The Personal Autograph Album of the Maid of Honor to Queen Alexandra, With the Autographs of Every British Monarch From 1837 to 1952, and Every Consort From 1901 to 1952

With an impressive selection of over 1000 signatures of royalty and other distinguished personalities of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras

This is the 9 by 11 inch oversize autograph album entitled “2500 Echoes: A Musical Birthday Book”, with imprinted music for each day of the year on the right hand pages and blank left hand pages opposite for autographs, bound in green leather with gilt decoration and title to spine, and five raised bands and all edges gilt. It contains well over 1000 original signatures, with each autograph in the album inserted at that signatory’s birthday. The book was kept by Margaret Dawnay, Maid of Honour to Queen Alexandra, and was given to her by her mother.

The British regal signatures are extraordinary in scope and include Queen Victoria (who added “June 12, 1894”); her son King Edward VII (as King, “Edward R&I”, Windsor Castle, 6th June 1906); Edward’s wife Queen Alexandra; their son King George V (two examples, one as Prince in 1907 and the other as King, 1913); George’s wife Queen Mary (as’’Victoria Mary”); George V’s eldest son King Edward VIII (two examples, one as a child, 1906, and the other as Prince of Wales, “Edward P, Sandringham, 1-1-24”); Edward’s brother King George VI, who assumed the throne when his brother abdicated (two early examples signed with his given name of Albert, 1906 and 1914); and George VI’s wife Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (“Elizabeth”, dated Sandringham, 1st January 1924). Thus every monarch from Victoria’s ascension of the throne in 1837 until George VI died in 1952 is included. The Queens Consorts Alexandra, Mary, and Elizabeth (widely known as the Queen Mother) reigned from 1901-1952. Victoria was born in 1819, and the much-beloved Queen Mother lived until 2002, yielding a span of almost two centuries.

The children of the monarchs present, who did not themselves become monarchs, are: Queen Victoria’s children Princess Helena (with her daughter Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein), Princess Louise, Prince Arthur of Connaught, and Princess Beatrice (who married Henry Battenberg); Edward VII’s daughter Princess Victoria; George V’s children Henry Duke of Gloucester (two examples, one signed Harry in 1906 and the other Henry in 1917), Princess Mary, the Princess Royal (two examples, dated 1906 and 1914), Prince John (very rare autograph), and Prince George, Duke of Kent (early example. 1918). Victoria’s cousin George, the Duke of Cambridge, is also here.

The Mountbattens are here in force, signing before the family name was changed to sound less German during World War I. There is Louis Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine (she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, he was First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty. The couple were the parents of the famed Lord Mountbatten of World War II fame). The First Sea Lord’s niece and nephews are here as: Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (she was Queen of Spain. There are two examples, 1900 and 1905); and her brothers Leopold (“Leopold of Battenberg”) and Maurice, the last two dying young their autographs are very rare. Princess Victoria’s brother Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse is here as well.

As for foreign royalty, there are: the rare autograph of the legendary King Chulalongkorn the Great of Siam, who modernized his nation and was portrayed in the film “The King and I” (he has signed in both Thai and English, and added “Windsor Castle, 23rd June 1907”); the first King of modern Norway, Haakon VII, along with his Queen Maud (1907) and their son King Olav V (who has signed at the age of nine); Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, and her children Grand Duchess Olga (the Tsar’s sister) and Grand Duke Michael (the Tsar’s brother); Prince Andrew and Princess Alice of Greece (parents of the present Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh), and Andrew’s sister Grand Duchess Marie; and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia’s children Prince Saleh and Princess Tenagne.

Important notables include in part: Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour (whose Balfour Declaration promised the Jews a national home in Palestine), British commander-in-chief during the Boer War Lord Roberts VC, the top British general in World War I Douglas Haig, French ambassador to Britain Paul Cambon, women’s suffrage advocate Christabel Pankhurst, Norwegian explorer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen, and Randall Davidson (as Archbishop of Canterbury).

Plus some thousand other names of royals, nobles, notables in different positions and walks of life. The contents of the book are somewhat loose in the binding (which could be corrected), but the pages themselves are generally tightly bound and are clean and bright.