Gerald Brenan (1894-1987) - photo 1

Gerald Brenan (1894-1987)

Starting price
£ 3 000
Auction dateClassic
30.07.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 381248
Lot 40 | Gerald Brenan (1894-1987)
BRENAN, Gerald (1894-1987). Typescript signed (‘Gerald Brenan’) with autograph corrections, ‘Diary and papers relating to D[ora] C[arrington] 1925-1926’, the typescript undated.

In English with occasional sentences in Spanish. 125 pages, 260 x 250mm, autograph corrections (ranging from a few letters to a whole sentence) on approx. 28 pages, autograph pagination (first page rather soiled and worn at upper margin). Cloth boards. Provenance: Ralph Patridge (1894-1960, Carrington's husband: note on front endpaper in Brenan’s hand, ‘This Copy left with R.S.P.'); the collection of Richard Heron Ward (1910-1969, information from bookseller’s description).

‘The more I write, the more I shall entangle myself …’: a rich source on Gerald Brenan’s tortured relationship with Dora Carrington, narrating in sometimes excruciating detail the gradual disintegration of their relationship in the course of 1925 and 1926. The typescript addresses with equal frankness Brenan’s other activities and relationships, including an account of a major quarrel with his parents over money. Members of the broader Bloomsbury circle feature largely, including much on Ralph Partridge’s relationship with Frances Marshall, as well as Helen and Boris Anrep, Roger Fry, Arthur Waley, Henrietta Bingham, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Julia Strachey, Gwen Raverat, Edith Sitwell and others. The typescript comprises a series of sometimes parallel documents: an initial journal from 1 August 1925 to 22 May 1926; then ‘Some papers relating to D.C.’, beginning with an account of a dream on 15 March 1925, but continuing with a sequence of dreams and daily entries from October 1923 to 25 October 1924; then extract from a letter to Helen [Anrep] about Carrington, 6 Nov 1924, a ‘brief summary’ of autumn 1924, and thereafter mixture of diary entries and extracts from letters (mostly unsent) up to November 1925. It is particularly telling of Bloomsbury moeurs that the intended reader of this sometimes appalling frank account was Carrington’s husband, Ralph Patridge. Brenan’s autograph diaries are held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center: the present group of notes is apparently unpublished.

‘I saw her standing there among the grass, as through after wading the stream, lifting up her silk dress to pull on a pair of linen drawers […] I saw too late it would be better not to have lured her there, since she had ceased to love me’ (a dream about Carrington)

‘When we made up our relation in Dec. or Jan. in Helen Anrep’s sitting room, I was less in love and therefore less exacting […] Her inevitable reaction against the physical side came in March […] Disagreeable remarks about my appearance and character, a disinclination to be alone with me, perpetual irritability and stinginess […] Her alarm at R[alph]’s lack of any physical feeling for her : his secret jealousy of me increased by his reading a very private letter of mine’

‘C R D made love to me because R. was in love with her; when I fell entirely in love and R. out, she left me for him, assisted by an unconscious jealousy of Frances. As soon as Frances has left him, he will be thrown back upon her[…]’

‘Virginia, Vanessa, Julia Strachey, Mme Raverat, Edith Sitwell […] the rest men – for it is not easy to put women in a room with the Stephen sisters. Lytton and his young man Philip Ritchie, Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, James and Oliver Strachey, Raymond Mortimer […] It was amusing’ (28 January 1926)
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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09.07.2020 – 30.07.2020
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