Apr 03, 2008 - Sale 2140

Sale 2140 - Lot 37

Price Realized: $ 4,320
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
"IT WANTS 'STRONG MEAT' AND BY JOVE IT HAS GOT IT" Autograph Letter Signed "R. F. Burton" (and inscribed in Arabic beneath his signature), to "My Dear Sir" [i. e., Colonel Montgomery]. 4 pages on United Services Club embossed letterhead, 16mo; fold discreetly reinforced, first page browned along left edge; laid in custom-made 1/4 morocco folder. [London], 15 October 1885
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Additional Details

Written in the year of publication of Burton's edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: "Many thanks from both for your kind note . . . & invitation to Vevey. We should greatly enjoy it but I can hardly fit it into my time as I intend to pass the winter in Tangier . . . returning to Trieste in March & London in May. To my great astonishment The Nights has hit the public taste: it has of later years been so stuffed with goody, goody, namby-pamby Maria Matilda that it wants 'strong meat' and by Jove it has got it. We had the pleasure of seeing my good friend Thayer here and I (unhappily) forgot to put his name down for the Athenaeum Club--London without a club is like a park without games. We are both living well under influence of beef and port (wine) and shudder at the lean flesh pots of Trieste (veal) . . . "