Gorringe's Spring Fine Sale - 12th March 2024 starting 10am

Lot 19
° Journal of Emily Eden (1797-1869), novelist and
traveller; 1 January - 29 March 1828
Paper book with marbled edges in a parchment
binding, 18 x 12 cm, with label of the supplier J
Bowen, wholesale stationer, 315 Oxford Street.
The journal opens with Emily’s departure from a
long stay with her sister Mrs Colvile at Langley Farm
at Beckenham in Kent.
The context for this brief period in her life was
the fall of the government led for five months by
Frederick John Robinson (1782-1859), first Viscount
Goderich and first earl of Ripon, and the character
of Goderich’s wife Sarah, often the butt of Emily’s
acerbic comments.
The journal contains a full record of Emily’s social
engagements and cultural interests; on 18 January
she visited the French theatre with Mrs Mildmay and
Francis Baring: ‘The Lyceum is very prettily fitted up
but except Perlet, the acting is very bad’; on the 28th
‘Lady Grantham lent me her box at C[ovent] Garden,
Mary went with me – saw Henry 4th – C[harles]
Kemble’s Falstaff is a wonderful piece of acting – but
the whole play acts very heavily.’ On 16 February
‘we went in the evening to Mr Hay’s – saw some
drawings of birds by a Mr Audebon’ [John James
Audubon, 1785-1851, whose publication of Birds of
America was largely financed by his visit to England
between 1826 and 1829].
Emily greatly admired Jane Austen, whose writing
influenced her own fiction. At a performance by the
pupils of the Royal Academy of Music on 7 March,
Emily overheard a couple ‘settling how to break
to her father their intention of marrying – it would
have been an excellent scene for Miss Austen’.
On 17 March she accompanied her nephew
Charley D[rummond] to the studio of Gilbert Stuart
Newton, to sit for one of the children in The vicar of
Wakefield reconciling his wife to Olivia; the picture,
commissioned by Lord Lansdowne, was exhibited at
the Royal Academy later that year.
At rear, in reverse: ‘List of books at Berkley, August
1879, E Dickinson’ (2 pages)
Loose within volume: ‘Directions for washing Piña
Cloth’ (a luxury fabric made from the leaves of the
pineapple plant, mostly in the Philippines); c1840
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Very few of Emily Eden’s papers are in public
collections: letters to two of her sisters are held
at Durham University Library, letters to Lord
Minto in the National Library of Scotland and to
Lord Brougham at University College, London. In
1919 her great-niece Violet Dickinson published
extracts from her papers, including brief excerpts
this Journal: Violet Dickinson, Miss Eden’s letters
(London: MacMillan), 1919. The papers of her
brother George Eden, Earl of Auckland (1784-1849)
are held by the British Library.
See our online listing for the full description
Lot 20
£250 - 350
° Osborne, William Godolphin, Lord - The Court
and Camp of Runjeet Sing. With an introductory
sketch of the origin and rise of the Sihk state,
8vo, original green blindstamped cloth gilt, with
frontispiece and 15 lithographed plates, Henry
Colburn, London, 1840
Lot 21
£600 - 900
Late 18th century English School - Portrait of
Sir William Eden, later 1st Baron Auckland,
watercolour on card, 20 x 18cm. A sketch of the
sitter verso.
Note: Sir William was father to fourteen children,
including Emily Eden and her brother George Eden,
1st Earl of Auckland, the Governor-General of India
(1836-1842)
£150 - 200
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