Product Details
FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF JAMES WENTWORTH DAY
F. BARNES & CO. (LONDON)
A 4-BORE SINGLE-BARRELLED ROTARY-UNDERLEVER HAMMERGUN, no visible serial number,
43 3/4in. black powder bold damascus barrel (shortened) with border-engraved sight flat, signed F. BARNES & CO. (LONDON) inset with a folding leaf sight, Jones patent rotary-underlever, carved percussion fence, unsigned rebounding back-action lock, border engraving, retaining slight traces of nickel-plated finish, 14in. pistolgrip-stock including 1in. rubber recoil pad, fore-end with grip-catch release and horn finial, weight 19lb. 13oz.
Provenance: James Wentworth Day was born April 1899 into a wealthy agrarian Suffolk family. He was to become a highly successful journalist, sometime broadcaster and fairly prolific non-fiction author.
He was educated at Newton College before going up to Cambridge, following which he saw service in the Great War. Following the end of hostilities, Day began his career in journalism writing for several sporting and rural publications including Country Life and was also to edit the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. In the later inter-war years he became personal assistant to Lady Houston, a prominent far right-winger of the time, and for a period shared her sympathetic views on Italian fascism and the support of Mussolini. Day worked for the BBC as war correspondent to France and the Near East during the Second World War until 1943 when he was invalided home.
He became a member of the Conservative party after the war and stood, unsuccessfully, as candidate for Hornchurch in 1950 and 1951, he also expounded on the party cause at other events and bye-elections. Day was a keen defender of the traditional un-elected upper house and following Harold Wilson's White Paper on its reform he addressed the Conservative Monday Club on this and several other issues, including Wilson's suggested increase on Death Duties.
Day was a dedicated country sportsman and had an especial love for wildfowling which led him to purchase Adventurers' Fen in Cambridgeshire. He wrote several books on shooting, but is perhaps best remembered for the journey taken around the farms of his beloved East Anglia during World War II on horseback. These were detailed in his book 'Farming Adventure' but were later re-worked and published as 'Wartime Ride'. He was to continue writing until shortly before his death in 1983. Always a complex and, at times, controversial and colourful character, he described himself thus, "I confess it. I do not like modern furniture or much modern architecture, less or none of modern art and little of modern literature. I am, of course, an antediluvian, a reactionary, an out-of-date or, as I prefer it, a rural romanticist."
Other Notes: This lot is accompanied by an affidavit signed by the vendor, and witnessed by a solicitor, stating that he purchased the shotgun from Wentworth Day in 1967.
Estimate £3,000-5,000