DLA018-0025  Transcription 

WOLMER WOOD,

MARLOW COMMON,

MARLOW, BUCKS.

April 3rd 1930.

My dear Philip

I had my talk with Marriott this afternoon and I found that his suggestion is to do a book with thirty two illustrations and fifty thousand words of text and to publish it at a price not exceeding one guinea.^[1] This suggestion requires, I think, rather careful consideration because I am not at all sure that the type of book he proposes would be of much use to you. For one thing, the size of the page would scarcely be large enough to allow of really effective reproductions of your works and would certainly be too small for reproducing properly a large picture like a full length; for another thing it seems to me that there would be too few illustrations and too much text; and for another thing, again, it is a question whether you would care to have published a sort of personal

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biography, giving at length your experiences as a painter by crowned heads – I gathered that he rather wanted the text to deal at some length with this aspect of your life. I would like to talk the whole thing over with you next week and to go more fully into details before you come to any decision.

Marriott told me about the suggested article – I, of course knew nothing about it so he had to explain what he had asked you to write and he made the suggestion that I should discuss it with you and help you to write it! I said that I did not know whether your views and mine on the subject would be the same but that I would, when I had an opportunity, try to find out; but that, anyhow, I thought that the idea of such an article was quite a sound one.

I am not sure that I quite liked Marriott; he was very pleasant and civil, but he was

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rather vague in his treatment of business matters and he gave me an impression that he had in his mind some idea of a sort of sharing agreement with you – and that would be a thing which would rather want watching as certainly it would not do for you to take any share in the risks of this book.

However, we will discuss the affair generally at our next meeting.

I saw Edsall^[2] this afternoon and arranged details about the Plaza exhibition so matters can go straight ahead as soon as the list of members who will contribute to the show has been officially settled.

Always 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].

SMDL

13/04/2018