"MY BOAT IS THE LUSITANIA" SETON (Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946, Author, Wildlife Artist and Founder of the Woodcraft Indians and founding Pioneer of the Boy Scouts of America)

Small collection of two Typed and two Autograph Letters signed with his added bear claw pawprint, to Lord TANKERVILLE (George Montagu Bennet, 7th Earl, 1852-1931, Peer, Cowpuncher, Circus Clown and Revival Meeting Singer), the first a very long letter saying he is "most happy indeed to hear that the clouds are breaking in the black firmament of trouble that hung over your estate ... Had it not been for the history of the world at present your difficulties would have been much less. Our days are surely fallen in stormy times, nevertheless we believe that a clear dawn is not so very far ahead. This country, excepting the German-American element, is, I believe, solid for the Allies. Our President feels called on to take a neutral pose, but I don't believe he feels at all neutral. Last night I was at a dinner at which the Guest of Honor was the Premier of Canada. He took a very reasonable view. He says this war was inevitable, sooner or later the German and English ideals would clash. The winner would control the world afterward. If Germany could not win on the first dash, at the moment of her selection, with all her preparations complete and her adversaries unready what chance has she of winning now with Austria practically out of it and the Allies stronger every week. Nevertheless no one underestimates the power of the German army. We find, however, consolation in the thought that Germany has yet to face three enemies that are invincible. These enemies are hunger, finance and revolution at home. She cannot possibly feed herself for more than a year longer. We know now that the great war loan was financed by an Imperial mandate compelling every man with a savings-bank account to subscribe that amount for the war loan ... my German friends who have just returned from Germany said there were utterly staggered when anybody told them Germany had been defeated, repulsed or even halted in her forward march. Even the battle of the Marn has been explained as part of a very clever stratagem, not yet completed. When the truth is known and the wolf of hunger is at the door, the beast of Pottsdam will have an awful reckoning to face ... it is absolutely known that Von Kluck was killed in action about six weeks ago and the Crown Prince about two months ago. Also that the Kaiser is very ill ...", he continues that he is coming over to England "Leaving New York on the 30th of January. My boat is the Lusitania, due in Liverpool on the 6th of February ... I note that Charlie is in Patterson, N.J. I gave a public lecture there about six weeks ago. I am sorry he didn't turn up as I had a great group of Boy Scouts and school boys ...", 4 sides 8vo., 15th January, the next autograph letter says he has returned to London from Scotland "I looked out at Bedford & though of you all with hearty good wishes - but I was as usual on the rush. I never expected to come over this year - am amazed to realise the Sang froid of all England. America pretends she is neutral. She is not. She is wholly with the Allies. I saw Charlie and was delighted to see him looking so well ...", 3 sides 8vo., Savoy Hotel headed paper, 27th February, the next autograph letter is to Lady Tankerville telling her that he "went to Broadstairs as planned to lecture but when I came to enquire for 'Bobs' I found that he was away at Margate & inaccessible partly from distance but chiefly on account of school rules so I did not see the dear boy ...", 2 sides 4to., Savoy Hotel headed paper, 29th March, the final Typed Letter is to Lord Tankerville thanks him for the "perfectly splendid essay by Bobs. It has been admired by all of us, including his 'intelligent friend'. I am working away on my Fur Farm. That is, I see it every day, but of course must leave much in the hands of the hireling. I prevent my skunks nesting under ground by laying a carpet wire ... all over the bottom of the pen ... I note what you say about Dr Lindlater's 'Nature cure'. We are using many such things in America today. One of these, the Sun Cure, you will have some trouble in applying in England unless the climate has changed since I lived in England ...", 2 sides A4, The Fincherie, Greenwich, CT, 19th July all

Tankerville travelled in America in 1892, becoming friends with two revivalists, Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody, accompanying them in both America and Britain. He spent some time as a cowpuncher in the western states. He made American headlines in January 1912 when he placed his 14-year-old son, Charles, in a Boston, Massachusetts school, saying he wanted him to be "educated in a world where every one worked". He was for a time a clown in the circus and met his future wife, Leonora Sophia van Marter, when he turned a somersault over a sofa in a New York drawing-room and nearly fell into her lap.
Seton was born Ernest Evan Thompson in County Durham, England of Scottish parents. His family emigrated to Canada in 1866. Most of his childhood was spent in Toronto, Ontario. As a youth, he retreated to the woods to draw and study animals as a way of avoiding his abusive father. He won a scholarship in art to the Royal Academy in London, England. On his twenty-first birthday, Seton's father presented him with an invoice for all the expenses connected with his childhood and youth, including the fee charged by the doctor who delivered him. He paid the bill, but never spoke to his father again.
Seton met Scouting's founder, Lord Baden-Powell, in 1906. Baden-Powell had read Seton's book, The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians, and was greatly intrigued by it. Baden-Powell went on to found the Scouting movement worldwide, and Seton became the president of the committee that founded the Boy Scouts of America and was its first (and only) Chief Scout.
Only months after Seton's trip on the Lusitania, on the afternoon of 7th May, a German U-boat torpedoed the boat off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared war zone. A second, unexplained, internal explosion sent her to the seabed in 18 minutes, with the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew.


Item Date:  1915

Stock No:  39316      £750

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