Thirty-eight Autograph Letters signed, to her sister Mary.

Bookseller Notes

An excellent, substantial and wide-ranging series of autograph letters to her sister, Mary - beginning in 1915, the year in which the recipient married Algernon Strickland (known as 'Tom'), after which the familiar sobriquet of 'Fishmarie' becomes occasionally 'Strickfish', though 'Darling' is the prevalent mode of address. In the opening letter, February 9th 1915, Asquith has been staying with D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda, in 'a very "precious" cottage' near Kingsgate Beach - 'lent to them by the poet-patrons the Meynells' - and recalls kippers cooked by 'the whimsical poet dressed in corduroys [...] and his delightful ebullient German wife'. Asquith is known to be the basis for at least one character in Lawrence's fiction. A letter from May in the same year conveys alarming news about Julian Grenfell, explaining that he has 'had to be trepanned and will not be out of danger for about a week more' - in fact, he lived only two more days - as well as discussing the challenges facing her father-in-law, H.H. Asquith ('mellow buffer as he is') in the wartime coalition government, amongst which a 'bizarre dispute' (ODNB) between Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher (who has, she considers, 'behaved vilely') as well as animosity between Lords Kitchener and Curzon. The engagement between Eileen Wellesley and an 'incomeless artist', i.e. Cuthbert Orde, brings the extravagant detail of 'the most romantic courtship you ever heard of', in which he, serving in the Flying Corps, '[flies] over the sea to her every morning and drop[s] a bomb enclosing love letters' - but in response to which her mother, yet to learn her suitor's name, only worries that he 'might be worst of all an Asquith'! Reference is made to Mary's wartime nursing, and in a letter of July 1918, we see the first reference by Asquith to a new employer, with whom she has had a 'trial trip' - this was J.M. Barrie, the 'dominant presence in her life' from that point, to whom 'she played alternately the roles of friend, nurse, mother, and lover' (ODNB). Her letters discuss the Llewellyn Davies children (upon whom the family in 'Peter Pan' is based), and her asking him to be her daughter's godfather. Barrie enters the picture recurrently thereafter, though the letters become more sporadic. Health issues intrude: in letters of 1939, Mary's gall bladder, her own 'knock-out bilious attack' and generally 'feeling very neurasthenic' are the considerations that preoccupy, whilst the path to War is laid in Europe - a post-scriptum bemoans Chamberlain having made 'Hitler's elimination the condition', and agrees with Mussolini in respect of Russia, calling the whole thing 'an awful mess'. There is much discussion of family matters, and references to her own work, principally plays, which she encourages her sister to come and see - she also mentions taking her grandchildren to see Barrie's 'Peter Pan'.A letter of 1943 apologises for not having yet sent a wedding present - Mary had, following Tom Strickland's death in 1938, married John George Lyon in 1943 - and recommends that her sister contact Rachel Cecil. There are references to Cynthia Asquith's wild swings of mood ('I emerged from my misery two days ago; and I am now rather uppish [...] As always the cause is chemical'; 'I am [...] still suffering from unseemly, untimely high spirits. In vain I try to check my senseless elation'), which causes her some embarrassment during wartime. Her husband, Herbert Asquith ('Beb') is 'kept very busy with Home Guard' - though his own 'health crisis' the following year causes him to give it up. She bemoans their common combination of 'rotten nervous systems and strong constitutions', entailing that 'to die will be as difficult as to live', but is glad that Mary's use of 'Osbert Sitwell's doctor is doing you good'.There is an interesting digression on how the name 'doodle-bug' is a 'diminishing and endearing' one, compared to 'pilot-less aircraft' - but describes for her sister, who is 'out of range of the "novelties"', the 'immense psychological effect' of the 'horrid strange new voices' of their engines, mentioning that she heard one stop directly overhead the night before, but in the end it 'did not drop until it had nearly got to Petworth' (a few miles away from her home in Sullington).In a letter of July 1944, she reflects on the death of Rex Whistler that month - 'he came here for a night just before he went to Normandy and was so well and so charming', and reports that 'a now very poignant letter' from him has just arrived from the Front, expressing a wish to 'come back to Sullington when [...] we struggle home from this Blood Bath'.Post-war, the letters return to more domestic matters, including the upheaval of moving to Bath when 'Beb' is in a state of poor health. A letter of 1958 makes reference to a comment by the author 'Henry Greene[sic]', who has commented that 'but for you [Mary], he would never have written' his novels - joking that 'you should claim percentage on his considerable royalties'.Covering close to forty-five years, these letters display the social, literary and political connections of the sisters (ne Charteris) - providing, among other things, a commentary on both World Wars.