Charles Kean, Irish-born actor and theatre manager: autograph note, signed, to theatre designer Thomas Grieve. (Plus a clipped signature of his wife, actress Ellen Tree)

[London? no date – simply “Thursday night” – but probably circa 1850]. Manuscript in ink, 1 page, written on the first side of an octavo bifolium of expensive notepaper (190 x 150 mm); the note is addressed ‘My dear Grieve’ (i.e. Thomas Grieve, theatre designer and scene painter), and is signed ‘Yours sincerely C. Kean’; this was evidently a cover note that accompanied a partial draft of a new production by Kean, who writes: ‘I send you the first act of the Easter piece. As soon as you can, let me have it back pray do, as I require it immediately. You shall have the second act as soon as I gets it….’; well preserved and tipped onto a nineteenth-century album page (verso blank); mounted below it is a fine clipped signature of English actress Ellen Tree (circa 1840), who married Charles Kean in 1842 and subsequently became known as Mrs Kean; the compiler of the album has annotated the page beside the signature ‘Mrs Charles Kean’.

Provenance: Autograph album compiled by Jane Emma Murphy (Balcombe) (1854-1924), “The Briars,” Mornington, Victoria (Australia); à Beckett family, Melbourne (by descent).