Note: Partial letter from Sullivan to Gilbert, sent by Gilbert on 2nd June 1892 to an autograph hunter, Miss Constance Sim, who with callous disregard for its contents, cut it and pasted it into her album, next to Gilbert's covering letter. The first section is visible only by holding the letter to a strong light. It reads:

"...all events, as you see yourself, I am pretty well filled up until the Leeds Festival is on in October. I suppose you will be back in England at Easter , so shall I. We could have a talk then and probably arrive at some settlement. Do you remember my telling you, when I came back from Egypt in '82, how I longed to do a Cairo (or other Egyptian town) story with you ? That I thought the...

[missing line or two]

Be sure when you are there not the miss the "Mouled" and the great Dervish gathering at Abbaseyieh, just outside Cairo. I saw both the departure and the return of the sacred carpet from Mecca. The weather is beastly here and I am not very well thank you.

Yrs very truly,

Arthur Sullivan."

The letter dates from early 1892. It is clear that Gilbert is about to depart for Egypt, and although he made four visits there in his lifetime (Oct/Nov 1885; late 1889 to early 1890; Feb 1892; late 1900) only the 1892 trip fits with the references to Easter and the Leeds Festival. This may also explain why a few months later the letter was on WSG's desk, handy to be passed on to Miss Sim, possibly after removal of the first page.

That it is from Sullivan to Gilbert is beyond dispute, even without the supporting evidence of Miss Sim's album. It is unthinkable that in 1882 Sullivan would have considered collaborating on "a story" with anyone other than WSG.

It is known that while in Egypt in 1882 Sullivan had made some notes for a potential Egyptian symphony, but that he had had discussions with Gilbert at that time about an Egyptian piece for the Savoy is apparently new information. Of course Sullivan would finally compose the score for The Rose of Persia, with its Middle Eastern setting, in 1899. In the Spring of 1892 Sullivan was in Cannes, and appeared to be dying. Gilbert was already working on Utopia Limited, and it may be that the disagreement referred to in the letter may relate to their earliest discussions about collaborating once more.

Letters between G&S rarely appear on the market, and it is remarkable that one should now surface which, in its few surviving lines, adds much relevant information to our knowledge about the pair, and their working method.

NB: The back of the album page to which the letter is pasted has autographs of Sir George Grove (author of Grove's Dictionary of Music) and composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

Condition: The partial letter has been pasted to an album page, so that the reverse is only readable with the use of a strong light source. We have been advised that it would not be wise to attempt to remove it, as it may cause irreparable damage, especially as the letter can be entirely deciphered without such an invasive technique. There are the remains of hard pencil notes in the margins of the album page relating to the careers of the signatories, but the Sullivan letter itself is clean, with just a few glue spots at the extreme margin. Some extremely gentle rippling of the letter surface has been greatly magnified in the scan above.

Price: £2800 (c.$6060)