Tennyson forgery: manuscript document presenting itself as a letter from Alfred Lord Tennyson to the wife of William Ewart Gladstone, agreeing to a visit as long as he can smoke his pipe.

An apparent forgery of a letter the text of which is quoted in Hallam Tennyson’s 1897 memoir of his father. 1p, 12mo. On discoloured wove paper. Aged, and with repair with archival tape at extremities on reverse. Folded twice for postage. Reads: ‘Aldworth / Oct 25 - 76 / My dear Mrs Gladstone / On Monday then - if all be well. As you are good enough to say that you will manage everything rather than lose my visit - you must manage that I may have my pipe in my own room whenever I like? / Yours ever / A Tennyson/’. The supposed provenance is noted in pencil on the reverse: ‘This letter was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson to Mrs. Gladstone in 1876. Purchased from Noel Conway of New St Birmingham in 1900 by / Samuel Englefield / Henley on Thames.’ The present text differs from Hallam Tennyson’s version (also in the third volume of Lang and Shannon), by reading ‘you must’ rather than ‘will you’ - the latter reading also featuring in the facsimile of the letter in the Strand Magazine, 1892, among the illustrations to J. Holt Schooling’s article on ‘The Handwriting of Alfred Lord Tennyson’, the caption stating that the letter ‘is in the possession of Messrs. Noel Conway, 50B, New Street, Birmingham’. See Image.