PROPOSED SALE OF THE GLENRIDDEL

MSS.

HE most stirring event of the year in the Burns

Tworld is undoubtedly the reported sale of the Glen

riddel MSS. by the Directors of the Liverpool Athenæum, in whose custody they have remained since 1853. The transaction appears to have been carried through in the early summer with a considerable amount of secrecy, for it was not till near the end of the month of July that it leaked out and became public property through the medium of the daily press. Immediately the Federation, the leading Burns Clubs, and Burnsians everywhere began to bestir themselves, and preliminary action was taken by the solicitors of the Burns family to prevent the sale being consummated. As the case is likely to come before the Courts of Law at an early date, we deem it the most judicious course to lay before our readers only what has already appeared in the public prints, arranged chronologically so as to give a connected narrative of the proceedings from their inception.

-EDITOR.

LIVERPOOL VOLUMES FOR AMERICA.

Liverpool has sustained a serious literary loss by the sale of the Glenriddel Manuscripts of Burns's poems and letters, which have been in possession of Liverpool Athenæum for sixty years. The Manuscripts have passed into the hands of a London agent, who is understood to have been acting on behalf of an American millionaire, and the transaction has been carried through with a certain amount of secrecy. In fact, many proprietors of the Athenæum were unaware of the transfer, though a majority of the members of the institution gave provisional consent at a meeting held some weeks ago, when the executive were authorised to negotiate for the sale. The price is said to be £5000.

When the volumes came to Liverpool's possession it was generally thought that they were intended to find a permanent resting place in the city, and many people think that a serious mistake has been committed in allowing them to go to America.-Glasgow Herald, July 23rd, 1913.

THE GLENRIDDEL COLLECTION.

Much regret and indignation will be felt at the announcement that the fine collection of Robert Burns Manuscripts at Liverpool Athenæum has been sold by that club. The buyer, according to report, is an American, and the price the record one of £5000. We understand that the revived proposal to sell the manuscripts received very strenuous opposition in Liverpool, but that opposition appears not to have been crowned with the success of a former occasion, when (so at least it was reported) the late Mr J. Pierpont Morgan made certain proposals to the members of the Club. The Manuscripts, as will be seen from the donor's letter quoted below, were gifted unconditionally to Liverpool Athenæum ; but it appears to me that, whatever their legal rights, the members of that institution had no moral right to part with them.

During the sixty years that have passed since then the volumes have been one of Liverpool's most treasured possessions, and many students and admirers of Burns have visited the city purposely to see them. Now, it appears, they are to leave the country-to go whither so many of our finest literary and artistic treasures have gone; and to join, it may be, that other and even finer collection, the almost perfect series of letters written by Burns to George Thomson when assisting him with his Scottish Airs.-Glasgow Herald, July 23rd, 1913.

BURNS MSS. AT AUCTION.

On being interrogated to-day, three or four of the chief Metropolitan dealers in literary MSS. said they knew nothing of the reported sale to a London agent on behalf of an American millionaire of the Glenriddel Burns MSS. owned by the Liverpool Athenæum. On the other hand, these MSS. were, as a fact, offered at a big sum to and declined by a London dealer about a year ago. As to the reported price of £5000, it may be recalled that the Burns "Family Bible," now happily in the museum at Alloway, fetched £1650 at auction in 1904, while for one poem only in the Poet's autograph, "The Jolly Beggars," £490 was realised at the Huth sale in 1911.

This poem cost Mr Huth no more than £12 in 1906. The late Mr Pierpont Morgan acquired, through Messrs Sotheby, the Earl of Dalhousie's fine collection of Burns autographs for a very large sum. The exact figures, however, have not been disclosed.

As to the legal right of a private institution like the Liverpool Athenæum to dispose of such a possession, it is worth recalling that a couple of years ago the Attorney-General unofficially intervened when the Bedford Literary Institute proposed to put up at auction in Wellington Street Foxe's famous Book of Martyrs containing signatures claiming to be those of John Bunyan. Subsequently the Attorney-General was satisfied that the Bedford Literary Institute was acting within its legal rights, whatever the unwritten moral obligations might be. The volumes, on being offered for sale late in 1911, however, were bought in at £600. Later they were acquired for America, if I mistake not, by Mr Pierpont Morgan.-Glasgow Herald, July 23rd, 1913.

STRONG PROTESTS.

