11. [Cumberbatch, Benedict] Cumberbatch, Henry Arnold / Rees, Helen / Basil Benwell Rees / William Benwell Rees / Etheldreda Blanche Barker / [Sir Winston Churchill / Sir Anthony Arthur Duncan Montague Browne [Private Secretary to Sir Winston Churchill]].

Large Family Archive of the Benwell Rees – Family, including William Benwell Rees (brother to actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s grandmother Helen Rees, by marriage to British Diplomat Henry Arnold Cumberbatch, who was Consul in Romania, Turkey and Lebanon ). The archive includes at least one manuscript letter by Henry Arnold Cumberbatch and around one thousand documents chronicling the lives of the ex-patriate Benwell Rees family from 1890-1970 in Alexandria and Monaco, including William Benwell Rees, whose marriage to Etheldreda Blanche Barker cemented the family’s role in the highest circles of Alexandria life. The archive also charts their son Basil Rees’ decade in Monaco under Princess Grace and Prince Rainer III where he served as President of the British Association in the 1950’s-‘60s and solicited a letter written by Sir Anthony Arthur Duncan Montague Browne, on Winston Churchill’s behalf on Chartwell headed paper in which the former Prime Minister declined to attend an event in Monaco [signed by Montague Browne]. The archive is held in five heavy volumes, bursting with a plethora of amazing and wonderful historical letters, ephemera, emotional messages and telegrams, old images, theatre-programmes, and especially also includes programmes of plays in which ancestors of Benedict played (J.M.Barrie, Shakespeare etc.). The original letters and documents paint an interesting picture of Benedict Cumberbatch’s grandmother’s side of the family history in the Levant, their service in the Middle East and their social lives. The five volumes are bound in bespoke red morocco over textured paper-covered-boards and they contain at least one reference to Helen Rees next to a newspaper-clipping and dozens of wonderful handwritten letters and cards. Each volume about four inches across spine with title in gilt to upper cover and around 100 leaves in each with documents mounted recto and verso throughout, with photographs, invitations, business materials and clippings that chart the family’s life in their service for the British Colonial Office. The five Volumes include for example: Volume 1: The Benwell Rees’: begins with Egyptian Gazette, 1890 and a programme for a performance c1900 at the Port Theatre, Marina, Alexandria of Rumpelstilkskin; visiting cards and contemporary reports of the marriage of W B Rees and Etheldreda Blanche Barker in Alexandria, February 1901; Windsor Hotels prospectus and flyer (a WBR enterprise); 1913 Casino de Monte Carlo ticket for Ethel Rees; Kings School Canterbury ephemera and St Johns’ College, Cambridge for Basil Rees from 1920’s, graduated June 1924. Volume 2: The Benwell Rees’ Vol II, 1920’s-1990’s: includes J M Barrie, Quality Street programme for English Girls’ School, Alexandria, 1941; invitations from Princess Grace of Monaco etc Volume 3: Basil Rees Vol III, cover nearly detached, 1953- Basil Rees living at 2 Rue Origene, Alexandria, and covering period of move to Palais Majestic, Monaco after which he served as President of the British Association and his sudden death in 1967. Invitations to dinner and place settings with the Prince and Princess of Monaco. Birthday greetings; international stamp collecting societies. Photographic ‘Permis de Sejour’ for William Benwell Rees in Monaco, October 1918. Volume 4: Basil Rees Vol. IV Begins with telegram from Rees to the Queen; mostly very extensive formal correspondence concerned with Rees’ Presidency of he British Association in Monaco; invitations, notes, printed volume of Statutes of association from 1950, royal correspondence with Monaco and Britain. Volume 5: Basil Rees 4-5 1902 Vol II; William Basil Benwell Rees; Royal Navy ID card, British Forces, September 1943 – other material relating to Rees’ work as Duty Defence Officer at the Royal Navy Defence Base in Alexandria, HMS Nice. Volume begins in 1902 and includes Alexandria Dog Show, W B B Rees at Jesus College, Cambridge; Egypt NAAFI permits; lock of Basil Rees’ hair, aged 2 etc.

Alexandria / Monaco / etc., c. 1902 – 1967. Octavo. Half Morocco. Bindings stronger rubbed and slightly damaged.

