One of the greatest collections of historical letters ever amassed has been found in a laundry room.
Susannah Morris was called in to examine the hoard after the death of the secretive collector and was astonished to be led not into a library or a safe room but to the basement.
In the laundry room, wedged between a washing machine and a tumble dryer, was a plain metal filing cabinet. Miss Morris, who works for the auction house Christie's, opened it and could not believe her eyes.
Inside was the most remarkable collection of letters she had seen outside a national institution: a love letter by Napoleon; a diplomatic note to the king of France in the hand of Elizabeth I; a letter of condolence by John Donne; a tragic account written in 1545 by John Calvin, the theologian of the Reformation, about the suicide of a friend; and a withering letter by Charlotte Brontë on male shortcomings.
As Miss Morris delved through files, where the papers were arranged by size rather than alphabet, date or subject, her eyes grew wider.
There was a letter by Beethoven, one by Albert Einstein, by Isaac Newton, Hemingway, Frederick the Great, Darwin, Voltaire, Lewis Carroll, Pushkin, Monet, Churchill, Gandhi, Defoe, Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky.
By the time she had finished her first trawl she had counted almost 1,000 letters written by the great monarchs, scientists, authors, painters, philosophers and musicians from the 15th to the 20th century in almost every European language.
After months of research Miss Morris has valued the find, which is to be sold in separate lots at Christie's in London on July 3, at £2 million.
$2 Million? Is that in pounds? Because it doesn't seem like very much for all that stuff. Pretty cool, though. It would be interesting if they did a documentary where they'd show and discuss all the findings with some historians. Can't imagine what it was like to open that filing cabinet and find all that stuff.
thats a cool story, like something out of a movie, it really seems like it isn't enough money though; i would have guessed like 10 mill or something outrageous like that
On the eighth day God created Sean Taylor- and he was good.
"That's a clown question, bro" - - - - - - - - - - Bryce Harper, DC Statesman "But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man That he didn't, didn't already have" - - - - - - - - - - Dewey Bunnell, America
Yes, I thought that the price (approx. $3.8 million) was a deal compared to the value of the letters in the collection. Letters hand-written by Queen Elizabeth I, John Donne, John Calvin, Napoleon, Newton, Gandhi. . . .that list is truly incredible. Maybe it just needs another hundred years. . .
