CHAPTER III
THE CAVEAT EMPTOR OF AUTOGRAPH COLLECTING

Forgeries and fakes—Cases of mistaken identity—Some famous autograph frauds—Practical methods of detection

I must resist a strong temptation to enlarge on such interesting topics as W. H. Ireland's wholesale manufacture of Shakespearean MSS.; Thomas Chatterton's ingenious fabrication of Rowley's poems, and James Macpherson's alleged translations from Ossian. The main object of Ireland and Chatterton was obviously to deceive the world of letters rather than the then little-known autograph collector with whose interests I am solely concerned. By the irony of fate, however, there are at the present moment very few rarer or more costly autographs than that of Thomas Chatterton, who might very well have lived for a twelvemonth on the price paid by Sir George White for four or five lines of his handwriting scrawled on the back of a letter. Chatterton died by his own hand, with starvation staring him in the face, but Ireland lived to make money by the "Confessions"[8] of his misdoings, and more than thirty years ago £50 was paid for the scathing letter addressed to Macpherson by Samuel Johnson. The forger of autograph letters for the purpose of entrapping the over-trustful or ignorant collector is the product of the nineteenth century, although some of the French imitations may possibly be a little older. The modern forger obtains important aid from photography, but by way of compensation the enlargement of any given specimen by the same means is invaluable for the purposes of detection. The earliest imitations of autograph letters I have ever seen are of French origin, and are contained in the extra-illustrated copy of Madame de SÉvignÉ's Letters already alluded to. They are frankly labelled as "tracings," "engravings," "lithographs," and so forth, and many of them seem to have been executed on old paper in order to simulate more completely the originals.

The inexperienced collector must, in the first instance, beware of facsimiles of letters which have been published bon fide as illustrations of works of biography, and, having been extracted from them, are offered for sale (sometimes innocently) as genuine specimens. The most familiar instance of this is a letter of Byron's addressed to "Mr. Galignani, at 18, Rue Vivienne, Paris." A facsimile of this, with address, &c., was prefixed to an edition of Byron's poems published in Paris. Not long ago I saw this lithographed facsimile figuring as genuine in a valuable collection of holograph letters, the rest of which were above suspicion.

This letter commences with the words:—

"Sir,—In various numbers of your journal I have seen mentioned a work entitled 'The Vampire' with the addition of my name as that of the author. I am not the author, and never heard of the work in question until now," and ends with the sentence, "You will oblige me by complying with my request of contradiction. I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in question, and have the honour to be (as the correspondents to magazines say), 'your constant reader' and very obedient servant, Byron." To this is added the date, "Venice, April 27th, 1819." There is a well-known facsimile of a letter of Lord Nelson which occasionally does duty as an original. Some years ago I saw it in a catalogue priced at several pounds! It is inserted after the preface in T. O. Churchill's "Life of Nelson," published in 1808, and the paper is therefore not unlike that of the period at which the letter is supposed to have been written, and bears on the back the address, "To Thomas Lloyd, Esq., No. 15, Mary's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane, London." The original would be worth quite ten guineas. Buyers of Nelson letters should remember that this dangerous facsimile begins as follows: "Bath, January 29th, 1798. My dear Lloyd,—There is nothing you can desire me to do that I shall not have the greatest pleasure in complying with, for I am sure you can never possess a thought that is not strictly honourable. I was much flattered by the Marquis's[9] kind notice of me, and I beg you will make my respects acceptable to him. Tell him that I possess his place in Mr. Palmer's Box, but his Lordship did not tell me all its charms, that generally some of the handsomest Ladys at Bath are partakers in the Box, and was I a bachelor I would not answer for being tempted, but as I am possessed of everything that is valuable in a wife I have no occasion to think beyond a pretty face"—and so forth.

If either of these facsimiles had been touched with the end of a sable brush moistened with muriatic acid and water the print would remain unaffected. In a genuine letter the writing if so touched would grow faint or disappear. The same test may be applied to photographs or imitations in sepia. I once purchased a quaint note written by Edmund Kean, of which a reproduction is now given. Nearly a year later I saw an autograph, identical in every particular, offered for sale. I sent for it, and on applying the dilution of muriatic acid test found it to be a copy in sepia of the note already in my possession. The owner of the genuine note had sent it to two or three applicants for inspection. It had been traced over and then worked up in sepia. I once discovered a letter of William Pitt the Elder to be a forgery by the mere accident of the sun falling on it, and showing a narrow rim round each letter. In this case the basis was a photograph, touched up with black paint.