12. Barwise, Lucy Weston / [Lucy Chapman, George Chapman, Henry Chapman]

Manuscript Autobiography, Diary and vintage photo album of the Chapman – Barwise Family. A cultured London woman’s autobiography and diary including a first hand account of ‘Fiesche’s attempt to assassinate Louis Phillippe’ which she observed while at school in Paris as a child. The manuscript has a mournful postscript by the man she left behind, her husband: ‘Alas! that I George Chapman should have to finish the record of so dear a Life…’ by Lucy Weston Barwise (1822-1876) wrote in a lockable, lined octavo notebook, crushed morocco, marbled endpapers and edges. Her autobiography was begun in January 1872 at one end of the book (16 pages); her diary appears at the other end of the book from October 22 1871-April 1874 with her husband’s postscript dating from June 1880. There is a second volume of family accounts in a lockable octavo sized ledger and a folio sized volume of family photographs, most unlabelled. Barwise’s autobiography recounts her education in Paris in the Rue Taitbout where she witnessed ‘Fiesche’s attempt to assassinate Louis Phillippe’ while watching from her music master’s house opposite the Porte St Martin, noting ‘the Duc D’Orleans [who] looked very handsome’ but shortly afterwards ‘heard a loud report and then a shout… general commotion but the crowd was so thick and immoveable’ and then ‘the King and stiff rode slowly back along the line but looking very white.’ It was only later that she discovered the casualties of ‘Fieschi’s infernal machine… It was a row of gun barrels arranged along a window so as to be discharged all at once.’ Barwise also watched the subsequent funeral from her attic window, the ‘open hearse with its draperies of black and silver’. The highlight of Chapman’s diary is a detailed account of the deaths she witnessed during the ‘Thanksgiving Day for the recovery of the Prince of Wales’ on February 27th, 1872, as seen from her husband George Chapman’s ‘office windows in Cockspur St’ behind Trafalgar Square which overlooked the procession. There she witnessed the lack of barriers and observes with horror the police charging into the surging crowd ‘The big policemen threw themselves against the men; the horses even made to dance and back heel it was a fearful struggle’with a baby almost crushed to death in front of her. There is an interesting secondhand account of Paris under the Commune via one of her daughters and frequent visits to London art exhibitions as on July 8 1871 where she saw an ‘exhibition of old masters at the Royal Academy… Crome, Ruysdael, heads by Moroni, of Titian’s Schoolmaster, Burgomaster by Rembrandt… the two heads.. by Giorgine belonging to Lord Ashburton, such colour and such expression. There are trips to Ascot and the Boat Race, a curry with friends in Wandsworth and a recitation by ‘Mr Bradman [of] the Merchant of Venice for the benefit of the Workman’s Club. It was very clever… Shylock was good but my recollection of actors, Charles Kemble, C.Kean &c made this more familiar and perhaps a little more like ranting’.

[London], c. 1871 – 1872. Octavo. Diary I: 44 pages / Diary II: 24 pages / Photoalbum: 48 pages with 120 original cabinet photographs (including a photograph of a british Forest School). Hardcover / Original full leather. All three Volumes slightly rubbed but all in very good condition. The cabinet photographs all in excellent condition and from dozens of different victorian photographers in Bath (Friese Greene), Bonn (Emil Koch), Astley (Photograpic Landscape Artist in Astley, Essex), and many others. The one diary is really a cash ledger of George Chapman where he kept track for the Chapman family with listings of expenses for Hampstead House, Henry Chapman, Edward Chapman, Oswald D. Chapman, Mrs. Barrett Chapman, Edith Louisa Chapman.

13. Aylmer, Captain James Evans Freke / Colonel F. A. Aylmer.

Pedigree of The Family of Aylmer of England and Ireland. Compiled by the Late Captain James Evans Freke Aylmer. With some additional Notes by Colonel F.A. Aylmer. [and with several manuscript annotations completing or correcting some of the Pedigrees (surely in the hand of Gerald Percy Vivian Aylmer)].

London, Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 1909. Quarto. 26 pages. Softcover / Original printed wrappers. The binding a little frayed but overall still in good condition. From the library of Gerald Percy Vivian Aylmer (1856-1936) of Walworth Castle, with his signature to the front wrapper. Extremely Rare !