Donne, John

A magnificent letter of consolation written on the death of her husband, two pages, folio (260 x 178 mm), integral autograph address leaf ("To the Honerable lady the lady kingsmill"), "At my poore house at S: pauls", 26 October 1624; fold tears neatly repeared, small seal tears not affecting text, slight water staining and some browning. Black morocco slipcase gilt with small Vander Poel armorial gilt stamp.

Maggs Brothers (sale catalogue 597, 1934, item 353; catalogue 600, 1934, item 93 catalogue 611, 1935, item 614 and catalogue 730, 1943, item 381) — Barnet J. Beyer, Inc. (sold through Seven Gables, New York, 10 August 1948, for $900, to) — Halstead B. Vander Poel (sale of his library, Christie's, 3 March 2004, lot 28) — Albin Schram (sale of his library, Christie's, 2007, lot 54). acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

CELM DnJ 4133

"Madam
Those things which god dissolvs at once, as he shall do the Sunne and Moone, and those bodyes at the last conflagration, he never intends to re-unite again, but in those things which he takes in peeces, as he doth Man and wife, in these divorces by death, and single persons in the dyvorce of body and soule, god hath another purpose, to make them up againe..."

This letter, which is as finely wrought as Donne's sermons and poems, addresses the subject of loss when writing to console a friend who had just lost her husband. Donne's themes may be familiar, but his treatment is strikingly original and powerful. The mourning and pain of her remaining life will render her "Fitter and fitter for him, by the good use of hys corrections, and the intire conformity to hys wyll." He writes of the unknowability of God's plan by comparing Him to a woodman taking timber for his particular purpose, and how can we who "have no Modell, no designe of that building, wonder as hys takinge in hys Materialls." Above all, Donne repeatedly counsels acceptance of God's will: ""To say, that our afflictions are greater then we can bear, ys so near to Despairinge, as that the same words expresse both."

Lady Kingsmill had been born Bridget White, the daughter of a Hampshire gentleman. Donne had come to know her in the spring of 1610, before her marriage, when she had an extended stay in London. This was an unsettled time in Donne's life. It was before he took Holy Orders and he was spending considerable time in lodgings on the Strand using his connections to try to find employment. The two struck up a friendship over these months that is captured in four lightly flirtatious letters that were written after her return to the country. By the end of the year, she had married a neighboring squire, Sir Henry Kingsmill of Kingsclere, but continued to correspond with Donne. This long letter was written just a few days after the death of Sir Henry. The relationship was encapsulated in Letters to Persons of Honour, published by John Donne, Jr, in 1651, which opens with Donne's five letters to Lady Kingsmill. She was still alive when the letters were published and did not die until 1672, having remarried a widow for some fifty years.   

One of the finest works by Donne to survive in the writer's autograph and indisputably the most significant Donne manuscript in private hands. Donne autograph material is exceptionally rare: Peter Beal lists more than 4,000 items under Donne in his online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts; however, all but a tiny handful of these are scribal transcripts. Only one of Donne's English poems survives in autograph ('To the Honourable lady the lady Carew,' sold at Sotheby's, London, 23 June 1970, lot 267, and now, in the Bodleian Library, MS Eng.poet.d.197) and the only other autograph verses are two Latin inscriptions in printed books. Donne's exquisite prose is represented by two scribal presentation manuscripts with autograph corrections: a Sermon on the Gunpowder Plot (British Library, Royal MS 17.B.XX) and a copy of Biathanatos (Bodleian MS e.Mus.131). Of the thirty-six surviving original letters by Donne, all but three are in institutional collections. Two of the three are found in the Pirie Library, and the final letter — which accompanied a copy of Pseudo-Martyr presented to Henry, Prince of Wales — is in the collection of the Marquess of Bath at Longleat House.