Letter on the headed paper of 14, the Royal Crescent, Bath, in the firm hand of Mrs. Penelope Penrose, widow of the late Lieut.-Colonel R. F. Penrose, 22nd Foot. Posted at Bath on the evening of the 4th of December, 1879; received at the Strand offices of Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on the morning of the 6th. A pen-and-ink sketch of the pendant accompanies the letter on a separate small sheet.
14, the Royal Crescent, Bath, the 4th of December, 1879.
Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge 13 Wellington Street, Strand, London.
Gentlemen,
It is with regret rather than indignation that I write you these few lines. I purchased on the nineteenth of November, at the second session of the Barlin sale, Lot 47 — a silver-and-niello bird-form pendant, said to be early Byzantine, bearing an inscription in Greek upon the reverse and exhibiting a small old bend at the leading edge of the lower left wing. I paid for it the sum of one hundred and forty-two pounds, which sum was not inconsiderable for a widow of fixed income and which I paid with a careful pleasure, having attended the viewing on the seventeenth and held the object in my own hand.
The pendant which was delivered into my drawing-room by your firm's carrier on the twenty-first of November is not the pendant I bought.
It is a pendant of the right form. It is silver. It bears niello-work in a chevron pattern across the wings — but the chevron is not the chevron of Lot 47, the angles being more obtuse and the strokes appreciably narrower than the strokes I examined at the viewing. It has no Greek inscription. The lower left wing is whole, with no bend whatever, and the metal of that wing carries the polish of a piece much-handled and not long-resting — which the Barlin piece, by your own catalogue's description, was not.
I enclose a small sketch I have made of the piece as delivered, beside which I have placed (from my memory of the viewing, which is sharp) a sketch of Lot 47 as I bought it. I am not an artist; I am a woman who looks at the things she pays for. The two pieces are not the same piece.
I do not wish to make a scandal. I have not written to the Times. I am writing to you because I trust your firm's reputation, which is what I was paying for as much as for the pendant, and because I would prefer the matter to be sorted between us. I should be grateful if Mr. Hodge would, when his schedule permits, consider what enquiries the firm can make as to whether the pendant I bought was, between the close of the hammer at three o'clock on the nineteenth and the wrapping for the carrier on the morning of the twenty-first, exchanged for the piece I have at present in my drawing-room cabinet.
I shall keep the substitute piece in safe custody pending your reply. I shall not consult any other antiquary in the matter until I have heard from you.
I remain, gentlemen, your obedient servant,
Penelope Penrose (Mrs.)
[At the foot of the letter, in a smaller hand and a fainter ink, by way of postscript:]
P.S. — I had thought, on the day of the viewing, that the gentleman seated against the south wall on the day of the sale was Mr. Karras, an Athenian antiquary whom I met once at Brighton in 1872. I did not greet him; he did not greet me. I mention it only because he had, on the occasion of our meeting at Brighton, a great deal to say of the niello-work of the Byzantine ninth century. He may be in London still. — P. P.