The autograph collector soon becomes accustomed to the appearance of genuine letters, for the creases and stains of time cannot be perfectly imitated any more than the old-world appearance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ink. Watermarks are a good, but not an infallible, test of genuineness. The thick, gilt-edged letter paper of quarto size used by our ancestors cannot be satisfactorily counterfeited, and the inexperienced buyer should eschew documents of all sorts written on morsels of paper of irregular size, which may have been torn from books, and lack the usual tests of authenticity. Collectors of autographs should bear in mind the facts that "franks" ceased to be used after the introduction of the penny postage in 1840; that envelopes were first used about ten years earlier, and that the letters denoting the various London postal districts did not form part of the postmark till some time after the invention of the adhesive stamp. A forged letter of Thackeray was detected by the appearance of the letter W. after London in the counterfeit postmark quite ten years before it could have legitimately done so. If hot water is applied to a genuine watermark, it becomes clearer and stronger; if to a fabricated one it disappears. The autograph collector should carefully study a book which has quite recently been published on the subject of forgery and fabricated documents.[10] One chapter is devoted to the subject of forged literary autographs, but those who desire to acquire an expert knowledge of this important question should master the whole of its contents, and this is no difficult task, for the volume only contains seventy-seven pages. In proportion to the constant rise in the value of autographs the temptation to forgery increases, and the gradual absorption of genuine specimens is sure to bring into existence a number of shams. As the authors very rightly point out, "It is not surprising the profitable and growing autograph market should have attracted the fraudulent, for the prizes when won are generally of a substantial character, and amply repay the misapplied effort and ingenuity demanded. The success which has attended too many of these frauds may be largely accounted for by the fact that in many cases the enthusiasm of the collector has outrun his caution."

The letters of Washington, Franklin, Burns, Nelson, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Scott were the first to attract the attention of the autograph forger in England. Thackeray and Dickens have been recently the object of his unwelcome attentions. Most of the Thackeray forgeries, like the example reproduced, are the work of one man, who uses an ordinary pen and has a fondness for half-sheets of paper. His feeble attempts to imitate Thackeray's wit and style are alone sufficient to excite suspicion. If the counterfeit is carefully compared with a genuine specimen like the one given, deception will be impossible. I possess a small collection of forged autograph letters to use for detective purposes, and as a warning to others. There are five of these "duffer" Thackerays amongst them. The forger apparently finds the upright hand Thackeray adopted later in life more to his taste than the less angular calligraphy of his youth. A few years ago the London autograph market was inundated with forged letters of Thackeray and Dickens. At present they are kept out of the light of day, and sold to the unwary in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, often in shops at the sea-side. The Dickens forgeries are generally betrayed by the printed address at the top of the letter being lithographed and not embossed. The gentleman to whom Dickens is said to have addressed his last letter is supposed to have had a certain number of facsimiles made for distribution amongst his friends. These are now used occasionally like the Galignani-Byron or the Churchill-Nelson. It is here a clear case of caveat emptor.

Very often a letter is offered for sale which is in no sense of the word a forgery, but which was never written by the person the buyer supposes. In nine cases out of ten the seller is as ignorant of the true state of the case as the buyer. I allude to letters written by persons bearing the same name, but whose autographs possess a very different value. In addition to the kings and queens whose names are identical, we have two Oliver Cromwells, two Horace Walpoles, two Sarah Siddonses, two Charles Dickenses, and many other "doubles." I have within the last few months seen a letter of the less-known Horace Walpole catalogued as one of the owner of Strawberry Hill, and a letter of Sarah Siddons the younger, whose usual signature is "S. M. Siddons," described as a "long and pleasing" specimen in the handwriting of her mother. In these cases there is no sort of resemblance in the calligraphy of the two persons. The error arises solely from the similarity of the name, and a lack of care or knowledge on the part of the cataloguer. As a matter of fact, the letter of Sarah Martha Siddons is an exceedingly interesting one, and was written about two years before her death under the tragic circumstances graphically described by Mr. Knapp in his "Artist's Love Story." I never saw any other letter of Sarah M. Siddons, and I give it in extenso to show how careful one should be in studying an autograph before purchasing it. It should be remembered that "Sally" Siddons promised her younger sister Maria, who died in 1798 at Bristol Hot Wells "all for the love" of the handsome painter, that under no circumstances would she ever marry him. The letter gives a striking picture of the Kemble-Siddons "circle" at Bath in the first year of the nineteenth century.

Miss Sarah M. Siddons at Bath to Miss Patty Wilkinson,[11] Blake Street, York.

Of the forged letters in my private "pillory" that of Keats is by far the most cleverly executed. The facsimiles of Byron and Nelson were never intended to be used for the purposes of deception. The Keats and Thackeray counterfeits, on the other hand, are the work of a professional fabricator of spurious autographs. In the Keats letters (dated Wentworth Place, Hampstead, December 8, 1818) the postmarks, the creases, the faded colour of the paper, and the seal with the clasped hands and motto are all carefully imitated, but it would not for a moment deceive an experienced hand. Collectors should carefully examine all Keats letters offered for sale—particularly those addressed to "My dear Woodhouse." The same remark applies to correspondence by Burns, Scott, Shelley, and Byron, for those much-prized and eagerly-sought-after letters have been each in turn the subject of ingenious and carefully prepared forgeries. The Byron forger (who claimed relationship with the poet) escaped the punishment he richly merited, but the wholesale manufacturer of Burns and Scott MSS. was sent to jail for a twelvemonth.

