TWO SIDED LETTER ( REPAIR ACROSS THE CENTRE ) , HAND WRITTEN AND SIGNED BY ...................

Sir Henry William Lucy JP, (5 December 1842 – 20 February 1924) 

was one of the most famous English political journalists of the Victorian era. He was acknowledged as the first great lobby correspondent. Lucy wrote articles for Punch, Strand Magazine, The Observer, The New York Times and many others. He also wrote books detailing the workings of the Houses of Parliament and two autobiographies. He was Knighted in 1909. Lucy was widely known in the United Kingdom and in North America. President Woodrow Wilson said his articles in The Gentleman's Magazine inspired his mind and propelled him into public life. Lucy was a serious commentator of parliamentary affairs, but also an accomplished humourist and a parliamentary sketch-writer. His friend, the explorer Ernest Shackleton, named a mountain in Antarctica after him.

Life and career[edit]

Henry Lucy was born in Crosby, near Liverpool in 1842,^[a][1] the son of Robert Lucy, a rose-engine turner in the watch trade, and his wife, Margaret Ellen Kemp. He was baptised, William Henry on 23 April 1843 at St. Michael's Church, Crosby. While he was still an infant the family removed to Everton, Liverpool, where he attended the private Crescent School until August 1856; thereafter until 1864 he was junior clerk to Robert Smith, hide merchant, of Redcross Street, Liverpool.

While working as a clerk he had poetry published in the Liverpool Mercury; taught himself shorthand. Worked for the Shrewsbury Chronicle as chief reporter from 1864,^[2] and for Shrewsbury's local Observer, and the Shropshire News. Before giving notice to the Chronicle he wrote leader articles for the other Shrewsbury papers, which mostly replied to his own leaders in the Chronicle the week before, besides writing "penny-a-liners" of Shropshire news for London newspapers.^[3]

Lucy married on 29 October 1873 Emily Anne (1847–1937), daughter of his old schoolmaster at Liverpool, John White. There were no children of the marriage.

Lucy lived in Paris during 1869 and learned French. After returning to England he wrote for Pall Mall Gazette from 1870 and as parliamentary reporter for Daily News from 1873. He stayed with the Liberal newspaper, for which he was promoted the editor. He was a parliamentary sketch writer for Punch from 1881.^[4] He used the pseudonym "Toby, M.P." from 1881 to 1916. He wrote the weekly column "The Essence of Parliament" in Punch magazine for 35 years. When not writing under one of his pseudonyms, he was usually styled Henry W. Lucy.

In 1880, Lucy began writing for The Observer the Cross Bench column. This he continued to do for 29 years.

Lucy's lasting memorial is in the volumes he compiled from his Punch parliamentary sketches: A Diary of Two Parliaments (2 vols., 1885–1886), A Diary of the Salisbury Parliament, 1886–1892 (1892), A Diary of the Home Rule Parliament, 1892–1895(1896), A Diary of the Unionist Parliament, 1895–1900 (1901), and The Balfourian Parliament, 1900–1905 (1906). They amount to a history of the Commons in its heyday and have been extensively mined by historians.

Lucy was a long-running friend and fund-raiser for Shackleton's expeditions to the South Pole. His generosity exceeded Shackleton's expectations, guaranteeing their success. Knighted in 1909, he was the first lobby correspondent to be seen as a social equal of the politicians in the Commons on whom he reported. He rose to national prominence during the constitutional crises of 1909–1910, during which he revealed to the Commons that Navy estimates had been as much as £60 million all along. His article was used as evidence by Hugh Foster MP to demand clarity from the government on the budgetary proposals being blocked in the Lords.^[5]

His London home was at 42 Ashley Gardens, and he was a member of the National Liberal Club.

Sir Henry Lucy left a huge sum of money, over £250,000,^[6] and was probably the wealthiest Victorian journalist who was not also a newspaper proprietor. In his will he endowed a "Sir William Henry Lucy Bed" at Shrewsbury's Royal Salop Infirmary "in memory of his pleasant connection with Shrewsbury" as a journalist.^[7] A pioneer of the profession of public affairs consultancy, Lucy had already been awarded a knighthood, when invited to Buckingham Palace by Queen Mary, to whom he presented a gift of his political anecdote collection.^[8]

Sir Henry Lucy died of bronchitis at Whitethorn, his country house at Hythe, Kent in 1924, aged 81. (The house is now known as "Lucys" on Lucys Hill).^[1] In 1935, his widow Lady Lucy donated £1,000 to found the Sir Henry Lucy Scholarship at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby. There are several portraits of Sir Henry Lucy at the National Portrait Gallery, including one by John Singer Sargent.

The mixed perceptions of his personality have been left to modern biographers to examine more deeply.^[9]

Quotes about him[edit]

US President Woodrow Wilson credited Lucy with propelling him into public life,^[10] describing his articles in The Gentleman's Magazine as "the deciding impulse of [my] life; vivid descriptions of Parliament, which took an enthralling hold on [my] young imagination" (New York Times, 1912).^[11]

"Never in the House, but always of it, Lucy seemed to occupy for a long time a position of his own, as a species of familiar spirit or licensed jester, without which no Parliament was complete." Times Obit., 1924^[12]

The journalist and writer Frank Harris said of Lucy: "He met everyone, and knew no-one."^[13]

Mount Henry Lucy (3,020 m) in Antarctica was named after him by Shackleton in 1909,^[14] as thanks for Lucy's help in publicising his Nimrod Expedition and raising funds. 

"Shackleton's naming an Antarctic mountain after Sir Henry Lucy amuses me. I knew Lucy very well – a little toadie, who afterwards toadied himself into a title..." Ambrose Bierce, letter, 1910

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