DLA019-0098  Transcription

Hotel Continental,

PARIS.

19th May, 1930.

I have two letter [sic] of yours with me here, one of April 20th and your last one enclosing the newspaper cuttings for which please accept my very best thanks.^[1] I hope you will forgive me for not having acknowledged them sooner, but since I returned from Barcelona my usual amount of work was awaiting me. Also my new office as President of the Royal Society of British Artists keeps me hard at it.

It was very kind of you to send me a telegram telling me of Prince Festetics birthday and I very much appreciate this nice attention on your part.^[2] We telegraphed to him immediately and he acknowledged the telegram at once.

No doubt you will have heard that just before I left last week the Budapest Choir kept me very busy. We gave an “At Home” when they entertained over 150 of our guests here among whom were the Hungarian Minister and the whole of the Legation; also my friend, the owner of the New York Times with his wife whose portraits I have just painted [6480][6486].^[3] They all enjoyed the afternoon very much, and an article about it is going to be published in the New York Times. The Choir had a great reception in London. After the music was over at our “At Home” I was very much moved as all of a sudden, without giving me any warning, the Choir surrounded me and the Lord Mayor of Budapest^[4] made a wonderful speech. I was scarcely able to control myself from bursting into tears as I felt his words came from the depth of his heart, and I was extremely moved when the Choir

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sang the Hungarian “For he is a jolly good fellow.”

As a souvenir of the occasion I did a sketch of the Lord Mayor [110835]. No doubt you will see it in the Budapest Autumn Exhibition.^[5] We were so happy to receive those fine Hungarian fellows in our home. They honoured me by handing me a diploma as an honorary member of their Choir. I was again in their company when present at the splendid dinner which Lord Rothermere and his son gave at the Savoy Hotel in their honour. I never saw such enthusiasm as there was that evening between the Hungarians and Lord Rothermere.^[6] The following day I left for Paris and shall be here until the end of this month with the exception of a break on the 22nd when I have to return to London to receive the guests at a Soiree which is being given by the Royals Society of British Artists, of which I am president.^[7]

I am sorry I shall miss you in Paris. My portraits of Marshal Lyautey [6118] and the beautiful Marchesa del Merito [13322] are exhibited in the Salon and they have great success.^[8] I am enclosing herewith a reproduction of the lady’s picture.

Now, dear friend, I must repeat again what I would beg you to do for me for certain, as I have given my promise regarding it. Would you be good enough to send me a print of Count Bethlen’s portrait [2487] and ask him kindly to sign it for Mr. James Speyer, the banker in New York whom the Prime Minister knows.^[9] Mr. Speyer’s great desire is to possess that picture, and as he is coming over to England about the middle of June I should like to be able to let him have it then. He is a great friend of mine too, so dear friend, do your best for me.

In regard to my Grand Prix in Barcelona,

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I cannot go into detail about it to-day but hope to write again or see you personally concerning it. To come to the point, however, I wish to tell you that a very dirty trick has been played there on me, and I do not believe the stories which Ruttkay^[10] and Dery^[11] have told you nor those they have told me. Fancy! All those pictures which received a prize had tablets fixed on them. But mine had not one. I have my idea what their plan was, and be assured that I am not of that material, as you know, to let “sleeping dogs lie.” This matter must be cleared up at all costs, and if necessary, I shall have it made public. I do not need either Ruttkay’s or Déry’s goodwill. It is my work which counts and which has been awarded the prize by the International Jury. I never had the idea to exhibit in the Hungarian Pavilion; it was Dery and Ruttkay who asked the King for my portraits [possibly [12400] and [12398]]^[12] without my knowledge, and I only received at the time a telegram from Dery asking for the portraits to be shown in the Hungarian Pavilion. That was last year at the beginning of the Exhibition, and I have had no other correspondence regarding the matter since then. My appearance in Barcelona was certainly a surprise to Mr. Ruttkay, and I think they thought that I should take no further interest in the question. If I had not been there and lunched with my friend, comte de Guells [sic], who is the President of the Exhibition, I should never have seen the medal.

I will not tell you more to-day except that Dery had the audacity the other day after what has happened, to telegraph to London to ask me for my permission to have my portraits of the Prince of Piemonte [7890] and a Spanish lady [6875], which are exhibited in the International Exhibition in Venice, exhibited in the Hungarian pavilion.^[13] I of course refused his request.

We are all very well and look forward to see [sic] you and your family this summer in London.

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Please remember me to dear Edith and your son,^[14] and be good and let me have your news as soon as possible.

I dictated this letter to my Secretary in Paris, and now I am sending it to you from home.

Editorial Note:

István Bárczy de Bárcziháza (1882-1952), Private Secretary to successive Hungarian Prime Ministers, later Permanent Undersecretary of State in the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office and close friend of de László; for biographical notes, see [111342].

SMDL

01/06/2018