Two Waugh Letters on Offer

Two Evelyn Waugh letters will be offered for sale at a Bonhams auction to be held on 18 March.

One, to Stella Morrah, expresses regret that she will be unable, due to illness, to accompany him to a dance that evening. He wonders if she might be available to attend a dance the following Saturday. the letter is dated New Years Eve 1919 when Waugh would have been 16. The recipient is described in the notes as the sister of Times correspondent Dermot Morrah. Stella later married Norman Edyvean-Walker, identified as a solicitor in Rugby, where she was active as an amateur artist. Waugh’s handwriting is clear and precise and bears little resemblance to that of his adult years. He signs it E. A. Waugh, so perhaps they were not close friends. She is not mentioned by his biographers. Letters from this period of Waugh’s life are scarce. The only one published in the 1980 collection that predates this one was written to his brother Alec in 1914.

The second letter is to Graham Greene and is dated 6 June 1950 from Piers Court. The reverse side of the letter is posted on the Bonhams website. Waugh mentions his wife’s upcoming confinement for the birth of their seventh child and declines a proposal made by Greene that he change publishers in France. He says he has just returned from a trip to Italy where he visited Harold Acton and went to Verona, Parma and Mantua for the first time. He proposes that Greene join him on a trip to Jerusalem in the autumn. Waugh made such a trip in early 1951 to research an article for Life magazine, but it seems that Greene did not accompany him. Letters, 345-46.

Thanks to R. M. Davis for letting us know about a blog post about the letters at Fine Books Magazine.

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