“1st Baron Houghton" Richard Monckton Milnes Signed Envelope Mounted For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! “1st Baron Houghton" Richard Monckton Milnes Hand Addressed Signed/Initialed Envelope Mounted. 

patron of literature and politician. Milnes was born in London, the son

of Robert Pemberton Milnes,

of Fryston Hall,

Castleford, West Yorkshire, and the

Honourable Henrietta, daughter of Robert

Monckton-Arundell, 4th Viscount Galway. He was educated privately,

and entered Trinity College, Cambridge,

in 1827. There he was drawn into a literary set, and

became a member of the famous Apostles Club, which then included Alfred Lord Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, Richard Chenevix Trench, Joseph Williams Blakesley,

and others. After graduating with an M.A. in 1831, Milnes travelled abroad,

spending some time at the University of Bonn. He

went to Italy and Greece, and published in 1834 a volume of Memorials

of a Tour in some Parts of Greece, describing his experiences.  Milnes returned to London in 1837, and was

elected to Parliament as member In

parliament he interested himself particularly in the question of copyright and the conditions of reformatory schools. He

left Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel's

party over the Corn Law controversy, and was

afterwards identified in politics with Lord

Palmerston. His easy good nature had the effect that his political

career was viewed with less seriousness by his contemporaries than it might

otherwise have been. In 1848, he went to Paris to see something of the

revolution, and to fraternise with both sides. On his return he wrote, as a

‘Letter to Lord Lansdowne,' 1848, a pamphlet on the events of that year, in

which he offended the conservatives by his sympathy with continental

liberalism, and in particular with the struggle of Italy against Austria. During

the Chartist riots of 1848, Matthew Arnold wrote to his mother: Tell Miss Martineau it is said here that Monckton Milnes

refused to be sworn in a special constable, that he

might be free to assume the post of President of the Republic at a moment's

notice.

In 1863, Palmerston elevated Milnes to the peerage as Baron

Houghton, of Great Houghton in the West Riding of the County of York.

George W. E. Russell said

of him: "As years advanced he became not (as the manner of most men is)

less Liberal, but more so; keener in sympathy with all popular causes; livelier

in his indignation against monopoly and injustice."

Milnes' literary career was often influenced by church matters. He wrote

a tract in 1841, which was praised by John Henry Newman. He took part in the discussion about "Essays and Reviews",

defending the tractarian position in One

Tract More (1841). He published two volumes of verse in 1838, Memorials

of Residence upon the Continent and Poems of Many Years, Poetry

for the People in 1840 and Palm Leaves in 1844. He

also wrote a Life and Letters of Keats in 1848, the material

for which was largely provided by the poet's friend, Charles Armitage among the most popular of their day. In 1868, Lord Houghton was elected to the Royal Society. In 1870, he was elected a member of the American his piety, he had apparently an almost unsurpassed collection

of erotic literature, which he bequeathed to the British Library, a collection known to few in his lifetime. A

man whom his biographer Saunders said, "had many fine tastes and some

coarse ones," Milnes authored The Rodiad, a pornographic poem on the subject of flagellation.

However, his chief distinctions were his sense of literary merit in

others, and the way he fostered it. He was surrounded by the most brilliant men

of his time, many of whom he had been the first to acclaim. His reputation

rests largely on the part he played, as a man of influence in society and in

moulding public opinion on literary matters, in connection with his large

circle of talented friends. He secured a pension for Tennyson,

helped to make Ralph Waldo was one of the earliest champions of Algernon Charles Swinburne.

He helped David Gray by writing

a preface for The Luggie. He helped to obtain a job for Coventry Patmore at the British Museum. He was, in the traditional sense, a patron of

literature, who never abused the privileges of his position. He likewise

admired the literacy brilliance in female writers and was a firm friend of

the Gaskell family of Manchester. A believer in the advancement of women, he

supported Meta, the daughter of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell in her work as the Representative of

the Manchester Ladies' Educational Association and on The North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women. The

Spectator reported upon Meta's death in 1913 that, "Lord

Houghton once said that the conversation and society to be met with in the

house of the Gaskells at Manchester – Plymouth Grove – were the one thing which made life in

that city tolerable for people of literary tastes"