Political & Historic Interest: a three draw telescope in...

Hammer

£280

Political & Historic Interest: a three draw telescope in brass and mahogany (length 24.6cm opening to 76.7cm) with folding eyeguard, made and inscribed by 'Keyzor & Bendon, successors to W.Harris & Co, 50 Holborn, London' with a dedication inscribed into the brass mounting: 'R C Graham from the Hon'ble Mountstuart Elphinstone, Hookwood 1858'.
R C Graham is almost certainly Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852 – 1936) a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer, a Liberal Party MP who became the first socialist member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. He was a founder, and the first president, of the Scottish Labour Party and went on to be a founder of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 and its first president in 1934.
The telescope was gifted to him by his uncle the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone  FRSE (6 October 1779 – 20 November 1859) a British statesman and historian, associated with the government of British India (one time Governor of Bombay, now Mumbai), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and one of the seven founders of the Royal Geographical Society.