LETTER IN AN UNKNOWN HAND REFERRING TO MARY SEWELL'S JUVENILE "DAVIE BLAKE THE SAILOR", SIGNED BY YACHTSMAN THOMAS BRASSEY.

Normanhurst Court, Battle, [East Sussex, U.K.]: April 2, 1888., 1888.. Good. - Letter penned in black ink in an unknown hand & filling both sides of a sheet of black-bordered letterhead, approximately 7 inches high by 4-3/8 widr with the address of his family seat printed in raised lettering at the top. Signed "Brassey". The black border most probably references the death of his wife, Lady Anna Brassey, seven months prior. There is a small, light stain below the salutation with a glue mark down the right margin of the verso where the letter has been removed from an album. Folded once for mailing. Good. <p>Brassey writes to thank the Rev. J. R. [Boyer?] for sending him the children's book, "Davie Blake, the Sailor": "It is, as you say, a work very much to the sailor's taste, and is calculated to do much good by drawing attention to those vices and follies which we all deplore."<p>Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl of Brassey [1836-1918] was a British Llberal Party politician, Governor of Victoria, Australia and enthusiastic yachtsman. His first experience of sailing was while he was still in school at Rugby. He owned a succession of yachts and between July 1876 and May 1877 circumnavigated the world in his steam-assisted three-masted topsail-yard schooner Sunbeam. In 1886 he founded "The Naval Annual" and edited it until 1891.