Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and others

Los 190
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Verkauft
£ 1 386
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortVereinigtes Königreich, London
Aufgeldsee on Website%
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Archive
ID 1108990
Los 190 | Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and others
Schätzwert
£ 1 800 – 2 500
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) and others
Four autograph letters, England and France, 1771-1989
Norton Nicholls (1741-1809). Two autograph letters to his mother, Chateau D’Aubonne, 6 and 15 August 1771; Evelyn Waugh. Autograph letter signed ('Evelyn') to Robin Campbell, Stinchcombe, 27 December 1945; and Ted Hughes (1930-1998). Autograph letter signed ('Ted') to Nicholas Grant, Devon, 8 May 1989

8 pages in total, various sizes [With:] four drawings by Hughes [and:] the summer 1989 edition of The Duncan Lawrie Journal. Provenance: Sotheby's, 25 July 1975 and Christie's, 29 May 1986, lot 225.

Nicholls responds to the death of Thomas Gray, Waugh offers his views on aesthetics and Picasso, and Ted Hughes supplies drawings for a close friend. In two letters to his mother, Nicholls first describes a trip to Switzerland: ‘here we lay amidst eternal snow [...] the sun shone bright & the weather was that of a fine sharp day in winter – before this we had seen the Glacier of Grindelwald’. Later, he writes on the death of Thomas Gray, lamenting that he has lost ‘all that was most dear to me in this World except yourself’ but reassuring her ‘you need not be alarmed for me, I am well, & not subject to emotions violent enough to endanger my health’ despite claiming, ‘at present I feel that I have lost half of myself’. In a letter to Robin Campbell, Waugh defends a recent letter he wrote to The Times with a fierce attack on Picasso who, he claims, fails as an artist and is a symbol of decadence and the decline of Western civilisation – ‘the only criticisms valid for him are: "Ooh doesn’t it make you feel funny inside" or "the fellow’s a charlatan"' – including Gertrude Stein in his criticism (‘aesthetically in the same position as, theologically, a mortal-sinner who has put himself outside the world order of God’s mercy’). Ted Hughes encloses four drawings entitled 'The Candlestick', 'The Wolf Spitting Flames', 'God Clasping His Head' and 'The Bat' in a letter to Grant apologising ‘I’m afraid there are only four. Two or three others I tried weren’t getting anywhere so rather than delay – here are four, which I quite like’. The Duncan Lawrie Journal contains enlarged reproductions of the drawings to illustrate a short story titled How God Got His Golden Head.

Robin Campbell, the future Director of Art of the Arts Council, believed that the letter Waugh had written for The Times was a hoax and had therefore written to his friend to confirm: the present letter is Waugh’s response. Nicholls acted as a confidante to Thomas Grey in the several years before his death, they shared an extensive amount of correspondence over this period. Meeting in 1980 through a mutual friend, Hughes and Grant became close friends, they shared a passion for fly-fishing.
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