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Sunday Reading
New Delhi, 22 September 2009
Of Celebrity
Letters
HISTORY GOES FOR A FORTUNE
By Suraj Saraf
Last year after much ado the Central Government succeeded in
acquiring a Gandhian manuscript from the world famous art auctioneers
Christie’s for 15,000 pounds plus 3,000 pounds as premium.
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) President,
Dr. Karan Singh, had held it as a great honour for India and presented the yellowed
parchment to the Navajivan Trust, which holds the copyright of all written
works of the Mahatma. Written in January 1948, just 19 days before his
assassination, it was one of the last articles penned by Mahatma Gandhi for his
magazine Harijan and dealt with the
dwindling circulation of the Urdu edition of the magazine.
Interestingly, it had been put up for sale by a Switzerland-based
collector. The draft was brought to the notice of the Prime Minister’s Office,
which collaborated with several other agencies, namely the Ministry of Culture,
ICCR, Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian High Commission in London to convince the
bidding organization to exempt the article from being publicly auctioned. The Government
managed to obtain it at the negotiated cost without entering into the bidding
fray, as Christie’s had withdrawn the offer a day before the date of the
official auction.
On the other side of the Globe, in England a note
by the Queen Mother fetched 16,000 pounds at an auction while eight letters
written by the Late Princess Diana sold for 20,000 pounds. There are many other
instances when notes by celebrities had sold for astronomical sums. For
instance, a letter by the renowned scientists Einstein had fetched over $
400,000 and one by the renowned Dutch impressionist artist Van Gogh had sold
for $ 500,000. Most of all, a letter by
Abraham Lincoln sold for $ 3.4 million, said to be the highest price for an
American manuscript. So on and so forth.
One sometimes wonders why some people pay so exorbitantly
for a letter, note, manuscript et al. Is it the intrinsic importance of the
writing? Or is it the high status of the celebrity behind it? Or is it some
sentimental expression of the buyer that he/ she pay through their nose for it?
Or is there some historical importance of the letter? Or is it the feeling of
honour or pride in possessing the letter? Or is some dealer of manuscripts who sees
an opportunity to make some easy money?
Indeed, there can be any one or more of these reasons behind
the high prices being attached to the letter. For instance, there was a letter
written by the most brilliant brain of the 20th Century – Albert Einstein,
as said above, auctioned for $ 404,000.
The letter was written in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which
he had described the Bible as “pretty childish” and scorned at the notion that
the Jews could be a “chosen people”. The letter had sold for 15 times the pre-sale
estimate. The unidentified buyer was described by the Managing Director of the
Auction as having “a passion for theoretical physics and all that it entails.”
Among the unsuccessful bidders was the Oxford Evolutionary biologist Richard
Dakins, an outspoken atheist.
Several other manuscripts by Einstein had sold for sky high
prices. The $404,000 Einstein letter to Gutkind was only a little less than $442,000
paid for the entire collection of 55 love letters between Einstein and his
first wife Mileva Maric, at an auction. Interestingly, at that very auction, a
paper by Einstein and his best friend Michale Lesso, attempting a calculation
that would later be a pivotal piece of his crowning achievement, the “General
Theory of Relativity”, went under the hammer for $398,500.
Apparently, it came as no surprise to a historian at the
California Institute of Technology and head of the Einstein papers project, Diana
Kormos Buchwald, that the Gutkind letter fetched such a high price. Likewise, Gerald
Holton, a historian of science at Harvard and a longtime Einstein expert said the
scientist’s marketability had been improved by the last few years of hoopla
about the 10th year of Relativity, which included his selection as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Century” in
2000, and several new publications. Einstein, as pointed out by him in his
autobiographical notes, lost his religion at the age of 12, concluding that it
was all a lie, and he never looked back.
As for US President, Abraham Lincoln, his letter had sold
for $ 3.4 million only a few months ago by the famous art auctioneers
Sotheby’s. It was bought by an American collector bidding over the telephone.
The record breaking manuscript was “arguably Lincoln’s most personal and powerful
statement on God, slavery and emancipation”.
The letter was the highlight of a sale of some 100-odd manuscripts
written by other American historical figures. These included documents written
by George Washington, a Lincoln autograph penned
on the day of his famous Getty-burg address and one from the sixth US President
John Quiney Adams, foretelling the Civil War. The letter dated April, 1764, is
a response to some 195 boys and girls who put their name on to a document
entitled “Children’s petition to the President asking him to free all the
little slave children in this country.”
“Please tell these little people,” Lincoln wrote, “I am very
glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that
while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that
God has, and that, as it seems, he will to do it.”
A 12-page letter penned by the anguished Dutch Impressionist
artist Vincent Van Gough was purchased by someone for $ 500,000 just before it
was to go for public sale. The letter was to an art critic written only months
before Van Gogh committed suicide. The buyer had get it as Valentine Day
present to his wife, who in her college days had been a student of art history
whose first love was Van Gogh!
At the end, there is no always good reason for the buyers to
own these letters, manuscripts et all. And, the saga of letters by star personalities
fetching fortune to their owners shall go on. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance-
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