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272

John G. Magee

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:15,000.00 - 17,000.00 USD
John G. Magee

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Auction Date:2011 Sep 14 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
American Episcopal pastor (1884–1953)who filmed Nanking massacre victims. His son (1922–1941) was a pilot and poet best remembered for High Flight. TLS, two pages, 7.75 x 10.5, July 9, 1947. Lengthy letter to an Agentine publisher granting permission to publish the famous poem ‘High Flight’ written by his son. In part: “Forgive me for being so slow about answering your letter of June 13th, asking permission to use my son’s sonnet ‘High Flight’ in your forthcoming book, ‘Fifteen Poems of Fate and Freedom’…We shall be very glad to let you use his poem, and thank you for the thought of sending us a copy of the book when completed. About three or four years ago ‘High Flight’ was translated into Spanish in some Magazine. I think it was a Pharmaceutical Magazine of some kind prepared in North America for Latin America. Some doctor or chemist down there in Buenas [sic] Aires saw it and wrote to us for a copy of the original.”

The elder Magee gives a three paragraph biography of his son and then relates the history of the poem. In part: “After getting his wings at the top of the class in a training camp of the Royal Canadian Air Force he was sent abroad about the first of July 1941…while on a training flight and before he had been in combat, he composed that exquisite little sonnet at an altitude of 30,000 feet in a Spitfire, and sent it home to us in his regular letter, not knowing that he had done anything great. When he was killed four days after Pearl Harbor we gave it to the newspapers, and within about ten days it had been published in about every newspaper of importance in the USA…While on practice maneuvers with two other planes, practicing getting in and out of clouds, as he came out of a cloud he ran into another plane piloted by an English boy just learning to fly, both being killed instantly.” He adds a lengthy handwritten postscript concerning his permission to also use the poem as part of a war memorial. Double-matted with both sides visible to an overall size of 24 x 17.5. Intersecting folds, light creasing and wrinkling, light toning, and show-through from his postscript on the reverse of the second page and a newsprint copy of the poem, otherwise fine condition.

Thought to be the first time permission was granted for use of ‘First Flight’ in a book, this amazing letter breathes incredible life into a favorite—and most famous—aviation tribute ever conceived. On these pages the Reverend Magee, a member of the American Episcopal Church Mission remembered in his own right as filming Japanese atrocities at the Nanking Massacre in China, calls to mind another tragedy...the death of his son. Yet born from that tragedy was the younger Magee's posthumous fame, which rests on his sonnet. As his father relates here, his son “composed that exquisite little sonnet at an altitude of 30,000 feet in a Spitfire, and sent it home to us in his regular letter, not knowing that he had done anything great.” His father, then curate of Saint John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., reprinted it in church publications. It was included it in an exhibition of poems called ‘Faith and Freedom,’ at the Library of Congress in February 1942, with the original manuscript copy of the poem now held at the Library of Congress. A touching and detailed bit of correspondence that honors those men and women who ‘have slipped the surly bonds of Earth...and touched the Face of God.’
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