Footnotes

'SHALL WE MAKE A TRYST AMONG THE OLIVE TREES?': AN ILLUSTRATED LETTER FROM H.G. WELLS TO HIS EX-LOVER ELIZABETH VON ARNIM.

H.G. Wells and the novelist Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) became lovers after the death of her husband Count Henning August von Arnim in 1910, their relationship lasting for three years. Affectionately nicknamed "Little e", she was the dedicatee of Wells' The Passionate Friends, and they themselves remained lifelong friends, as evidenced by our letter. The letter can be dated from after her affair with Alexander Frere had ended (see lot 91) and she had to moved her new French home in 1930. At this time Wells was living nearby at Lou Bastidon and enjoying a famously tempestuous relationship with the Dutch socialite and travel writer, Odette Keun, twenty years his junior. The couple shortly afterwards moved to Lou Pidou, the house they built together, and which is depicted on our postcard. It must be assumed that Elizabeth gave the letter to Alexander Frere, who had married Patricia Wallace in 1933, and was H.G. Wells' publisher at Heinemann.

This lot forms part of an archive of letters and papers from the personal collection of publisher Alexander Stuart Frere-Reeves (1892-1984), known as 'Frere' to his friends, which brings together many of the most important authors of the twentieth-century, and demonstrates a wide web of influence and relationships. As managing editor of William Heinemann, he built up an extraordinary list of talent represented here in correspondence from, amongst others, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Rebecca West and her lover H.G. Wells, W. Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward, and J.B. Priestley, a lifelong friend with whom he edited Granta. Frere tended towards the younger, more 'modern' authors, several of whom became close friends, as is shown by these intimate letters, which blur the lines between personal and business relationships: '...He had a flair for detecting talent, and encouraging it, and the gift of establishing friendships with the people he liked and respected, among whom were most of his authors. He prided himself on publishing authors rather than books only...' (obituary, The Times, 6 October 1984). As a young man he had an intense relationship with the novelist Elizabeth von Arnim, nearly 30 years his senior, their hitherto unpublished correspondence also offered here (see lot 91). Many of our letters are addressed to his second wife Patricia Marion Caldecott Wallace (1907-1995), writer, theatre critic and daughter of the author Edgar Wallace, most notably some revealing correspondence from her close friend Daphne du Maurier (see lot 92).

After leaving Christ's College, Cambridge, Frere's career began as a journalist on the London Evening News. He joined William Heinemann, a subsidiary of Doubleday, in 1923, rose rapidly within the firm and was made managing director in 1932 under the chairmanship of C.S. Evans when F.N. Doubleday sold his shares after the Wall Street crash. He resigned as president in 1961 and retired a year later to become advisor to The Bodley Head. His papers have remained in the family until now.

Provenance: Alexander Stuart Frere (1892-1984); thence by descent to the present owner.