The Lumley Autograph | Page 7

G-----, and
affirming that it was still in his own possession. The younger Lumley
immediately set to work to discover the original letter, but his search
was fruitless; it was not to be found either among the papers of his
uncle, or those of his father. It was gone. He was himself a tutor at
Cambridge at the time, and returning to the university, he carried with
him his uncle's life of Otway, in MS. Some little curiosity was at first
excited among his immediate companions by these facts, but it soon
settled down into an opinion unfavorable to the veracity of the late Mr.
Lumley.--This nettled the nephew; and as Lord G-----, was still living,
a gouty bloated roue, he at length wrote to inquire if his lordship knew
any thing of the matter. His lordship was too busy, or too idle, to
answer the inquiry. Some time later, however, the younger Lumley,
then a chaplain in the family of a relative of Lord G-----'s, accidentally
met his uncle's former pupil, and being of a persevering disposition, he
ventured to make a personal application on the subject.
"Now you recall the matter to me, Mr. Lumley, I do recollect
something of the kind. I remember one day, giving my tutor some
musty old letter he found in the library at G-----; and by the bye he
came near cracking my skull on the same occasion!"
Mr. Lumley was not a little pleased by this confirmation of the story,
though he found that Lord G----- had not even read the letter, nor did he
know any thing of its subsequent fate; he only remembered looking at
the signature. Not long after the meeting at which this explanation had
taken place, Mr. Lumley received a visit from a stranger, requesting to
see the MS. Life of Otway in his possession. It was handed to him; he
examined it, and was very particular in his inquiries on the subject,
giving the chaplain to understand that he was the agent of a third
person who wished to purchase either the original letter if possible, or
if that could not be found, the MS. containing the copy. Mr. Lumley
always believed that the employer of this applicant was no other than
that arch-gatherer, Horace Walpole, who gave such an impulse to the
collecting mania; he declined selling the work, however, for he had
thoughts of printing it himself. The application was mentioned by him,

and, of course, the manuscript gained notoriety, while the original letter
became a greater desideratum than ever. The library at G----- was
searched most carefully by a couple of brother book-worms, who crept
over it from cornice to carpeting; but to no purpose.
{Horace Walpole = Horace Walpole (1717-1797), a prolific writer,
connoisseur, and collector, best known for his extensive
correspondence; he established a taste for literary collecting by
would-be cultured gentlemen in England}
Some ten years later still--about the time, by the bye, when Chatterton's
career came to such a miserable close in London, and when Gilbert was
dying in a hospital at Paris--it happened that a worthy physician, well
known in the town of Southampton for his benevolence and
eccentricity, was on a professional visit to the child of a poor
journeyman trunk-maker, in the same place. A supply of old paper had
just been brought in for the purpose of lining trunks, according to the
practice of the day. A workman was busy sorting these, rejecting some
as refuse, and preserving others, when the doctor stopped to answer an
inquiry about the sick child.
{Chatterton = Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), British poet, who
created an imaginary Thomas Rowley, a supposed medieval monk, to
whom he ascribed some of his poems. Chatterton committed suicide at
the age of 18 when a poem of his, allegedly by Rowley, was rejected;
he was buried in a pauper's grave. Susan Fenimore Cooper no doubt
has this in mind in naming a character in this story Theodosia Rowley.
{Gilbert = Nicolas Gilbert (1751-1780), French poet, who died in Paris
at the age of 29. The French writer Count Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863),
in his book of essays "Stello" (1832), popularized a legend that Gilbert
had died insane and in abject poverty at the charity hospital of the
Hotel Dieu in Paris, and compared his miserable end with that of
Chatteron; it seems likely that Vigny, whose book appeared while
Susan Fenimore Cooper was studying in Paris, was her source for this
reference to Gilbert. In fact, Gilbert was not impoverished, and died of
injuries after falling from his horse}
"Better, Hopkins--doing well. But what have you here? I never see old
papers but I have an inclination to look them over. If a man has leisure,
he may often pick up something amusing among