"WE ARE THANKFUL THAT WE HAVE GOT THROUGH THE GREAT WAR ALIVE AND WITH SOME PROPERTY LEFT" SETON (Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946, Author, Wildlife Artist and Founder of the Woodcraft Indians and founding Pioneer of the Boy Scouts of America)

Two Typed 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 long letter saying he "has just seen by the papers that Charley has had a bad motor accident. I do hope there is nothing serious about it and that long ere now he is up and about again. I suspect that his life at the Front developed the streak of recklessness that ran though the family ... Not long ago I shipped to Col. Chute all the skunks I had left in my collection - seventeen fine big breeders, and all have reached him in good shape ... I had intended to go over this last Fall, but was frightened from it chiefly by the shortage of coal, for I do not like cold houses ... We are all thankful that we have got through the Great War alive and with some property left; but I for one certainly hope that they will get that miserable beast out of Holland and put him through some trial to set a new precedent that will have its effect on future generations of rulers ...", 2 sides 8vo., 28th January, the second says "Certainly Charlie has had a tough time, but the fact that he came through shows that he is going to live a long and useful life. Things over here are really worse than they were during the war, that is, food is higher and everything turns on these necessaries of life .... we have more mouths to feed and production has been greatly reduced. That, however, is a condition that will right itself if only our misguided Government would let things alone ... I suppose the same remark applies to thing in England, though of course you have greater problems to meet. Babs evidently is getting along - nothing seems to upset him very much ..." and he mentions his own daughter, Ann (Anya SETON, 1904-1990, Best selling Author) "You would not know her now. She is a tall young lady, come out ...", 1 side A4, both De Winton, Lake Avenue, Greenwich, 12th March, both the second letter has slits caused by worming affecting some of the text, easily supplied

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.
After the Great War, on the 10th November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm crossed the border by train and went into exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. Upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in early 1919, Article 227 expressly provided for the prosecution of Wilhelm "for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties", but the Dutch government refused to extradite him, despite appeals from the Allies. King George V wrote that he looked on his cousin as "the greatest criminal in history", but opposed Prime Minister David Lloyd George's proposal to "hang the Kaiser". President Woodrow Wilson of the United States rejected extradition, arguing that prosecuting Wilhelm would destabilise international order and lose the peace


Item Date:  1920

Stock No:  39317      £450

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