Across the 22 diminutive pages she records all the balls she attended, all her dances and her often titled and regal partners.
Part of the Peter Hone collection offered by Cornish auction house Lay’s (21% buyer’s premium) on October 12 (with viewings held in collector and dealer Hone’s Notting Hill, London, home beforehand), it took £500.
A decade after she wrote this manuscript, Miss Seymour, a direct descendent of the third wife of Henry VIII, married Vice-Admiral Frederick Spencer the 4th Earl Spencer in 1854. She was thus Princess Diana’s great, great grandmother and great, great, great grandmother to our future king.
Coastal life-savers
Magic lantern slides from the Frank Strike collection, £15,000 at Lay's.
Also at Lay’s, this time at the Penzance saleroom, a collection of early Cornish shipwreck magic lantern slides was offered on November 16.
They were regularly used by Frank Strike to give lectures in Cornwall until he died in 1967. He had compiled the group for the previous 20 years. Strike was a keen local historian and an active and much respected member of the Coastguards and other images in the group reflect these interests.
He held the Coastguard long-service medal for 35 years as number one in the life-saving team, during which time he was responsible for aiming and firing the rocket that carried the rope to the shipwreck.
Magic lantern slides from the Frank Strike collection, £15,000 at Lay's.
Also among the shipwreck slides are a number of images of early divers exploring shipwreck sites and views of Porthleven. Strike’s collection was carefully preserved by his family.
The images (around 330 in total) are annotated, catalogued and boxed, the majority taken by the Gibson family of photographers and Alfred Hawke of Helston. Together with a magic lantern projector made by JH Steward (Optician) of 406, Strand and 457 West Strand London, they were estimated at £8000-10,000.
The lot sold for £15,000.
