Art: Desk

Shortly before he died in 1824, famed poet George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron, bequeathed his desk to his valet. He himself had often hated this mahogany desk with its dozen secret drawers, its rickety legs which folded up so that it could be carried about like a trunk, its green-baize writing board, its little pigeonholes for ink and sand and quill. He had used it most in moments of depression; waking up in Italy after a night of debauch, he would sit before it for an hour or more, trying to trace out some verses of Don Juan, a poem which bored him before its completion. Whenever he saw the desk being set up in his chambers after some journey, it reminded him of an interminable effort. He had never, on any occasion, been content when he began writing on it, he had never been honestly satisfied when he pushed back his chair and left it. But John Jeffrey, his valet, seemed to admire its neat construction; he kept Byron’s shaving apparatus neatly tucked away in a hidden compartment which could be opened only by pulling a certain brass bolt.

On Feb. 16, 1850, John Jeffrey wrote this letter to one Dr. Hayes: “The writing desk I have just sold you was formerly the property of Lord Byron and was used by him when he wrote Don Juan. This fact I know. . . .” In 1890 one William Warren, a London journalist, offered it to the Chicago World’s Fair for $25. After the World’s Fair, the desk was purchased by a Swiss clockmaker named Uhry, living in Chicago.

A little while ago one Mrs. Adele Louise Gerhardt found it at the house of Mr. Uhry in Oradell, N. J., where he had moved from Chicago. When she praised it, Mr. Uhry said: “I am an old man and presently will die. I want this to fall into the hands of somebody who will love it.” Mrs. Gerhardt promptly took the desk to Harry F. Marks, Manhattan bookdealer, who, last week, to the astonishment of antiquarians, who are forever losing track of the things they admire the most, announced that he had sold Lord Byron’s desk. The purchaser withheld his name because he wanted to give it to his mother, for a surprise, on Christmas. Lord Byron’s razors were still in their proper compartment.