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Watson (Sir William

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53pp. 8vo & 1p. folio, Towcester, Dublin & elsewhere, 15th November 1909 - 6th May 1916, sending the poem to Cecil Harmsworth, "The enclosed sonnet is, as you will observe a tribute - I think I may say as sincere as it is obviously disinterested - to your brother, Lord Northcliffe. I sent it a few days ago to the Times, thinking that the editor might just possibly care to print it on the Daily Mail's '20th Birthday', but he has returned it to me for reasons which of course I quite understand and appreciate. I am not sending it to Lord Northcliffe as my acquaintance with him does not extend beyond shaking hands at your table in the House of Commons"; and 4 others including a letter on behalf of the editor of The Times thanking him for the sonnet, "but to say that he thinks it would be unbecoming to insert it in any newspaper in which Lord Northcliffe has an interest" and a T.L.s. from Northcliffe, 12th May 1916, "I was delighted that William Watson should have thought it well to write such a sonnet and also pleased with Daphne's skill will enable it to be printed properly. I have told the 'Sunday Pictorial' to communicate to William Watson", folds(12)

***Watson's three Alfreds are the Anglo-Saxon king ("the care-crowned king"), Tennyson ("Victoria's golden warbler") and Northcliffe. "It being impossible to publish the Sonnet in a newspaper under N's direction it was printed in the Sunday Pictorial or Daily Mirror - I forget which." - CH. 23/IX/1933..

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