NEWTON, Isaac (1643-1727)

Лот 50
14.12.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Продан
£ 35 280
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Место проведенияВеликобритания, London
Комиссияsee on Website%
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Archive
ID 870904
Лот 50 | NEWTON, Isaac (1643-1727)
Оценочная стоимость
£ 12 000 – 18 000
NEWTON, Isaac (1643-1727)

Autograph draft letter initialled (‘I.N.’) [to ?John Conduitt], n.p., n.d. [after 1717].

In English and Latin. One page fragment, c.60 x c.150mm, the recto with 8 lines of text and terminal subscription in English, a draft for a letter, the verso with c.18 words in Latin, apparently notes for a work on religion, (written on a fragment of a larger leaf, uneven edges affecting the initialled signature, creases and spotting). Framed (345 x 335mm). [With:] Envelope containing ownership records.



Provenance: Isaac Newton – Catherine Barton (1679–1739) – her daughter, Catherine (b.1721), m. John, 1st Viscount Lymington – Earls of Portsmouth – Henry Fellowes (1799-1847), son of the 4th Earl of Portsmouth – Lady Louisa Fortescue (1813-1899); annotated in pencil on the verso ‘Sir Isaac Newton given me by Harry Fellowes his kinsman’, by descent to her grandson – C. Wyld; his ownership notes, May 1924, on an envelope – Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), bookseller; typed letter of authentication addressed to him, 10 January 1955, sold to – Stanley Scott; his ownership note dated July 1959.



Newton drafts a letter to a family member on a living in the Church of England sought by his ‘young profligate’ half-nephew Benjamin Smith. No autograph letter by Newton has sold at international auction since 2005; the present draft, which is unpublished, has autograph notes for a work on religion on the verso. ‘Sr I shewed Mr Wortley your Letter & he wondered that Mr Smith should not acquaint him with his sons being an undergraduate & not yet capable of the Living. However I return you my hearty thanks for your readiness to have so favoured me in this matter had the youth been capable. I hope this Letter will find you in better health than you we [cancelled] fully recove[r]d of yo[u]r feaver & your Lady is also in good health. And wishing health & happiness to you both I remain yo[u]r very affectionate Unkle & humble Servant I.N.’



The mathematician and biographer of Newton, Augustus de Morgan, described Newton’s nephew Benjamin Smith (b.c. 1700, rector of Linton-in-Craven, 1743-1776) in Newton: His Friend: and his Niece (1885) as ‘one of the most marked specimens of a profligate clergyman at a time when such specimens were more frequent than now’, so notorious in early youth that Newton was moved to write a frank letter to his young relative in such ‘unpresentable language’ that it was destroyed by the clergyman into whose hands it later fell for the sake of Newton’s reputation. It is presumably this nephew to whom Newton refers in the present draft, son of his half-brother Benjamin Smith senior. The intended recipient of the letter may have been the politician John Conduitt (1688-1737), a cousin by marriage of the notorious Benjamin Smith by virtue of his 1717 union with Newton’s adored half-niece and heiress Catherine Barton.

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