A small archive of letters and signature slips from Lady Florence Baker 1893
BAKER (FLORENCE, Lady). Two autograph letters signed to Mrs Belfield, with accompanying autograph signature slips of Florence and husband, Sir Samuel Baker, [Newton Abbot and Bath, 20 September and 5 May 1893].
Two autograph letters, 4 pp. and 3 pp. respectively, together with their original envelopes and two autograph slips signed “Florence Baker / Sept 20ᵗʰ” and “Sam. W. Baker.” The first on embossed letterhead of Sanford Orleigh, Newton Abbot; the second on engraved stationery of the Grand Pump Room Hotel, Bath. One leaf on the first letter with card remnants to one side after removal from a scrap book, but overall, very good.
A small group of letters by the traveller and explorer Florence Baker (1841–1916), wife and collaborator of Sir Samuel White Baker (1821–1893), recalling the years following their celebrated African expeditions. Writing to a local acquaintance, Mrs Belfield, from Bristol, Florence encloses both their signatures — “I enclose our autographs as you wish to have them” — and refers to the death of “poor Major Bartlett,” before turning to the rigours of exploration: “Sir Samuel is quite sure that Stanley is all right, but it is a difficult and hard task to travel through Africa; it is not so easy as some people may imagine it to be.”
The second letter, written from the Grand Pump Room Hotel in Bath on 5 May 1893, thanks Mrs Belfield for flowers and extends an invitation to visit. Samuel was quite unwell at this point and died a few weeks later.
Florence Baker—born Flóra von Sass in Transylvania and rescued by Samuel from a Turkish slave market—became his companion on the Nile expeditions that led to the discovery of Lake Albert (1864) and to their later work in Equatoria suppressing the slave trade. Her courage and endurance made her one of the best-known women travellers of the Victorian period, though her unconventional past excluded her from London society.
A scarce set of letters, with both signatures of Sir Samuel and Lady Baker.