"I'LL KNOCK OLD DEGAS INTO A COCKED HAT" PEAKE (Mervyn, 1911-1968, Writer, Artist, Poet and Illustrator)

Exceptional Early Autograph Letter Signed to his old friend [Helene] Lanie Bruce "Lanie, my darling" written in his tiny neat hand asking if she can "guess who is writing to you? It is the last person you would expect, and one whom you have given up as an ungrateful and bad mannered young cub - yet t'is he, the very Mervyn. O Lanie, I wish you were with me now. I could talk such a hell of a lot, tous to say and everything, and I never could write. As for the not writing before, I take it that you have forgiven me ... I have written to you a million times mentally ... thousands and thousands of wild and marvellous things have happened. Ah God to see you again ... I suppose you know nothing - marriages - divorces, RA's etc. Ah well. 'Out of London, out in the wilds' as they say ... Got a picture in the Academy this year, and have sold 4 all together - total £7. 7. It's all gone - bought a corduroy suit - double breasted - damned snappy ... Had a marvellous holiday ... Went to Sark on my ownio. L+. Eric Drake and his American wife were there. Marvellous. Sark is Paradise, without any damned angels getting in the light. Paint, paint, paint. I'm doing nothing else, except drawing, modelling, & writing. Have written a 1000 line poem 'Pygmalion' and was well on in an opera 'Saul', which was better, but left it in a bus. I feel so wild. The other day I was taken to 'Romano's' restaurant in Soho. Best cooking in London - Marvellous. And he's going to hang my pics on his walls - 'O Baby - she's my cuty now'. Goodbye Old Compton Street and the Black Cat, eh! Dirty old hovel. Romano's Ho! All the fat Americans go there - Lady Dillwater, Lord Drainwater, Viscount Dishwater from Little Puddleton-on-the-Slush etc. O Boy, Lanie sweetheart - I never knew what art was or painting or drawing or anything when you were here - not that I do now, but things are beginning to move. I am going to draw Cochran's chorus girls in the Ballet school - Free permit - isn't that great, and I'll knock old Degas into a cocked hat ... greatest artist of the ballet ever. I'll never forget Kensington, the cigarettes, gas fire, being put in my place - Old Bobbie taking us to the flicks ... Great chap Bobbie - I hope you realise that. I see him more in perspective than you do ... Is there any chance of your coming back soon. I do hope so ... Lanie - all women grow dim to me after a month or two ... But I always remember you, and the one thing on God's Earth I'd like to do now is to be talking to you .. I've grown a bit - and I've just realised how I've been wasting my time ... there are such colossal things to be done ... Please write to me ... I always have adored you. From the old Romantic who ... never forgets, Mervyn ...", 3 sides 8vo., Woodcroft, Wallington, Surrey, 1st November

This letter predates what was thought to be his earliest visit to Sark. His early career in the 1930s was as a painter in London, although he lived on Sark for a time. He first moved to Sark in 1932 where his former teacher Eric Drake was setting up an artists' colony. In 1934 Peake exhibited with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London, and in 1935 he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Leger Galleries in London.
Letters from Helene Bruce to both Mervyn and Maeve Peake can be found in the Mervyn Peake archive at the British Library
He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but Peake's surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
Letters from Peake are uncommon as he died at the age of 67 after suffering from dementia for the last years of his life.

Item Date:  1931

Stock No:  40688