ROSES

Two pages, 8vo, blue paper, closed tear not affecting texyt, a bit rumpled but text clear and complete as follows: Leslie [Caron, first wife] & I are delighted to hear that you're getting married. I'm a firm believer in a bourgeois base for artists! | Shan't see your student I'm afraid till I return from my three month rest. We leave on Tuesday. But I'm sure John [Barton, co-director] will take good care of him. | I hope you enjoy the Histories. They've been misery to do, but I think are my most important work to date.

Painfully appropriate words (‘The old friends leave us soon or late’), set to music within days of the composer’s death. Among Weatherly’s many lyrics are ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Roses of Picardy’. See his obituary in the Oxford DNB, and Löhr’s three-page obituary, with portrait, in the Musical Herald, London, February 1889. Löhr was the father of the composer Hermann Löhr (1871-1943). 2pp, 4to, on the facing pages of a bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged, with a couple of closed tears unobtrusively repaired with archival tape. At head of first (left-hand) page: ‘Friends.