I'm with Tony on this. It is difficult to verify and that being the case, it wouldn't be correct to pass it off as his signature. Interesting how David's letter seems to be written by someone(other than a professional typist) who is not skilled. Heavy handed keys in a number of places and a lack of a space with a line drawn through it. People's signatures do change a bit over time, but Austin's signature on David's letter, with an "S" that looks like round hand is different than the others.
I think we are spoiled by word processing and Laserjet printers and that the above letter would have been a perfectly acceptable formal communication back in 1938? Typewriters were expected to go on indefinitely with little maintenance and the typist may have been typing as Lord Austin dictated? The spelling of 'apologize' with a Z seems a little incongruous? American influence even then?
(14-11-2021, 09:23 AM)Colin Morgan Wrote: ...... The spelling of 'apologize' with a Z seems a little incongruous? American influence even then?
No, apologize with a zed was the original spelling in England. It gradually changed to an s, apologise, in England but continued with the zed in America.
Other things were similar. Over a hundred years ago us English people called Spring Onions 'Scallions'. Then we changed to calling them Spring Onions. In America they are still Scallions.
14-11-2021, 03:25 PM (This post was last modified: 14-11-2021, 03:26 PM by Mike Costigan.)
David Howe has supplied some more examples of Sir Herbert's signature, and unsurprisingly there are differences between each; after all any signature is a unique piece of writing, and it's reasonable to see significant changes over the years as well. These examples are from apprenticeship indentures from the 1930-36 period, and in fact show a remarkable similarity to the ebay item that started this thread:
So in conclusion I would suggest there is a reasonable probability that the ebay item is authentic, but probably has very little value without supporting evidence.
I had to sign 4 legal documents this week and bemoaned to my lawyer that it would be nice if I could sign with a consistent signature.
As an Archive piece, I must confess a single signature, with no provenance, holds little interest. I don't think it adds much to the collection or increases our knowledge. David's letters are of greater interest...
Those other documents are fabulous - and all have what the slip of paper doesn't - context. The reason I thought it was unlikely to be fake is that: who would bother?! That typed card is plainly from the 50s, 60s or earlier.
It all seems rather sad that Austin lived less than 4 years after being made a hereditary peer, and even more so that his son died 30 years previously, ending that which could have run for centuries. Must have been rather bittersweet for him at the time of its award.
well if he's going to type out all that script on the right old foxed paper on the right old typewriter for provenance, on each signature, good luck to him or her!!! :-)
Yes, the signed letters etc are much more interesting.
Looked it up - the situation wrt use of 'ise' and 'ize in English is interesting. Seems that 'ize' has been more common than 'ise' for 'apologize' in printed books except from 1850 to 1920. Graph shows relative occurrence in UK published books digitised by Google...
