[Edmond Holmes, educationalist and poet; and Admiral Sir Reginald Neville Custance.] Autograph Letters Signed from both men to Lt-Col. John Glas Sandeman, regarding Holmes’s pamphets on education.

See the entries for Custance and Holmes in the Oxford DNB. According to the latter: ‘On his retirement in November 1910, Holmes published What is and What Might Be (1911), a condemnation of the existing education system, which stressed competition rather than co-operation, emphasized visible results, and demanded the mechanical obedience of the child. The book attracted wide public attention. [...] Shortly before his retirement, he became involved in the furore over the so-called 'Holmes–Morant circular', a highly confidential memorandum which he had issued in January 1910 to inspectors’. The two letters are in fair condition, lightly aged and ruckled; Holmes’s letter with light water tide mark around edges. Both with postage folds. ONE: Custance to Sandeman. ALS. 8 August 1911. 3pp, 16mo. Bifolium. Thirty-four lines. Addressed to ‘My dear Sandeman’ and signed ‘Reginald Custance’. The information about ‘Homer Lee’s book [Lee (1851-1923) was an American engraver and inventor] is interesting, not to say amusing’. Reference to ‘Gen. Chaffee’s introduction’ and Lee’s apparent service in the American army and ‘Chinese service’. ‘A great number of people on this side were taken in by him. Personally I always thought he presented a very exaggerated view.’ Turning to ‘the Holmes pamphlet’, which was given to Custance by ‘an American Admiral’, he discusses the ‘very much amplified edition’ titled ‘What is and what might be’, and how to acquire it. Ends: ‘A friend of mie tells me that the ideal school is a [real?] one.’ TWO: Holmes to Sandeman. ALS. 19 August [1911]. 2pp, 16mo. Addressed to ‘Lt. Col. J. G. Sandeman M. V. O.’ and signed ‘E. G. A. Holmes’. ‘My pamphlet on Sompting School [the school Holmes had set up in East Sussex] is not on sale; but I have written to the Printers and asked them to send you 4 copies.’ He cannot spare more than four, as ‘the stock is running very low, and half of it belongs to a friend of mine who paid back the whole cost to the printers’. With two cuttings: Custance’s Who’s Who entry, and a brief advertisement for Holmes’s book.