The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1905-05-14
Golden MANUSCRIPT.

A letter by Richard Golden on Tar
IN Reform" is to be sold at the same
time, and another Golden letter which
is likely to come into the market soon
has, like the Nelson document, a spe-
cial interest at the present time. This
letter was written by the great free
trader on October 10, 1S49, after Jour
ney through Russia, and his reference
10 the personnel of the Russian fleet is
particularly interesting. Golden says
in part:
L wish the alarmists about the vast
resources of the Car could all take a
trip, as l have done, into the interior
of that country. Russia is succession
of villages composed OF log nuts wide
~ scattered over an interminabIe pine
forest, in a country where coal does
not exist and where the winter lasts
half the year. People confound in their
minds the defensive force and the ag-
gressive power of Russia. She is in
vulnerable against foreign attack by
land, because no large army can be
concentrated within her borders Gun
less IT be in Moscow or st. Petersburg)
for want of accumulated stores Of food
etc. She has, it is true, large
force Of ships of war, but they are
manned by serfs taken from the VIII
lagos of the interior, who are unde-
serving the name Of sailors. and il is
pretty certain they would never ven
ture into an engagement with an Eng
lish or American feet, and If they did
it is quite certain they would be taken
or destroyed"
Nothing seems more likely than that
both these letters will be bid in by J.
Pierpont Morgan, who recently bought
two Of the few original autograph
manuscripts of works by Dickens which
are not in the South Kensington Mu-
biographer, John Forster, the original
manuscripts of nearly all his most i'm
portant works, and it was after Fors-
ter's death that they passed into the
possession Of the museum in Kensing-
ton. The exceptions included a couple
of fragments of "Pickwick," one of
which-a single page describing the
wedding breakfast at old Wardles-
brought $500 at auction in 1903. A larger
fragment of "Pickwick," of about
thirty-three pages, belongs to W. A.
White Of Brooklyn. Much of the more
valuable OF Morgan's purchases is THE
Battle of Life written on fifty quarto
pages, mounted by the author, the text
varying in parts from the printed YER
sion. This manuscript was valued
twenty-one years ago by a London
dealer at $500. Later it passed into the
collection of William Wright, who
owned so many Dickens treasures, in
GLIDING the set of "Pickwick" present
ed to his sister-in-law, Marv Hogarth.
A HISTORIC HOUSE.
At the Wright sale in 1899 THE Bat
tie OF Life" fetched $4,000, the highest
sum yet paid at auction for 'lot" Of
this kind. Morgan's other. purchase
comprises the original manuscript of
"A Christmas Carol and that of
Hunted Down." the first story writ
ten by Dickens for an American pc
riodical
Apropos of John Forster it has been
heard with much satisfaction that the
demolition Of buildings on the west
side of picturesque Lincoln's Inn
Fields to make room for a new thor
oughfare will not involve the destruc-
ton OF the house where for over TWEEN
ty years lived the friend and biogra-
pher OF Dickens. Forster was living
there when he succeeded Dickens as
editor of the Daily News, and there he
used to entertain the great novelist on
some of the latter's visits to town after
he had established himself by the sea.
It was on one of these occasions that
BOZ" running up from Broadstairs
for the purpose, reaC to an admiring
circle of cronies the manuscript of
certain immortal story called THE
Chimes"
Dickens also made the house serve
for old Tulkinghorn's chambers, and
II suits the character better nova
days. when IL has become the lair of
lawyers and accountants, than when it
was the scene of the Inequalities of
the burly biographer. The house is
pretty grimy now. but it has a dash
of portentous picturesqueness when
approached through the public gar
dens in front, and though IT is topped
by an ugly telephone staff and the
roof Of big electric generating sta
ton at the back, It still retains some
thing of the old stateliness that made