COCKERELL (Sir Sydney Carlyle, 1867-1962, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum 1908-1937 and Bibliophile)

Fine pair of Autograph Letters Signed in full to Lady Steward of Hammer Hill, Abinger Hammer regretting that he “cannot tell you anything about your grandfather’s pictures. If I live another month I shall enter my 90th year and I cannot recall a single picture on the walls of Warren Wood or Connaught Place - but before I went (in 1908) to the Fitzwilliam it had acquired from him (through Charly Fairfax Murray) most if not all of his primitive Italian pictures. You would be able to obtain a list of these from the Assistant Director, J. W. Goodison. I remember you coming to Warren Wood as a charming girl about to be married - by that time your grandfather had become an old curmudgeon both mean and generous. In 1908 I was expected to accompany him to Aix-les-Bains, as a member of his family would do this. I slept at Connaught Place on the night before we started and I remember his asking me whether I was taking a hat - It was then explained to me that ‘hat’ for him meant ‘tall hat’ and I had to climb down. At Aix his grumbling disturbed me a good deal and I was glad to come home - he was greatly upset by the Death Duties, then recently imposed. One of his sayings (perhaps not his own) was that there were only five things that a man could give to a friend without injury to his self respect - flowers, fruit, game, a box at the opera, and his blessing. Nevertheless he supplemented the stipends of curates and other underpaid people of his own class, including myself - the stipend of the Director of the Firzwilliam was only £300 a year when I went there. I think that my friend Freya Stark is now staying with your son at Arkara...”, the second letter says that “since writing to you I have remembered that your grandfather’s words were misquoted by me. The correct text is ‘that one gentleman can give to another’. If you can get hold of a copy of Viola Meynell’s ‘The Best of Friends’... you will find in it a quantity of very good letters from Freya Stark, chosen from more than 300 that I have received from her. She had been engaged in some very arduous travels in Turkey and she must have been pretty well tired out when she reached Ankara. I heard that very amusing French limerick many years ago, but I had forgotten it, along with many another good one. Thank you for reminding me. I had a great respect for your cricketing grandfather...”, each 1 side 8vo., with one original autograph envelope, 21 Kew Gardens Road, Kew, Richmond, Surrey,18th and 21st June

Sir Sydney was secretary to William Morris and to the Kelmscott Press 1892-1895.

Item Date:  1949

Stock No:  41816      £275

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