DLA123-0037  Transcription

[in another hand] Bawdrie y?

WOLMER WOOD,

MARLOW COMMON,

MARLOW, BUCKS.

November 18th 1936.

My dear Philip

I meant to have written long before this to say how glad I was to get your letter ten days ago and to hear that you had been making good progress and living the kind of life which will help on your recovery. I am afraid that such a placid existence must be rather strange to you but it is very much worth while and I hope that you are doing your duty still in a properly philosophical spirit. I wonder whether the wild weather has upset you at all – you must have felt the storms a good deal. I am afraid, as they seem to have been really severe all along the Channel. But certainly it is better that you should be away from London, as there would be too

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[in another hand] [illegible words]

many temptations if you were at home and you would find it very difficult to keep properly quiet there. I am very sorry, though, to hear that your departure for the South of France is so near at hand^[1] as I was hoping to have a chance of seeing you again before you left and now it looks as if it is not to be – the weather is very much against a trip to town and at the moment I am rather out of sorts with an annoying bilious attack which is keeping me from doing a lot of things that I want to do and that ought to be done before the real cold weather comes. However, I hope to be all right again in a few days time.

Miss Abernethy^[2] sent me the “Apollo” number and the “Scots magazine”; the letter in the first is one of those muddled pieces of argument which always seems to come from modernist [pens?] and the portrait in the second

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is a fair reproduction of your portrait [2203] – I remember the picture well – but rather misses the subtleties of the original.^[3]  Still, were a weak reproduction does not destroy the distinction of your work!

I think you are right to put off your exhibition; if you had decided to go on with it you would have had it on your mind all the time you were away and it would have worried you a good deal trying to place things when you were not on the spot to see to them. The delay will give you an opportunity to do some work in which you will be able to break new ground and perhaps make some interesting experiments – you know that I have always wanted you to show that you can be “different” without sinking to the modernist level, and to be “different” and get properly accomplished would be something of a triumph. What do you think of the Gauguin picture in “Apollo”?^[4] To me it seems

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simply beastly – it is a very incompetent composition, a filthy piece of colour, a ridiculous example of feeble draughtsmanship and a bloodless reflection of that kind of savage and which is acceptable only because it has a virile intention and a sort of crude sincerity. Gauguin has imitated this savage art mechanically, without sincerity and without conviction.

I am sending this letter to No.3. as you said you expected to be there on the 19th but if you are not there then I hope it will reach you without much delay. I shall be anxious to hear what are your final arrangements for going abroad and where you have decided to go to, and also to hear how you and Lucy are after your further period of rest – I hope she has been keeping well and that you are a lot better.

Our love to you both | ever yours

A.L.B.

Editorial Note:

Alfred Lys Baldry (1858-1939), British artist and art critic who authored several articles on de László and who was a close family friend; for biographical notes, see [3562].

LR

27/11/2018