DLA018-0017  Transcription 

WOLMER WOOD,

MARLOW COMMON,

MARLOW, BUCKS.

Sept. 9th 1930

My dear Philip

Your letter was very welcome and I am glad to hear that you are really doing your treatment properly and getting a quiet time – do make the most of it and rest as much as you can. You are bound to have a fairly strenuous time in America so the easier you take things now the fitter you will be for your work later on. Even with my comparatively placid existence – compared with yours, anyhow – I realise the need for slowing down quite a lot as I get older and that need you too ought to take into account if you want to conserve your energies for the achievements which are to be expected of you in the future. What they will be

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depends quite a lot upon the way you behave now. I do think we all have a certain fixed amount of vital energy and if it is all used up too early in life there is no reserve left for the after period. However, I have said all this to you before so I will not dwell upon it now or else you will say that age is making me fussy.

I am glad you are having nice weather as I expect you will want it if you are playing golf or sketching. It is not bad here, not so hot but still pleasantly warm, and we are having a fair amount of sun – we have had several thunderstorms, though, lately and the weather does not seem to be really settled. Still, it might be worse and I hope it will keep all right for you when you go on to Salzburg and Venice. You are going to be away quite a long time; I shall be glad to see you back again but it seems to me that I shall not have a chance of seeing much of you if you are off

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again directly to America – you are decidedly an elusive person.

We have had the Kendricks here for the weekend.^[1] Mrs Kendrick got through her operation very well and seems to be all right again; Kendrick has nearly finished a copy [possibly 112295] of the Birchenough portrait [3376] – he seems to have enjoyed doing it.^[2] Peter has just come down for a few days holiday; I have shown him what you say in your letter about the film. Your are right; it will be best to get the story fully set out so that we can discuss it together and see how the incidents fit together and can be expressed by the action of the characters. We ought to be able to draw up a proper scheme of arrangements which would make the story clear and effective and give it its proper dramatic quality. Of course, the way in which it can be made to appeal to the public will have to be considered but it would be best to avoid as far as possible the cheaper tricks of film making and we shall probably have to be careful about dealing with details in which people still alive are concerned. The working out of the character which represents you will have to be done in

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such a way that your strength of mind and your devotion to art will be made clear without suggesting that you are an impossibly saintly person; the character will have to be human and sympathetic to give the full value both to his refusal to give way to temptation and to his kindly action at the end. But all these points we shall have to discuss later on and see how it will be best to deal with them.

The death of the Duke of Northumberland is a great pity; he was in some ways a fanatic but he was a thinker and a man of very strong character;^[3] we have too few men of his type in these days. I was very sorry too, to see that Sir James Guthrie had died as he was an artist of real importance and did good work.^[4] He did not exhibit much in London but I have seen a fair number of things by him. Tom Mostyn is another capable artist who has just died – a man I have known for a good many years – he was a pupil of Herkomer.^[5]

Well, au revoir and our love to you and to Lucy, who is, I hope, enjoying the rest and change as much as you are.

Always yours

A.L.B.

Do write again soon.

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

11/04/2018