VERDI

Holograph of sixteen-line poem in four four-line stanzas, headed ‘Il tramonto’ and signed at bottom right ‘Andrea Maffei’. 1p, 16mo. Text entirely clear and complete, on discoloured laid paper with chipping and slight loss at right-hand margin. Begins: ‘Amo l’ova del girono che muore / Quando il sole già stanco declina,’. No variations from the version printed in the 1864 Florence edition of Maffei’s works, apart from ‘Una età’ beginning l.6 here, as opposed to ‘Un' età’ there.

The Sunday Times, 20 March 2002, carries an article by Ann Treneman, 'The real face of Rubinstein', discussing the discovery among Hollay's papers of her correspondence with Helena Rubinstein. The correspondence was made use of by Lindy Woodhead in her 2017 book 'War Paint: Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein: Their Lives, their Times, Their Rivalry'. Hollay was Rubinstein's London manager from 1914.

4to, 4 pp. Bifolium. 87 lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper, with wear to extremities and a spike hole to one corner. Written in ink in a Victorian hand, and with three changes in pencil. Docketed at head 'The art of Vocalization'. Towards beginning writes that the subject is one which he has 'studied many years in close connexion with the most eminent Masters of Italy, most of whom I may rank among my personal friends, and the pith of whose conversations, added to my own experience I propose embodying in a few short essays upon the Formation of the Voice'.