SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). - photo 1
SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). - photo 2
SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). - photo 3
SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). - photo 4

SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).

Lot 76
12.07.2023 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 378
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 993162
Lot 76 | SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).
Estimate value
£ 1 000 – 1 500
SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).

Autograph letter signed ('A.C. Swinburne') to his sister Alice ('Ally'), Tintagel, 14 October [1864].

61/2 pages, 180 x 110mm, on two bifolia; small sketch of a ?female head on verso of f.4. Provenance: Bonhams, 12 June 2012, lot 148.



On the death of Walter Savage Landor and the Cornish scenery, 'the most beautiful I have seen'. 'The news of [Landor's] death of course gave me pain ... I wonder what biography (if any) will be written of him; I do not suppose there are any very old intimates of his surviving; & so much of his life seems to have been capricious & solitary that I scarcely hope the work can be now done which only a friend constantly near him could perhaps do effectually'. Swinburne is a 'prisoner' to a foot injury sustained after bathing a fortnight previously: 'It is an extreme bore to be shut up a fortnight in a country cottage dependant on a friend's hospitality & without anything amusing to read ... The scene of the calamity is the most beautiful I have seen, I found it out for myself: a large bay facing due east, with the shallow sands running far out & an opening in the cliffs down by which boys & men come with donkeys to gather sand; on the left a huge split between two rocks or rather ... a long narrow hole in one thro' which the light fell sharp & full; & ripples fighting in against the wind from an outer sea of such a green that one's mouth waters to think of it & I could cry to remember the lovely days I have lost in this hole when I might have been bathing there in the one good place there is about'.



Swinburne spent the months of September to November 1864 at Tintagel in north Cornwall with his friend the painter John William Inchbold, and it was there that he heard of the death of his hero Walter Savage Landor, whom he had met in Florence in the previous March. Landor's death inspired Swinburne's elegy 'In Memory of Walter Savage Landor', and Landor is also the posthumous dedicatee of the verse drama Atalanta in Calydon, which Swinburne completed at Tintagel, and which was to make him famous after its publication in March 1865. The description of the Cornish coast in the present letter is typical of the 'intense love of the ocean' (ODNB) manifested in Swinburne's writing: this dates from his earliest childhood on the Isle of Wight, when he remembered being thrown head-first into the sea by his father. The recipient of this letter is the eldest of his four sisters, Alice (1838–1903).





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12.07.2023 – 12.07.2023
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