Arts diary: What price Byron's dispatches from Ali Pasha's Constantinople harem? About £180k

Published on Wednesday 7 October 2009 19:35

COLOURFUL, unguarded and saucy, they have been described as the most important collection of letters by Lord Byron to reach the market in 30 years – 15 letters in his own hand, plus fragments, valued at up to £180,000.

So would the National Library of Scotland, which acquired a treasure trove of Byron letters as part of the 31 million Murray Archive purchase, want to add them to its collection?

The letters in question are part of the library of Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery, formerly housed at Dalmeny House, the family's Scottish seat. Particularly attractive because they are mostly unknown and unpublished, the letters go under the hammer at Sotheby's on 29 October.

The letters on sale are from Byron to his close friend and "brother minstrel" Francis Hodgson, on subjects ranging from the poet's deceased dog to the unisex harem of Ali Pasha in Constantinople.

They seem a good match for those in the vast John Murray publishing archive, housed at the NLS since 2006, which already includes 58 letters from Hodgson to Byron.

One hurdle – just possibly – is that four years after the deal to buy the archive took shape, and three years after it arrived in Scotland, the NLS is still only half-way through raising the 6.5m it put towards the 31.2m purchase. The rest came from the Scottish Government and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Library staff insist there is no connection, but when pressed on exactly how much has been raised they seem strangely elusive.

John Murray, who oversaw the sale of the family firm's archive, is phlegmatic. The Murray archive already includes 1,200 Byron letters, he notes, and more than 10,000 in total to and about Byron. "We don't feel we really need them," he says, adding that they can afford to "be generous and let other people do their Byron collecting".

He has no complaints about the library's fundraising efforts. They are nothing short of "miraculous", he says, given other claims on public money such as the Burns Birthplace Museum or Abbotsford House, Sir Walter Scott's old home.

Mad for it

MADNESS trumpeter, vocalist and songwriter Carl Smyth turned nostalgic about touring Scotland when talking up the band's forthcoming headline slot at this year's Edinburgh Hogmanay bash.

Smyth – better known as Chas Smash – remembers heading to the Glasgow Apollo back in the old days. "You could tell when Shirley Bassey had been in town, because the dressing room had been refurbished," he says.

Smyth asked to say a special hello to Bill Murray, "one of the last big furry feet brothers (sic] … He makes Highland Papers, extra-long cigarette papers for the smoking of combustibles. He's a credit to Scottish exports."

Lest you think Madness have been up to naughtiness on their bus trips up the M1, Smyth stresses they are and always have been a family band.

"I usually bring my children, all our children," said the father of three, who turned 50 recently. "Put it this way, on our bus you didn't get Deep Throat, you got Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That's what we like."

A world apart

SEEING is believing when it comes to the Boyle Family. It's hard to realise how effective it is to see a piece of coal mine floor, beach or pavement lifted onto the gallery wall until you've actually experienced it.

Earthly Art, opening at Bourne Fine Art on Friday, is the first show of works by the Boyle Family since the Scottish National Gallery of Art show in 2003. It looks to be a powerful collection.

The family includes the late Mark Boyle, from Glasgow, his partner Joan Hills, from Edinburgh, and their children, Sebastian and Georgia. This selling exhibition is mostly of pieces from the 1960s and 1970s, when the younger Boyles were children and teenagers.

The Boyle Family's methods of choosing and exactly reproducing the six feet square pieces of ground shown in their work is cloaked in secrecy.

Shepherd's Bush London Study is a 6ft-square fibreglass-based reproduction of a piece of dark cobbled street; at 70,000 it's the priciest piece in the show.

Also look out for works entitled Pavement with Concrete Fragments and Car and Bicycle Tyre Tracks.