Item 777 - Theodore Howard Galton's journal and poetry scrapbooks

3 vols.

A note inside the journal states that the volumes were given to "R. H. L." when he visited Hadzor circa 1975. After Hubert Galton's death, the house was used as a college for missionaries, but was being cleared prior to being sold in 1975.

Purchased from Mallams Auctioneers, September 2025.

The journal, which runs from 13 November 1845 to 26 May 1846, begins in Paris. Galton travelled as a party of nine with his parents, younger brother, cousin, and servants on a trip to Italy. He describes his journey through France to Monaco, and then Italy in detail: Genoa, Chiavari, Pisa, Florence to Rome, where they spent two months before moving on to Naples for a month, thence on to Malta, returning via Syracuse and Messina to Naples, Rome, Florence, Bologna and Venice, ending the journal in Basel. Galton describes the art and architecture he encounters, and devotes much less time to discussing his companions and people he meets.
The journal is accompanied by two volumes kept by Galton, the first identified as "A Scrap-Book, Containing occasional verses written between the years 1843 and 1850 -- and copied at various times and without any particular order" and a second "Scrap-Book No. 2" dated Hadzor 1850. The latter has fewer poems at the front of the book but includes lines written about the St Barnabas Day riots in 1851, with an update in 1872, and starting from the back cover, an epic poem [or poems?] with notes from an unidentified work. A undated letter from Anne L. Dawson shares notes gleaned from an Abbé about confraternities in Nice is tipped in.