Lot 1286 , Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), prime minister, and others 1830-1902, i. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), prime minister, free frank cover addressed to Miss Ann Gore, Datchet; London, 24 January 1830

Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), prime minister, and others 1830-1902
i. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), prime minister, free frank cover addressed to Miss Ann Gore, Datchet; London, 24 January 1830; The addressee was probably one of the six daughters of Admiral Sir John Gore of Datchet (1772-1836)

ii. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), prime minister; letter, in the third person, to H[enry] W[illiam] Johnston; Drayton Manor, Fazeley, 7 June, 1830s

Declines the dedication of the poem which Johnston is about to publish on account of his very slight connection with the Isle of Wight; suggests that it ‘may be inscribed to some of the very respectable gentlemen and very good Conservatives who have long established connection with the Island from property and other local ties’

For a letter to HW Johnston from the librarian of the Empress Eugénie, 1854, see Lot 1291

iii. George Anson Byron (1789-1868), 7th Baron Byron; panel cut from a free frank cover addressed to Mrs Bayley, Old Elvet, Durham; London, 6 February 1836

iv. Samuel Pearsall, Lichfield; letter to ‘Reverend Sir’; the appointment at [Westminster] Abbey does not rest alone with the Dean but in conjunction with the canons who each have a vote; ‘your kind interest will confer a great obligation’; 9 February 1843

Samuel Pearsall (c1811-1883) was a Vicar Choral at Lichfield Cathedral, and married Anne Gorton at Lichfield in August 1836. In 1851 he was enumerated, aged 40, professor of singing, at Lombard Street, Lichfield (TNA HO 107/2014/344). The letter may relate to the vacancy created by the death, on 9 January 1843, of Thomas Vaughan (1782-1843), for 40 years a member of the choir of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s and the Chapel Royal (ODNB).

v. Rowland Hill (1795-1879), postal reformer and civil servant, Hampstead; letter to Mr Teulon, ‘I shall certainly vote for [Peter] King and [Charles] Buxton’; 17 November 1868

According to Gladstone, Sir Rowland Hill’s great reform of the postal service ‘had run like wildfire through the civilised world; never perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the lifetime of its author to the advantages of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures’ (ODNB).

The Hon. Peter John Locke King (1811-1885) and Charles Buxton (1822-1871) were returned as the Liberal MPs for the Surrey East Constituency in the general election of 20 November 1868.
The addressee of Hill’s letter was probably the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812-1873), also a resident of Hampstead, who had designed Shadwell in Norfolk for Lady Buxton and the Buxton Memorial Fountain, to commemorate the role of Charles Buxton’s father in the abolition of slavery, in 1865.

vi. Mary [Princess Mary of Teck] (1867–1953), queen of Great Britain and Ireland (signs May); letter to Lady Stanhope, thanking the people of Kent for their wedding present of a row of pearls; York Cottage, Sandringham, 21 July 1893

Evelyn Mary Stanhope, née Pennefather, was the wife of Arthur Philip Stanhope (1838-1905), Earl Stanhope, who was serving as Lord Lieutenant of Kent at the time of the wedding. The text of the letter was published in several newspapers in July and August 1893.

vii. Postcard, RMS Ortona, Transport Number 12 (illustration), from WLFE, Queenstown, to Miss ME Cadiz, Downside, Maritzburg, Natal, South Africa; 9 October 1902

Will wire from Cape Town on arrival; ‘Prince Arthur of Connaught is going with us’

With a postcard illustrating Napoleon’s birthplace, Ajaccio, Corsica to Miss Cadiz, St Marks Road, St Helier, Jersey from J Gubb, 17 February, c1905

The departure from Southampton of the Ortona, with Prince Arthur of Connaught and his regiment the 7th Hussars, was reported in The Daily News on 8 October 1902; the vessel was to call at Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland to embark further cavalry drafts. There was no officer in the regiment with the initials WLFE in 1902. RMS Ortona was launched at Barrow on 19 July 1899 and sunk in the Mediterranean by a German submarine in 1917.
£150-200

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