STURGIS (Howard Overing, 1855-1920, Novelist who wrote about Homosexuality)

Autograph Letter Signed addressed to "Oh, my dear Lally" thanking her "so much for giving me that enchanting book! It has moved me as nothing has for years. Don't you know how seldom it is that anything speaks to the something that is very deep down in us. I have scored & scribbled it all over, a shocking thing to do, but with me nearly always a sign of deep interest. I think I have always been a Buddhist at heart ..." asking her to tell him more about the author and continues "It has given me such a longing to leave this wicked bloodstained, drink-stained, gold worshipping aristocratic England, & go & be a monk in a yellow garment in some quiet Burmese monastery; there are just three insufferable objections, where nothing may be killed, there would be fleas ... and I couldn't live in a country of snakes & then the British are there too, busy bringing the benefits of civilisation to the poor benighted Heathen, as one or two tragic sentences in this wonderful book show ...", he then talks about a missionary's sermon about an Earthy paradise that he had heard some years before and he he had "thought of starting a subscription for a travelling scholarship that young men might go there to learn the philosophy of life, and I feel in reading this book 'Oh! Why can't we all go to school in Burmah!' ... I have had a letter from Frank from Athens - He has been to Burmah! & just mentions it in a list of other countries, Ceylon, Egypt etc!! He is by now in Corfu & hopes to be in Italy next week so we may meet there ... don't forget that you & Prince Henry are coming to lunch ... I shall be so dreadfully disappointed if you throw me over; resist your natural impulse to do so with all your might ... I will be very discreet & not ask you a word about Fielding Hall, though I shall burn to ...", 8 sides 8vo., Queen's Acre, Windsor headed paper, Easter Day

Sturgis was born into an affluent New England American family: his father, Russell Sturgis (1805–1887), was a China trader and lawyer who later became head of Barings Bank. His mother was Russell's third wife, Julia Overing née Boit. He was a friend of the novelists Henry James and Edith Wharton. After the death of his mother in 1888 he moved with his lover, William Haynes-Smith, into a country house named Queen's Acre, near Windsor Great Park.
Harold Fielding-Hall was with the Burma Commission.


Item Date:  1903

Stock No:  40048     

                


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