HAMPTON

For more information on the squadron see Charles Dickon's 'Americans at War in Foreign Forces: A History, 1914-1945' (2014). After some difficulties over its status and that of its members, and with the disapproval of American Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, the unit was formed in London in June 1940, with Brigadier-General Wade Hampton Hayes (1879-1956) as commanding officer. After some string-pulling by Charles Sweeny, the Thompson Company in America contributed 100 Tommy Guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition, and members contributed their cars, painted in camouflage at their own expense.

3pp., 12mo. Bifolium on mourning paper. Good, on lightly-aged paper. He writes to thank Gardiner for sending him 'a copy of your printed but unpublished Report to His Majesty's Government on the danger of governing Gibraltar as a Colony'. Gardiner's report 'forms an appropriate termination' to his 'administration of the affairs of the "Rock," & I shall read it with the interest and attention due to your long Experience in that Fortress'. He ends by sending his compliments to Lady Gardiner.

Landscape photograph, 19.5 x 14.5 cm, laid down on a piece of thin card cut from an album, 18 x 21 cm. Around sixty boys are posed in four rows in front of a grand house, with two masters to the right and two to the left, and with a fifth in the centre of the group. The group are surprisingly fat-faced, posing sulkily in jackets, with some waistcoats and tam o'shanters. Five more boys look out of a downstairs window, three from an upstairs window, and one peeks out from behind the front door.

12mo, 2 pp. Bifolium. Twenty-one lines. Text clear and complete. On discoloured paper. Begins 'I think if you go into The Park at Hampton Court you will easily satisfy yourself that I am justified in withholding my consent to its being stript of its turf'. He considers that 'positive injury [will be] done to the Pasture', and as 'it is expected that we should maintain Deer to the number of 500. or more & that we endeavour to obtain from the feeding of Cattle some portion of the rent payable to Lady Bloomfield', consent cannot be given 'to diminish the food in the Park'.

On one side of a piece of laid paper, with pot watermark, 26 x 20 cm. On sound, crisp paper, heavily foxed, and with slight wear to extremities, and remains of previous mounting at corners of reverse. Two small oval stains beneath text, and small clipping from autograph dealer's catalogue laid down in bottom left-hand corner. Firm signature. Fifteen lines of text beneath two-line date in Latin.