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Relics

            Sir, - In an article under the heading “Books and MS. For Sale” in your issue of the 17^th I figure as one of the authors whose waste-paper baskets are proving gold mines to dealers in relics.
            Now it does not seem to me to matter a rap to the purchaser of a relic whether it is genuine or not, provided he believes it is.  But it may matter a little to the person thus venerated.  If, for instance, a jawbone were sold as having played an authentic part in my platform eloquence, I should like it to be a healthy jawbone, and not one bearing evidence of diseases from which I have never suffered.  If a manuscript poem, I should like it to be fairly up to my literary mark, and not to imply amatory personal relations which I have never enjoyed.
            May I, therefore, beg my worshippers not to scramble too blindly for alleged Shaviana?  Otherwise they may share the fate of one of their number in America, who has just paid £300 for a copy of Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding,” advertised in the sale catalogue as profusely annotated and underlined by me.  Before somebody else pays £600, or £6,000, for this treasure, I had better state unequivocally that I have never read Locke’s Essay, and that I never disfigure books by underlining them, my practice, whether as a reviewer or a student, being to make a very light dot in the margin with the tip of a pencil, and note the number of the page on the end paper.  When I make a marginal note, which happens perhaps once in twenty-five years, I write the letter s and the letter r in the ordinary way, and not as printed.  The facsimile in the sale catalogue shows that the annotator of Locke used the printed forms for both letters.  In short, the £300 treasure is worth about threepence in the book market, though intrinsically it is worth as much as, or more than, a commentary by myself.
            Let me hasten to explain that the case is one of carelessness and credulity, not of deliberate forgery.  The name of the annotator is actually written by himself in the volume.  It is Horace Townsend, of Derry, County Cork.  He was my wife’s father, and he distinguished himself at his university, where, apparently, he was examined in the university manner in Locke, and had to mug up that philosopher accordingly.  Hence the underscored passages and the marginal notes in his handwriting, which, I repeat, nobody with the smallest claim to expertness could possibly mistake for mine.
            A remnant of my wife’s inheritance of the Derry library was sold when we left Adelphi-terrace [in July 1927] and were compelled to unload an intolerable burden of books.  Evidently the Locke volume went with the rest, which it would not have done had either my wife or myself ever opened it.
            I am sorry to disillude its latest purchaser, and can only suggest by way of consolation that if the present rage for relics continues it may easily happen that when all my own autographs are appropriated those of my father-in-law may command equally extravagant prices.  Meanwhile, will dealers and collectors be reasonably critical and not repeat a mistake which only the prevalent mania can excuse?

Your, &c.,

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