[ Thomas Vere Bayne, friend of Lewis Carroll. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('T. Vere Bayne') to Sir Richard Harington, regarding an anecdote by Augustus Hare concerning Samuel Smith, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

2pp., 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. A charming letter, the subject of which is an anecdote told by Augustus Hare in his autobiography relating to Samuel Smith, Dean of Christ Church, which was considered 'defamatory' by Smith's relation Harington, and gave offence to his family. (A letter of Hare's to Harington, with two draft letters from Harington, are offered separately.) Bayne writes: 'My dear Harington, | The decades were merely rough divisions: one man who told me the story with Dean Smith's name attached took his Degree in the thirties; another knew the story but without any name, & took his Degree in the forties; you and I who used to hear it of Dr Barnes took ours in the fifties. If you had asked me two years ago, I shd. have applied to two great friends of my Father who took their Degree in the twenties and remembered the Statue of Mercury in the middle of the Great Quadrangle; but they are now both dead. They wd. perhaps have told it of Dean Hall.'