With a letter to psychiatrist Strauss - photo 1
With a letter to psychiatrist Strauss - photo 2
With a letter to psychiatrist Strauss - photo 3

With a letter to psychiatrist Strauss

Lot 108
16.10.2020 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
$ 9 375
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 411516
Lot 108 | With a letter to psychiatrist Strauss
Estimate value
$ 4 000 – 6 000
WAUGH, Evelyn (1903-1966). The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. London: Chapman and Hall, 1957. [With:] Autograph letter signed ("Evelyn Waugh") to Eric Strauss, Corpus Christi, 1957, two pages (recto and verso), laid in.

"I shall shortly be sending you a little book of my own — a comic description of my own lapse into barminess three years ago": one of 50 large-paper copies of Waugh's "mad book," inscribed and with a letter to eminent psychiatrist Eric B. Strauss (1894-1961). The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold was Waugh's fictional account of his own hallucinatory experiences while aboard the SS Staffordshire, bound for Ceylon, in 1954. The trip was meant to remedy a bout of writer's block, but overuse of bromide sedatives brought it to a memorable close. Once returned to London, he agreed to see Dr Strauss, then the head of psychiatry at St Bartholomew's Hospital, who quickly diagnosed bromides as the source of his delusions. Waugh biographer Christopher Sykes suggested that it was during Waugh's sessions with Strauss that he may have discussed the idea of writing Gilbert Pinfold; the letter to Strauss confirms that the doctor played a role, reading in part: "I shall shortly be sending you a little book of my own — a comic description of my own lapse into barminess three years ago. You will find yourself totally omitted from the narrative. I hope you will not think this is a sign of ingratitude for your kindness to me at that time. It is simply that, as you say in your lecture, the psycho-analyst has become a misleading cliché in modern letters..." He notes instead that he attributed the doctor's "salutary influence" to his own wife, Laura, but nonetheless hopes that the account "will cause a smile." The book is inscribed on the front free endpaper: "For Eric Strauss | with gratitude | Evelyn Waugh | July 1957."

Large octavo. Original cloth (sunning, narrow stain to edge of letter and to lower free endpaper where the letter was previously affixed.) Provenance: Eric Strauss.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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01.10.2020 – 16.10.2020
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