66 INCREDIBLE AND DEPLORABLE."

The reported sale of Burns Manuscripts belonging to the Liverpool' Athenæum has brought forth strong condemnation of the committee's action from those interested in the Poet. The Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury has taken a leading part in the movement, and yesterday published the opinions of a number of public men. Lord Rosebery telegraphed that the committee's action is "incredible and deplorable," Mr Neil Munro declares that it is the " most philistine and discreditable transaction probably that any library committee ever carried through," and Dr William Wallace wired that "British local bodies should retain such treasures at all cost." The Glasgow Herald is quoted as stating that the committee have no moral right to sell. In a leader the Liverpool Daily Post declares that it is difficult to find a shadow of an excuse for the committee's action. The volumes were not property to be used for strengthening the finances of any private organisation. Their donor did not give them for any such purpose, and the recipients, until a few years ago, never regarded them as possessions to be applied for such an end. About & decade ago we were the happy means of foiling an attempt to dispose of them for the benefit of the Athenæum shareholders, who then, as now, valued the convenience of an extra tea-room or another billiard table as more desirable than the ownership of a unique literary treasure, and who now, by means of a secret transaction, the nature and results of which, we are informed, have not

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been made known to the general body of shareholders, have converted these volumes into a large sum of cash. Even admitting

the moral right of the committee to sell the books-as to their legal rights there is no question-their action is indefensible. It was said that the sum they asked on a previous occasion, and a sum which Mr Pierpont Morgan was willing to pay, was £5000. Assuming this figure to be the amount now realised, we gravely censure the committee for not taking the Liverpool public into their confidence. There are many rich Scotsmen in this country who would, we are convinced, have retained this Burns memorial in Liverpool at an even larger sum. We would gladly have lent assistance to the movement ourselves, assured that the public of Liverpool, which is second to none in liberality, would have put their hands in their pockets to avoid the shame of the existing situation."

THE LIVERPOOL ATHENÆUM.

In its news column the Daily Post points out that the Athenæum, which was founded in 1798, or fully half a century before the establishment of public libraries, has been chosen as the custodian of many treasures of literature and art. Besides the Burns MSS., the Athenæum has had entrusted to its keeping the William Roscoe MSS., which Liverpool could ill afford to lose; and quite recently there was added a collection of historic documents given by Mr H. Yates Thompson. Many of the Herdman pictures of bygone Liverpool are also housed within its walls. From these facts," it adds, "it will be seen that the institution has responsibilities of a semi-public character."-Evening Times, July, 24th, 1913.

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THE GLENRIDDEL MSS.

Benrig, Kilmaurs, July 25th.

Sir,-Apart from the legality of the atrocity perpetrated by the directors of the Liverpool Athenæum, there is the question of how the manuscripts came into their possession. They were written out by Burns at the urgent request of Riddel of Glenriddel, and so solicitous was he of their future that on the death of Riddel he asked and obtained repossession of them. After the death of the Poet they formed part of the literary material conveyed to Liverpool by Gilbert Burns and John Syme for the use of Dr Currie when engaged in the edition of the Poet's works associated with his name, which was published in 1800 for the benefit of Jean and her young family. On the completion of his task Dr Currie retained

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possession of the MSS., and they remained in the custody of his family till 1853, when the widow of his son presented them to the president of the Liverpool Athenæum, gratified by their finding a place in the library of an institution in which her father took so great an interest." She is also careful to say that they came into the possession of her father when he was engaged in writing the life of the Poet. Dr Currie's retention of the bulk of the literary material entrusted to his care has always been a sore point with the descendants of the Poet. Mrs Burns Hutchinson, the granddaughter of the Poet, who died at Cheltenham two or three years ago, and with whom the writer maintained a voluminous correspondence for many years before her death, complained bitterly in more than one of her letters of the injustice done the family, her father, Colonel James Glencairn Burns, not being in a position to leave his family in the most affluent circumstances. The large

sum (£5000 according to report) which now goes to fill the coffers of the Liverpool Athenæum represents the current commercial value of the MSS. The two volumes contain in the aggregate eighty-five compositions, fifty-six of which are poetical and twentynine are in prose. Of these, sixty-seven are in the autograph of the Poet, and eighteen are by amanuenses as a rule, with notes appended in the handwriting of Burns. These figures convey some idea of what the nation has lost, apparently without the opportunity of making a competing offer to retain them for the purpose evidently intended by Mrs Wallace Currie when she handed them over to a body of public custodiers, who thought so little of them that they were huddled away in a corner till brought to light in 1873 by Mr Henry A. Bright, who had them put on exhibition the following year. I am certain if Lord Rosebery had been timeously apprised of the proposed transaction he would have instantly moved on his own responsibility, or applied his torch to the heather. Another item of the Glenriddel collection (the interleaved copy of Johnson's Museum) has also been exported to America,, in connection with which, but for the labours of the late Mr James Dick, of Newcastle, the Burns world would have remained in ignorance of the garbling, misrepresentation, and untrustworthiness of Cromek's Reliques which purported to be a faithful reproduction of the MS. notes referred to. That the Liverpool MSS. have been carefully collated, edited, and published is poor consolation for the loss of the originals. If it is too late to recover them, it is right and proper that the public should know something of their history.-I am, etc.,

D. M‘Naught, President of the Burns Federation.

-Glasgow Herald, July 26th, 1913.