BIB_ID
458659
Accession number
MA 14887.12
Creator
West, Rebecca, 1892-1983, sender.
Credit line
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Description
1 item (1 page) ; 25.3 x 20.1 cm
Notes
Written on printed hotel stationery from: Great Eastern Railway Company's / Sandringham Hotel, / Hunstanton-on-Sea.
Dated "Sept 12".
Year of writing suggested by related correspondence concerning H.J. Massingham's response to the scandal which arose in 1918 when William Orpen submitted two portraits of Yvonne Aubicq to the official censor under the title "The spy", along with a fantastical story that the woman in the picture was a German spy who had been executed by the French; Orpen later recanted his story and retitled the portraits "The refugee" following an official reprimand from the War Office. Cf. West's letter to Sylvia Lynd, dated July 28, 1918, in: Selected Letters of Rebecca West (New Haven : Yale University Pr., 2000).
Forms one of a group of 13 letters from Rebecca West to Apsley Cherry-Garrard (MA 14887.1-13); each letter cataloged individually.
Dated "Sept 12".
Year of writing suggested by related correspondence concerning H.J. Massingham's response to the scandal which arose in 1918 when William Orpen submitted two portraits of Yvonne Aubicq to the official censor under the title "The spy", along with a fantastical story that the woman in the picture was a German spy who had been executed by the French; Orpen later recanted his story and retitled the portraits "The refugee" following an official reprimand from the War Office. Cf. West's letter to Sylvia Lynd, dated July 28, 1918, in: Selected Letters of Rebecca West (New Haven : Yale University Pr., 2000).
Forms one of a group of 13 letters from Rebecca West to Apsley Cherry-Garrard (MA 14887.1-13); each letter cataloged individually.
Provenance
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Summary
Requesting Lady Scott's address and explaining that she promised to send her a book; informing him that, should he not get this letter for days, she will be going to the Bell Inn in Thetford on the 18th; observing that the Sandringham Hotel "is a very queer place. All the women look like Queen Victoria or Queen Mary & all the men like King Edward ... I fancy I have blundered into a holiday home for the irregular offspring of the Royal Family"; mentioning a letter she received from (Harold?) Massingham and adding that she had "sent him [William] Orpen's denial that "The Refugee" was a spy and his statement of her stay and particulars of her present address and employment at Chantilly. Massingham writes gloomily to say that there is no end to the deceit of which a man like Beaverbrook is capable and he has no doubt that the girl is dead..."
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