WEST (Dame Rebecca, 1892-1983, Novelist, Journalist, Biographer and Critic)

Fine Autograph Letter Signed ‘Rebecca W.’ to Diana MARR-JOHNSON (1908-2007, Social Advocate, Novelist and Playwright, niece of Somerset Maugham), saying she has “often wanted to get in touch with you. But I have wasted the last few years in winding up my husband’s estate, which has nearly driven me mad, and all my married life our affairs have been handed over punctiliously to a firm of accountants, who have now handed it back to me in the state of a piece of knitting played with by a litter of kittens. As I picked up the stitches I have had more and. more trouble with. my eyes and so. life has been a shambles. I’ve got my eyes as right as I can and tried to get the knitting on the needles again, and I would like to see you!... Thank you for your book and your kind lunch. (That was a lovely party Sarah and Marjorie gave for me! And I saw so many people lie you that I had been barred off from for so long). I will read your book with pleasure... About Barbara - she is very glad of company if one can sacrifice oneself for an hour or two. She is very old now, and very stiff... and very distraught. But she is sweet and affectionate with her bitchiness and it is all very sad...”, 2 sides 8vo., with original autograph envelope, 48 Kingston House North, Prince’s Gate, S.W.7., 9th February

Marr-Johnson was well known for her charitable activities on behalf of the poor. During World War II she opened a meeting place in London called Beauchamp Lodge, where poor women could find respite from the grinding poverty and shocking living conditions that surrounded them. It wasn't long before the lodge became a sort of women's club, then added a nursery center, youth shelter, and soup kitchen. Marr-Johnson devoted much time and effort to keep the refuge open by raising funds, delivering public lectures, and working at the centre itself. Eventually Beauchamp Lodge collected clothing and found housing for people displaced by wartime bombings during the Blitz; its founder's efforts were so successful that the lodge remains in operation today.
In September 1912, West accused the famously libertine writer H. G. Wells of being "the Old Maid among novelists". This was part of a provocative review of his novel Marriage published in Freewoman an obscure and short-lived feminist weekly review. The review attracted Wells's interest and an invitation to lunch at his home. The two writers became lovers in late 1913, despite Wells being both married and twenty-six years older than West. Their 10-year relationship produced a son, Anthony West. Their friendship lasted until Wells's death in 1946. West is also said to have had relationships with Charlie Chaplin, newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, and journalist John Gunther. In 1930, at the age of 37, she married a banker, Henry Maxwell Andrews, and they remained nominally together, despite one public affair just before his death in 1968.

Item Date:  1973

Stock No:  41929      £275

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