Forgers Begin Work Upon Hardy’s MSS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 14

Forgers Begin Work Upon Hardy’s MSS

Young, American Swindled by Gang COLLECTOR EXPOSES FAKE Forgers are busy in London with Hardy MSS., and Mr. T. J. Wise, the well-known collector of first editions, has just exposed a plot whereby an American collector was induced to pay a considerable sum of money for a faked copy of the great Wessex novelist’s poem on Keats. The MS. of this poem was given to Mr. Wise by Hardy himself, and is still in the possession of Mr. Wise, who thus relates how he came across the forgery:—■ “The forgery was recently bought by a young American collector and taken to Messrs. Riviere and Son to be bound. At first Mr. Calkin, the head of the firm, was impressed with the find, but before binding it up he showed it to me. “ ‘I have the original of that forgery,’ I said to him, and produced it for his inspection. It was a dramatic moment! “On my advice Mr. Calkin sent the faked poem to Mr. Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, Hardy’s literary executor, who promptly declared it ‘an impudent forgery.’ No Complaint to Poiice “The owner has been advised to tear up the poem, but he may have it bound as a curiosity. At any rate, it will never have an opportunity of deceiving anybody again. “I think the genuine Hardy poem would fetch £l5O, hut I am not selling it. It was given to me, years ago, when I was a member of the committee which raised funds to buy Keats’s house at Hampstead. “Hardy was greatly interested in the scheme and the poem was his contribution to the fund. “After the premises had been acquired he made a copy of the manuscript, and presented it to the committee for use as an exhibit. There are thus two manuscripts of the one poem in existence.’’ Mr. Calkin added that no complaint has been made to the police, and that his young American client is “in midAtlantic on his way home.”