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Lot 91
ARNIM (ELIZABETH VON) Archive of correspondence, manuscripts and photographs relating to Elizabeth von Arnim and Alexander Stuart Frere, [1920-1979]
20 November 2024, 13:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £7,680 inc. premium
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ARNIM (ELIZABETH VON)
Archive relating to Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) and Alexander Stuart Frere (1892-1984), including unpublished correspondence recording their close relationship over twenty years, with two draft novels and personal photographs, comprising:
i) Extensive correspondence of around 225 autograph letters, including 170 from Elizabeth von Arnim to Frere and 37 from Alexander Frere to von Arnim (the remainder from other correspondents), variously signed ("Elizabeth", "E.A.", "L.G.", "Leiber Gott", "Tuppence", "Tup", "2d"), the majority dating from the height of their relationship c.1921-1922, beginning with her offer of employment in March 1920 ("...Would you like to arrange & catalogue books, stick in bookplates and be generally obliging & useful in a chalet up in the Swiss mountains... I feel already as if you are my right hand..."), Frere replying "...I only hope to be able to repay your trust, confidence and kindness...", continuing with a wide-ranging and intimate correspondence, revealing their feelings for each other, but also her struggles with writing ("...I am sticking to Vera, with the result that blackest dejection sits clutching on my soul... say prayers for the safe delivery of this book..."), Frere sending a verse by Alice Meynell ("... 'I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart'...") to which she replies ("...I wish the last line could come true! But it will someday..."), on Katherine Mansfield ("...when I think of her I am ashamed that I have too much happiness & light & warmth & love in my life...") and John Middleton Murry ("...He is by nature a sad man..."), with many amusing anecdotes ("...off I go, clutching my m.s. in one hand & my best bonnet in the other..."), on walking in the mountains ("...I start out... with a skirt on... I take it off directly I'm out of sight & stride about breeched..."), on depression and loneliness ("...I love to be pictured in someone's mind..."), much on her numerous dogs, her garden and her routine, mutual friends, travel, excursions, etc.; letters after 1936 mainly on publishing matters, on her fears of Hitler's rise to power ("...Incredible what a man can do in five years if he is entirely ruthless & has the gift of the gab...") and her plan if he invades ("...taking the five dogs to the vet to be put to sleep... putting myself to sleep in a full bath with a chloroform pad over my face... there'll be no real peace in the world until Franco's widow tells Stalin on his deathbed that Hitler was murdered at Mussolini's funeral..."), on her novel Mr Skeffington ("...I'm really distressed that you didn't like Mr Skeff... not a line of it has anything to do with me, or with you, or with anyone else... It is a good subject. And only a woman could treat it really thoroughly & truthfully..."), the last group including a telegram from Patricia Frere notifying Frere of Elizabeth's death ('Elizabeth died this morning in her quiet sleep'), some 440 pages, dust-staining, small tears, 4to and 8vo, Chateau Soleil, Whitehall Court, Cambridge, Portofino, Mas des Roses, USA and elsewhere, 17 March 1920 to July 1947
ii) Manuscript draft of her novel Christopher & Columbus, incomplete, written in ink with many deletions, additions and corrections, leaves 4-30 and 102-197 present, plus 2 extra leaves at end, dust-staining, tears, some leaves loose, disbound, lower cover missing, 4to (219 x 142mm.), [c.1919]; with additional manuscript draft for the same novel, ink and pencil, 66 leaves, dust-staining, tears, some leaves loose, in a 'Glendower Bond' notebook, 220 x 164mm., [c.1919]; manuscript drafts of the beginning of a 'Novel in Letters', a correspondence between 'David Fellowes' and 'Anne Doughty' written by von Arnim and Frere, 19 leaves, 4to; further three typescript leaves of 'correspondence' between 'Mrs Denison' and 'William Brayton', [1922-1923]; manuscript draft of Elizabeth von Arnim's review of A Passage to India ("...Plot. A wretched one. The man Forster is a lover of men. He is also shy, fastidious, & therefore frightened of his public... the form of this wretched plot is good. Like a good tune..."), 3 pages, 337 x 215mm., [n.d.]
