the author of a work in that person’s library. So far,  so good. These are obvious benefits of collecting autograph letters. Meyers then comes to the horror stories of letters and historical documents lost, irretrievably damaged through neglect, or deliberately destroyed. What she tells us is indeed a litany of terrible losses:

‘…it is amazing after what has befallen letters and documents in the not so distant past, how much has survived. The rats that gnawed the letters from Elizabeth’s favourite courtier, at Belvoir Castle; the parish registers that turned into solid glue in the wet cellars of another stately home; Somerset House in 1840 sending the Exchequer Accounts of Henry VIII and the Secret Service Accounts of Queen Elizabeth to the waste paper merchant: the old India Office turning out the records of the Indian navy to the paper mills; the French Revolutionaries destroying and dispersing the papers of the Monarchy, and the restored Monarchy destroying the papers of the French Revolutionaries; the British army destroying the White House papers in 1812; the Southern States destroying their records before the advancing Union Army in the Civil War; the Sinn Feiners’ destruction of Dublin Castle records; the salvage drives and bombing of two wars; the mouldering records in a pigsty at Arundel Castle; the toy-drum and lampshade-makers’ part; Cassandra Austen tearing up the letters of her sister Jane, and George Washington’s widow tearing up all George’s letters to her and a terrible story I just heard of a collection of Emily and Charlotte Bronte letters that were torn up only last week…’ 

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Autograph Collecting hints

Unknown [Found at Bookride 2010 -our first site, this wise piece about autographs.] Try to avoid forgeries! To my mind the ‘blink’ test is a good start in testing for authenticity. If on very first seeing it the autograph doesn’t feel right don’t touch it. As Malcolm Gladwell details in over 300 pages of his book Blink. The Power of Thinking Without Thinking the unconscious mind often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. If the seller doesn’t pass the blink test either, drop it like a hot brick. Kenneth Rendell, purveyor of manuscripts to the great and the good, advises avoiding the kind of dealer who brushes you off when probed, he adds: “The real expert will bore you with answers.” I also like what he says about how forgers often fail to get the feel of a signature right -the “flying starts and endings of the pen”.

Avoid signatures that look more like a drawing than writing and ones that seem to have stops and starts. Also signatures in cheap editions of books can be suspect, most forgers will not risk screwing up a signature in a four figure book. Forgers often stick to a plain signature so a date or sentiment is useful (belying the tiresome ‘flat signed’ schtick.) Also beware the desirable signature that is seriously underpriced, you may be lucky but it is often a sign of a grifter at work. If it is very cheap, of course, it may be real but unrated or unrecognised. Age is no guarantee of authenticity, forgers have been around since Heraclitus stood in the river. Ebay is a minefield. Bad Salinger forgeries appeared there after the writer’s death and usually made a few hundred dollars. Like the curate’s egg they were ‘good in parts’ but if it is wrong it’s worthless, if it’s right it’s a few thousand. In one of the online signatures Salinger appeared to have misspelled his own name…a bad start. Continue reading →

Doctor Who fan solicits Abu autograph

An interesting fan letter from 2005 found among a collection of TV memorabilia. A very polite and thoughtfully composed letter from an ultra-keen collector of 'The Doctor.' He even goes as far as enclosing a pen, a good idea for an autograph hound on the street but unusual in a soliciting letter (surely?). 850 autographs is pretty good going...could only find one photo of Terence Brown in his role as Abu. By the way the factoid about the early use of dry ice sounds convincing but how true is it?

Dear Mr Brown

I am writing in the hope that you can add to my collection of Doctor Who autographs.

If possible, I should be grateful if you would sign the enclosed cards, which relate to the Doctor Who story The Krotons in which you appeared as the doomed Gond  student "Abu."  His death at the hands of the croutons  was one of the first major uses of dry ice in television drama, and was the catalyst for the Doctor and his friends becoming involved in Gond society. Also enclosed is a pen, which should help with signing certain cards, and a return envelope with sufficient postage for both the cards and a pen.

Of course, I appreciate that Doctor Who is only a very small part of your career, and that you make the firm not to sign certain cards, but I should be grateful if you would return them in any event.

Terence Brown as Abu

Please could you also let me have a signed photograph. I have made one using images from the Doctor Who website, as I realise you may not have any available, but please accept my apologies for the quality. I much prefer a signed picture of the actor, rather than their role in Doctor Who, so I should be grateful for a current photograph if at all possible. These items are solely for my personal collection of over 850 actors and crew from the programme, and I'm quite happy if you would like to dedicate them.

The Krotons is one of the Doctor Who stories for which I have only been able to obtain a couple of autographs, most recently from actor Gilbert Wynne.

I do hope that you will find the time to reply…

Poor Mr Kitching…

The worship of celebrity is certainly nothing new. Autograph collecting in Britain started to be a craze from the mid Victorian period, possibly due to the cult of personality that grew up around Prince Albert and Alfred Tennyson. If this letter from sometime MP W. S. Shirley is any indication, even the autographed letters of sitting and former members of parliament, however comparatively modest their achievements, became the target of collectors.

It would seem that Shirley’s lawyer friend, Alfred Goodall, was one such autograph-hunter, and so was sent whole letters that Shirley had accumulated while sitting in the Commons as MP for Doncaster. Here’s what Shirley wrote in his undated covering letter:

Dear Goodall,

One or two autographs you can have viz:
S. D. Waddy, Q.C. M.P.
A. G. Kitching ex M.P.
Sir Walter Foster, M.P.
B. Pickard, M.P.
 All, except Kitching’s will improve in value as time goes on…

Oh dear! What can Mr Kitching have done to have gone down so low in Mr Shirley’s estimation ? A bit of delving, however, reveals that Shirley was a pretty accurate talent spotter. S.D. Waddy was already a busy QC and went on to establish himself as a respected writer on theological issues. Sir Walter Foster was already a man of substance. But it is with B(enjamin) Pickard that Shirley hit gold.

Having begun his working life as a miner at the age of 12, Pickard rapidly rose, Scargill-like, through the ranks of the Yorkshire miners’ union and in 1885 was chosen in a Liberal/miners pact to represent Normanton in Parliament. Already very active in the International Federation of Mineworkers from 1890, in 1893 he led miners in the biggest industrial dispute the UK had ever known. Pickard died, still MP for Normanton, in 1904.

As for the alleged nonentity Kitching, Shirley turns out to have been right. A stockbroker when he entered Parliament as member for Maldon in 1885, Kitching  remained one when  he was flung out at the General Election a year later.

Makes you think. How many autographs of our current crop of MPs are or will be collected? [RMH]