An exceptional woman’s album compiled 1820s-1880s containing an inscription by Samuel Johnson presenting a gift to his friend Hester Thrale. Johnson promises something ‘Brought from Scotland’ - a tantalising suggestion given the writer’s famous trip to Scotland and the Hebrides in 1773, immortalised in A Journey to the Western Islands.
Johnson’s inscription is laid down in the middle of the book, in the context of other documents signed by George III, Walter Scott, the Parsi businesman Manockhee Cursetjee and the Liverpudlian album creator Amelia Fox’s distinguished grandfather, William Fox. Johnson’s inscription is 7x5cm with the corners trimmed, and reads: ‘Brought from Scotland & presented to H:L: Thrale by Sam: Johnson Esq.’
The pair met first in 1765 and Hester Thrale, an affluent woman with literary interests and immense social gifts, became Johnson’s most confidential friend. Johnson moved into lodgings at the Thrale’s country estate south of London and their friendship is lavishly documented in the surviving correspondence and Thrale’s Anecdotes written after his death.
This document is part of a little group of Johnsonian material in the album which includes an unrecorded broadside from 1777 that encouraged participation in Dr Johnson’s campaign to lift the sentence of execution of the clergyman and man of letters William Dodd, suggesting that ‘real Friends to the Protestant Dissenters... would immediately, in a body, address or petition his most gracious Majesty, on behalf of Dr Dodd, now under Sentence of Death, in Newgate.’ The campaign was unsuccessful and it was of Dodd that Johnson famously remarked - ‘Depend upon it Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’
Additionally, Walter Scott contributes the lower part of a sealed autograph letter, signed from ‘Halfmoonstreet [London] 13 June - Walter Scott’ - a street where Boswell had lodgings on the same street.
This remarkable album, compiled over fifty years by a young Liverpool woman, is notably international in outlook: ‘Edward H Ede Constantinople’ contributes a poem in Turkish and ‘F H Barner of Sierra Leone Lat 8.30’ N.’ writes an acrostic on Fox’s first name, ‘Amelia’. There is a specimen of the handwriting and signature of Manockhee Cursetjee (1808-1887) a Parsi businessman and proponent of female education, and a passage in Chinese with translation.
Among the many inscriptions and illustrations and almost at the end of the album is a letter written in 1890 to Amelia by her nephew, describing the album’s maker - Amelia herself - as ‘The young lady who in 1826 began her Career of asking for Commendations to be written in this book, commissioned me to fill a page in it with something and Coming as I do after King George the 4th, Dr Samuel Johnson... as well as Sir Walter Scott and other mighty men long since gathered into the father of eternity while she remains a “single pilgrim” of nearly ninety I barely know what to put on record.’
Amelia Fox was born on 28 Feb 1801 in London and died in the Wirral near Liverpool in 1893. She was the daughter of Henry and Amelia Fox and granddaughter of William Fox (1736–1826), founder of the Sunday School Society whose wedding certificate she tipped into the album.
DESCRIPTION: Half red roan over marbled boards; ‘Souvenir’ on a red inset label to the upper board. Gilt lines to the spine and all edges gilt. Marbled endpapers; ‘Amelia Fox Liverpool August 1826’ on the second flyleaf. Manuscript interspersed with page stubs. A poem by ‘Louisa August 1826’ surmounted by a finely executed urn begins the book.
‘Caroline’ contributes a poem and a bird of paradise and Maria a similar image but set in a landscape (1827) with berries by ‘S.F.’ There are poems on ‘Human Life’ and the Monody on the Death of Sheridan with a pencil vignette; their namesake Charles James Fox is quoted.
A young man called Forrester writes of ‘how soon I am Order’d for Sea... Your prayers for my safety I hope may preserve the Packet [ship] from Quicksands and Rocks’ with an image of a British naval vessel above. ‘Timon’ writes presciently in 1828 of the impact of time on those in the album: ‘Methinks I could weep with the Royal Persian when I reflect what havoc a Century will make in the fleeting history of every name which stands recorded in these pages’. Drawings of poet Robert Bloomfield’s birthplace (E Bent Sep.r 1829) ‘from a Drawing taken in October 1827’. A Chinese contribution is tipped in by ‘Woo Tanjin’ with a translation opposite on ‘The pleasures of study’. A few lines and salutation from her grandfather, William Fox; the signature of ‘Robert Moffat’ (missionary and father in law of David Livingstone) tipped onto his engraved portrait; similarly William Jay, nonconformist divine and the signature of Thomas Raffles, Congregational minister in Liverpool. George. J Stonehouse (Liverpool historian) writes on happiness with cut signatures of George III and IV, the Duke of Portland twice (Whig politician and Prime Minister) with several others. Her grandfather’s marriage certificate from Oxford, 1761, is tipped in.