iii) Around 100 photographs from Frere's collection, including von Arnim, Frere and guests at Chateau Soleil, skiing, landscapes, also of student life in Cambridge (punting, picnics), many annotated by Frere on reverse, 140 x 84mm. and smaller, [c.1920's]; and other material including printed pamphlet, 'Note on a Passage in Shelley's Ode to Liberty', The Doves Press, 1914, with accompanying letter of presentation from The Doves Press; Shelley's Poems, Canterbury Poets edition, with von Arnim's bookplate and presentation inscription to Frere, dated 29 September 1921; various notebooks, two in Frere's hand; correspondence between Frere and von Arnim's biographer, Karen Usborne, c.1978-1979, and much else
i) Extensive correspondence of around 225 autograph letters, including 170 from Elizabeth von Arnim to Frere and 37 from Alexander Frere to von Arnim (the remainder from other correspondents), variously signed ("Elizabeth", "E.A.", "L.G.", "Leiber Gott", "Tuppence", "Tup", "2d"), the majority dating from the height of their relationship c.1921-1922, beginning with her offer of employment in March 1920 ("...Would you like to arrange & catalogue books, stick in bookplates and be generally obliging & useful in a chalet up in the Swiss mountains... I feel already as if you are my right hand..."), Frere replying "...I only hope to be able to repay your trust, confidence and kindness...", continuing with a wide-ranging and intimate correspondence, revealing their feelings for each other, but also her struggles with writing ("...I am sticking to Vera, with the result that blackest dejection sits clutching on my soul... say prayers for the safe delivery of this book..."), Frere sending a verse by Alice Meynell ("... 'I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart'...") to which she replies ("...I wish the last line could come true! But it will someday..."), on Katherine Mansfield ("...when I think of her I am ashamed that I have too much happiness & light & warmth & love in my life...") and John Middleton Murry ("...He is by nature a sad man..."), with many amusing anecdotes ("...off I go, clutching my m.s. in one hand & my best bonnet in the other..."), on walking in the mountains ("...I start out... with a skirt on... I take it off directly I'm out of sight & stride about breeched..."), on depression and loneliness ("...I love to be pictured in someone's mind..."), much on her numerous dogs, her garden and her routine, mutual friends, travel, excursions, etc.; letters after 1936 mainly on publishing matters, on her fears of Hitler's rise to power ("...Incredible what a man can do in five years if he is entirely ruthless & has the gift of the gab...") and her plan if he invades ("...taking the five dogs to the vet to be put to sleep... putting myself to sleep in a full bath with a chloroform pad over my face... there'll be no real peace in the world until Franco's widow tells Stalin on his deathbed that Hitler was murdered at Mussolini's funeral..."), on her novel Mr Skeffington ("...I'm really distressed that you didn't like Mr Skeff... not a line of it has anything to do with me, or with you, or with anyone else... It is a good subject. And only a woman could treat it really thoroughly & truthfully..."), the last group including a telegram from Patricia Frere notifying Frere of Elizabeth's death ('Elizabeth died this morning in her quiet sleep'), some 440 pages, dust-staining, small tears, 4to and 8vo, Chateau Soleil, Whitehall Court, Cambridge, Portofino, Mas des Roses, USA and elsewhere, 17 March 1920 to July 1947
ii) Manuscript draft of her novel Christopher & Columbus, incomplete, written in ink with many deletions, additions and corrections, leaves 4-30 and 102-197 present, plus 2 extra leaves at end, dust-staining, tears, some leaves loose, disbound, lower cover missing, 4to (219 x 142mm.), [c.1919]; with additional manuscript draft for the same novel, ink and pencil, 66 leaves, dust-staining, tears, some leaves loose, in a 'Glendower Bond' notebook, 220 x 164mm., [c.1919]; manuscript drafts of the beginning of a 'Novel in Letters', a correspondence between 'David Fellowes' and 'Anne Doughty' written by von Arnim and Frere, 19 leaves, 4to; further three typescript leaves of 'correspondence' between 'Mrs Denison' and 'William Brayton', [1922-1923]; manuscript draft of Elizabeth von Arnim's review of A Passage to India ("...Plot. A wretched one. The man Forster is a lover of men. He is also shy, fastidious, & therefore frightened of his public... the form of this wretched plot is good. Like a good tune..."), 3 pages, 337 x 215mm., [n.d.]
