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‘hotting up’ the material they also hotted up the price. In this case I was able to break the embargo but, having had no description of the material, was disappointed after all my stubborn detective work to discover that the letters were of no real use – until perhaps now – though the temptation to force some of them into my book after such a struggle was strong.
    Once a manuscript is sold at auction to a dealer there is no certain way of tracing its destination. The mail is crammed with blind letters of inquiry, and there are many culs-de-sac. I remember sending one of these letters myself and, receiving no answer, following it up after an interval with a second inquiry. This time the answer was swift and helpful. The librarian stated that he had one unspecified item that might be useful. I offered to pay the fee and was eventually rewarded with a luxurious folder complete with a covering letter explaining that, since there was only a single uncatalogued item involved, the library had waived its fee. Full of gratitude I opened the folder and found inside, beautifully copied and presented, my own original unanswered letter stamped with a warning that I did not have copyright permission to quote it.
    About the motives of private collectors I find it difficult to speculate. No person who buys the correspondence of the dead can be prevented from doing what he likes with it, except of course publish it: that is the prerogative of the copyright holder. But since holographs lose some of their financial value when published, a period of hibernation may very well suit someone who buys for capital appreciation. Though he may not legally quote anything much without copyright permission, an owner may,without breaking any law I know, burn or otherwise destroy his papers, thereby robbing himself. Or he may lock everything away in a bank vault. That is the law of property some call theft.
    Original manuscripts never lose their power of attracting textual critics, biographers and historians because handling such material is usually the nearest that they come to their subjects. They are almost literally in touch with them. Manuscript research, as Philip Larkin pointed out, can reveal the genesis and evolution of a work of literature and provide us with an archive of the writer’s life as the background of his works. ‘All literary manuscripts’, Larkin argued, ‘have two kinds of value.’ 7 He called them the magical and meaningful values. The first, which is older and universal, kindles research with a peculiar excitement and intimacy; the second, which is more technical and modern, contributes to our understanding of a writer’s intentions. Together they may enlarge our knowledge of the creative process, while contributing to the recreative process of non-fiction literature.
    All this was being frustrated while the Augustus John papers remained in limbo. What I did not know was that the National Library of Wales had been contacted by a third party acting on behalf of the purchaser. Negotiations for a private-treaty sale had started, proceeded, then stopped: and silence fell. Then at the beginning of 1988 I was contacted by a manuscript librarian at the British Library asking me to write in support of his objection, addressed to the Reviewing Committee of Works of Art, to the export of the Augustus John papers. The position seemed somewhat topsy-turvy since we were lodging an objection to something that was apparently being proposed eight years after it had actually happened. Reading between the lines, I guessed that the papers had somehow been smuggled back into the country and now posed something of a problem. In the event, the hearing in front of the Reviewing Committee never took place since the exporters agreed to sell the papers to the National Library of Wales after representatives from its Department of Manuscripts and Records had inspected the collection at Sotheby’s London office. This sale was completed in June