The Chairs of Great Men.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2965, 1 August 1888, Page 2

The Chairs of Great Men.

tVliat Englishman has not a lively sense of the interest taken in the ohairs of great men? The picture of the vacant ohair at Gad's Hill on the 9th of Juno, 1870, still hangs in many a drawing-room. A collection of the chairs of great men possessses peculiar interest, and that which the late Mr Georgo Godwin formed in Cromwoll Place, London, was both curious and interesting. The chairs collected by Mr Godwin, which have been brought to tho hammer, filled a whole library, sorry spectacles of departed greatness, as The Times account of them runs. The ohair of Shakespeare would not fetch muoh if Mr Donnelly had his own way, but Mr Godwin believed in both tho chair and the man who sat and wroto iu it. It mado 120 guineas and is to become the Editor's chair at the office of tho Era. Fancy, writing dramatic criticisms in tho chair of Shakespeare! It is a little stiff oaken ohair, duly oredentialed by an inscription dating from tho time of Garrick himself. A chain strotohed across the elbows of this precious chair to keep off those who would presume to sit on so venerable a seat, Then there was the library chair of John Gray, Anno Boleyn's ohair, which came out of Hevor Castle some 40 years ago, and Dr Watt's stout, angular, oaken ohair. The chair iu which sat Sir Walter Ealoigh is described as an important and stately seat, tho framework being of turuod ball work, inne Boleyn had sat in her queenly chair to be adored by her lover, and yet so fiokle and uncertain is taste, this royal rolio only fetohed ten and a half guineas. The thing is monstrous. Worse still, Sir Walter Ealeigh's famous chair brought only a couple of guineas, and Pope's chair changed

hands for five and'a half guineas. •Walter-Savage Landor sat on a rough; oaken; chair with; stout' ■ arms. ' Mrs Siddons occupied- a simple;'bamboo, chair, coarsely made, Elizabeth Barret Browning iui elegantly'embrbided easy chair:; ;Charle3'Matthews in\ a Bliabby old chair redojent to this day,'it is said of good'oigars.; There,were the chairs too,-of Lady Morgan, Louis XVI., Lytton Bulwer, Byron, Alexander Pope, and Napoleon.:- The wondet is how aiiy man could get together such a large number of precious chairs like' these, precious because of the great men arid womon who worked iu thein, and some of them have achieved their greatness. . 'l4^