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Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912)
Details
Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912)
Autograph manuscript, 'Acrostic', a rhyming acrostic riddle, n.p. [Discovery, McMurdo Sound], n.d. [June 1902], a quatrain and four couplets, the solution laid out at the lower margin, one page, folio.
PROVENANCE:
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922), and thence by descent.
One of Scott's characteristically deft contributions to The South Polar Times, under Shackleton's editorship. The 'Acrostic' begins with a riddle:
'All things the sea doth flavour
With its far pervading savour
As, with its briny touch it treats
The sailorman and what he eats'.
Four couplets follow, providing clues to words which form a double acrostic, the first and last letters of each line spelling the words 'salt meat'. The solution is laid out at the lower margin, which has then been folded inwards (there is faint off-setting of the ink above), suggesting that Shackleton himself may have been the first to attempt to solve the riddle.
'Acrostic' was one of Scott's noms de plume in The South Polar Times; the first number proposed a monthly double acrostic, with a prize at the end of the series for the greatest number of correct solutions. The present acrostic appeared as the first of a second series in the third number of the SPT, June 1902. An attractive instance of Scott and Shackleton's collaboration in the early stages of the Discovery expedition.
Autograph manuscript, 'Acrostic', a rhyming acrostic riddle, n.p. [Discovery, McMurdo Sound], n.d. [June 1902], a quatrain and four couplets, the solution laid out at the lower margin, one page, folio.
PROVENANCE:
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922), and thence by descent.
One of Scott's characteristically deft contributions to The South Polar Times, under Shackleton's editorship. The 'Acrostic' begins with a riddle:
'All things the sea doth flavour
With its far pervading savour
As, with its briny touch it treats
The sailorman and what he eats'.
Four couplets follow, providing clues to words which form a double acrostic, the first and last letters of each line spelling the words 'salt meat'. The solution is laid out at the lower margin, which has then been folded inwards (there is faint off-setting of the ink above), suggesting that Shackleton himself may have been the first to attempt to solve the riddle.
'Acrostic' was one of Scott's noms de plume in The South Polar Times; the first number proposed a monthly double acrostic, with a prize at the end of the series for the greatest number of correct solutions. The present acrostic appeared as the first of a second series in the third number of the SPT, June 1902. An attractive instance of Scott and Shackleton's collaboration in the early stages of the Discovery expedition.
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