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Our Growing Collections

ROLAND BAUGHMAN

Gifts

EROL gift. Mr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Berol have added
significantly to their earlier benefactions. To be re¬
corded here is a large collection of musical works,
comprising nearly 5,000 printed books and just under 400
manuscripts, ranging in date from the 17th to the 20th century.
Also included are more than 1700 pieces of American sheet
music, largely of the 19th century, among them being three rare
first editions of Stephen Foster songs—Jeanie With the Light
Brown Hair (1854); My Old Kentucky Home (1853); and Old
Folks at Home (1851).

Of surpassing interest are three post-Re\olution holograph
letters from Cieorge Washington to the merchant-patriot, Clem¬
ent Biddlc, and an extraordinary series of notes and letters that
relate to Edmund Burke's efforts, through Lord North, to ar¬
range for the exchange of two important prisoners of w ar, the
American, Henry Laurens, and the Englishman, General Bur-
goyne—all dated 14 December 1781.

Finally, the gift includes a superb group of nine original draw¬
ings and paintings by Arthur Rackham. The group comprises
two preliminary sketches for plates to be used in Dana's Two
Years Before the Mast (1904); a water-color painting of the
Ponte Vecchio, dated 1905; "Lyme from Gun Cliffe," a pen-
and-ink drawing dated January 8, 1901; an oil painting, framed,
of three girls playing, against a woodland background; and four
large pen-and-ink and water-color renderings of subjects used
in Midsummer Night's Dream (1908), Siegfried (1911), and
Malory's King A rthur (1917).

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