The most extraordinary case in the annals of autograph forgery occurred in France—the country par excellence of cunningly devised facsimiles—on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War. It is known as the Affaire Vrain-Lucas, and an excellent account of it was published at the time by M. Étienne Charavay.[19] Vrain-Lucas was a needy adventurer; Michel Chasles was a scientist of European reputation. Incredible as it may appear, Vrain-Lucas, in the course of a few years, induced one Chasles to purchase from him at the aggregate price of about £6,000 no less than 27,000 autographs, nearly the whole of which were forgeries of the most audacious description. Vrain-Lucas bestowed on his counterfeits little of the care and attention to detail which characterises some of the Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Scott forgeries. Beginning with a supposed correspondence between the youthful Newton and Pascal, which Sir David Brewster proved conclusively to be impossible, he proceeded to fabricate letters of Rabelais, Montesquieu, and La BruyÈre. Before he had finished M. Chasles became the possessor of letters in French and written on paper made in France of Julius CÆsar, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, and even of Lazarus, after his resurrection. On February 16, 1870, Vrain-Lucas was brought before a Paris Criminal Court (Tribunal Correctionnel). Amongst the forged MSS. produced on behalf of the prosecution were 5 letters of AbÉlard, 5 from Alcibiades to Pericles, 181 of Alcuin, 1 of Attila to a Gallic general, 6 of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, to say nothing of examples of the private correspondence of Herod, Pompey, Charles Martel, Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, Sapho, Pontius Pilate, and Joan of Arc. Another long alphabetical list of these fictitious rariora began with AgnÈs Sorel, Anacreon, and the Emperor Adrian, and ended with St. Theresa, Tiberius, Turenne, and Voltaire.

Here is a delicious example of this farrago of transparent fraud.

Letter of Queen Cleopatra to Julius CÆsar.

And next came a safe-conduct pass written by Vercingetorix in favour of "the young Trogus Pompeus on a secret mission to Julius CÆsar"! Vrain-Lucas was promptly sentenced to two years' imprisonment for fraud, together with a fine of 500 francs and the costs of the trial. The only excuse for M. Michel Chasles, mathematician of renown and Member of the Academy of Sciences, is to be found in his numerous preoccupations and advanced age. He was seventy-six in 1870.

In England the Affaire Vrain-Lucas has to some extent its counterpart in the literary forgery carried out with consummate skill by Dr. Constantine Simonides, who managed to deceive that too ardent collector, Sir Thomas Phillipps, with such tempting rarities from a monastery on Mount Athos as part of the original Gospel of St. Matthew, the Proverbs of Pythagoras, or a copy of Homer written on serpent's skin. But enough has been said of these literary frauds.

There is, however, one more class of forged autographs. I refer to letters fabricated in order to injure another, or in furtherance of some political object. The Parnell letters, forged twenty years ago by Richard Pigott, belonged to this class, but they raised many of the questions which belong to forgeries of autographs. I was lately shown a forged letter of Napoleon III., supposed to have been written in 1848, which had evidently been fabricated many years later, possibly in 1865, in order to discredit him when the Second Empire began to lose its popularity. According to the document he had ordered the assassination of some associate suspected of treason. Not only was the imitation of the calligraphy of Napoleon III. faulty in many respects, but the signature, "Napoleon Bonaparte," at once betrayed the falsity of the document. It was, curiously enough, enclosed in an official envelope of Prince JÉrÔme Bonaparte's addressed to Jules Favre!

The best-known dealers in autographs always guarantee what they sell, and will readily take back any doubtful specimen. In the early stage of autograph collecting it is a manifest advantage to confine one's transactions to men of this class. Whenever the origin of an autograph is suspicious or mysterious, it is always safest to obtain expert opinion. As M. Charavay points out in dealing with the Affaire Vrain-Lucas, the question of the source from which an article comes is often of capital importance. Never omit to read carefully any given letter, and consider it from an historical point of view, as well as a mere specimen of handwriting. If M. Michel Chasles had done this he would have saved his 140,000 francs. If the first Newton letter he purchased had been submitted to the historical test, he would have discovered that at the time the philosopher was supposed to discuss problems of the greatest abstruseness he was only three years old. It was on this deal that Vrain-Lucas built up his mountain of successful fraud. Bear in mind all that has been said of watermarks, postmarks, the shape and quality of paper, &c. Avoid notes written on scraps of paper and ragged half-sheets. If you suspect a letter to be a facsimile of some sort, touch the writing gently with diluted muriatic acid. Forgeries effected by the use of water-colour paint yield at once to the application of hot water. As yet the application of the useful maxim of caveat emptor is only necessary in the case of comparatively rare autographs. Letters of no great intrinsic value have as yet not proved remunerative to the forger, but it by no means follows that this will always remain so.