Autograph Letter Signed ('G. H. Seymour.'), written from St Petersburg by the English diplomat Sir George Hamilton Seymour in 1853, the year of his celebrated 'Seymour conversations' with Tsar Nicholas I, asking for three maps to be sent to him.

2pp., 12mo. Aged and creased, on Seymour's monogrammed letterhead. The letter, on the recto of the first leaf, is addressed to 'Gentlemen' (possibly Stamfords, the London firm of map-sellers). It reads: 'I shall be much obliged to you to send me the three Maps marked overleaf, mounted on <?> in a small parcel to be left at the Foreign Office to the care of F. B. Alston Th Esqre who will have the kindness to pay for the same. / The parcel to be directed to Sir Hamilton Seymour G.C.B. H.M. Minster, St Petersburg'. The recto of the second leaf carries the details of the three maps required, with the price of each, all in Seymour's hand. Docketed on reverse of second leaf. The 'Seymour conversations', which took place later in the same year, occurred as a result of the desire of Tsar Nicholas I to discuss with Britain the question of what to do if the Ottoman Empire should collapse. According to Seymour's entry in the Oxford DNB, 'The conversations were subsequently leaked in the St Petersburg Gazette and The Times and contributed to the British belief that the tsar was actively plotting the dissolution of the Ottoman empire.'