iii) Around 100 photographs from Frere's collection, including von Arnim, Frere and guests at Chateau Soleil, skiing, landscapes, also of student life in Cambridge (punting, picnics), many annotated by Frere on reverse, 140 x 84mm. and smaller, [c.1920's]; and other material including printed pamphlet, 'Note on a Passage in Shelley's Ode to Liberty', The Doves Press, 1914, with accompanying letter of presentation from The Doves Press; Shelley's Poems, Canterbury Poets edition, with von Arnim's bookplate and presentation inscription to Frere, dated 29 September 1921; various notebooks, two in Frere's hand; correspondence between Frere and von Arnim's biographer, Karen Usborne, c.1978-1979, and much else
Footnotes
'PICTURE ME SITTING ON MY SMALL HAUNCHES WITH MY TONGUE OUT PANTING FOR LETTERS': An important re-discovered series of letters and manuscripts charting the relationship between novelist Elizabeth von Arnim and Alexander Frere-Reeves.
In 1920, when this correspondence begins, Elizabeth had been married twice and enjoyed a prominent place in the literary world, her circle including her cousin Katherine Mansfield, E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole (both of whom she had employed as tutors to her children) and H.G. Wells, with whom she had a three-year affair after the death of her first husband, Count von Armin, in 1910 (see lot 97). In 1920 she employed Alexander Frere, 26 years her junior and the son of a friend, to catalogue her extensive library. He soon became an indispensable part of her life, and an intense affair began which lasted on and off until he married Patricia Wallace in 1933. As can be seen from the letters, the turning point of the relationship occurred in the summer of 1921, when the formal address of "Lady Russell" becomes "My dear Elizabeth". There are hints at their increasing feelings for each other before that, however, when he returns to Cambridge after his first summer. His letters from this period are full of yearning and loneliness ("...You have an expression in your wonderful eyes that no camera on earth could capture... God bless you for being an angel to me..."). It is a relationship of mutual support and happiness, much written with great humour – she organises cushions for his room, lavishes him with gifts and they attend concerts and dinners together when she comes back to London – he gives her affirmation in her later years (and the many dogs she featured in All the Dogs of My Life). Crucially for Frere, she introduced him to F.N. Doubleday, who offered him a job at Heinemann, thus launching his highly successful publishing career. By 1928, however, it was clear the relationship was coming to an end – he had a short-lived marriage in 1928 and married again in 1933. After that, although the letters predominantly concern business matters, our letters show that they remained close until her death, revealing that she still relied on him for advice and support, particularly during the war years in France when she feared for her safety. Also among the papers is a seemingly hitherto unknown draft novel written in letter form jointly written by von Arnim and Frere, which relates to an unpublished novel in a similar format but written under different names held at the Huntingdon Library (ER 49), and a draft manuscript of her novel Christopher & Columbus.
The letters and manuscripts have remained in the Frere family until now, and are an important survival, as many of Elizabeth's papers were destroyed on her own instructions by her daughter and executor Liebet in 1957. Many of her remaining journals and letters, apart from ours, were published by Liebet under the pseudonym Leslie de Charms as Elizabeth of the German Garden in 1958, published by Heinemann. In it she gives Frere the pseudonym Mark Rainley, a young man '...whom she had so impulsively and casually been moved to rescue...' (de Charms, p.213), but considers their letters so '...inflamed...' that '...their intimate quality disqualifies them from publication...' (de Charms, p.214). Their correspondence from 1923 which is held at the Huntingdon were deemed fit for inclusion and it may be that Liebet returned this tranche of Frere's letters to him after Elizabeth's death. Von Arnim's biographer Jennifer Walker has quoted from a small number of our letters from Frere but evidently took the text from transcripts in the Huntingdon Library (Elizabeth of the German Garden, 2013). Frere spoke at length to Karen Usborne for her 1986 biography, Elizabeth, but it is not known if she saw our letters.
Provenance: Alexander Stuart Frere (1892-1984, managing editor of Heinemann); thence by descent to the present owner.