BERNHARD

1p., 12mo. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. He is enclosing an invitation (and puts the word in inverted commas) for the New English Art Club, and gives the date of the 'sending in day'. The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy by young English artists returning from Paris.

The card is 4.5 x 7.5 cm, with 'Le Comte Moltke | Grand Veneur du Roi.' engraved in copperplate. In fair condition, aged and with slight staining from previous mounting on the reverse. The Moltke family originated in Mecklenburg, and by the eighteenth century members were prominent figures in the Danish court. Friedrich Philip Victor von Moltke settled in Holstein in 1805, and was left impoverished when the French army plundered his town house in Lübeck, and burned his country house. On 2 January 1819 the Journal de Paris carried a report from Berlin that on 22 December 1818 'M.

12mo: 4 pp. 78 lines. Very good. A highly interesting letter, addressed by Depping to his collaborator on an edition of the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (8 vols, 1817) praised by Brunet as the most complete that had yet appeared. Written in French. Such is the strength of Depping's feeling that he cannot bring himself to address Villenave directly. He begins by stating that he hopes that evening to end an arrangement with Villenave which fills him with disgust (qui m'accable de degout).

Anglo-German engineer (1842-1927), who administered 'a portion of the conquered territory for the German Government' following the Franco-Prussian War, and who, following his naturalisation as a British citizen in 1876, 'invented practically the mono-rail, now known as the High Speed Mono-Rail System, and obtained two acts of Parliament for the construction of the Manchester and Liverpool Electric Express Railway in 1901 and 1902' ('Who was Who'). No items by this important figure are present in the British Library Department of Manuscripts.