Lot 134
Brown, George Mackay (1921-1996)
'To Whinny Muir Thou Comest at Last. A Play', 1962
Auction: Other Properties | Wed 25 February from 10am | Lots 63 to 255
Description
holograph manuscript, blue and red ballpoint pen on rectos only of loose leaves, [2] 35 ff., 20.5 x 12.8cm, signed by Brown on title-leaf, inscribed and dated by him on the following epigram leaf ‘To Sylvia, 11 2 62’, in an envelope addressed by Brown to ‘Miss Sylvia Wishart’ at 56 Academy Road, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, together with a card bifolium containing a typed poem titled ‘A day at North-hoose, for Sylvia’ by ‘MG’. All leaves folded along centre, title-leaf slightly spotted
Provenance
From the family of Sylvia Wishart.
Footnote
An unpublished holograph play given by Brown to the Orkney artist Sylvia Wishart (1936-2008) on her 26th birthday, at the height of their romantic involvement. Wishart had grown up as Brown's neighbour in Stromness, and first came to his notice as a 12-year-old when one of her pictures appeared in a local exhibition. As a student at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen she began to visit Brown while he was at Tor-na-Dee sanatorium nearby. According to Brown's biographer, ‘he was fascinated by [Wishart's] changing moods: one moment she was as subtle and withdrawn as the Mona Lisa, he told Ian MacArthur; the next she was boisterous as Eartha Kitt. They had much in common. Like George, Sylvia was drawn to Catholicism; and, like him, she loved Rackwick more than any other place on earth. By the autumn of 1962, Sylvia and George were seeing each other every evening and, as often as their funds would allow, catching a lift with a fisherman to Hoy at the weekend’ (Maggie Fergusson, George Mackay Brown, 2006). Edinburgh University Library holds another manuscript copy with the possibly erroneous date 1952 (MS 3116/2a). The title of the work is from the traditional English folk song ‘The Lyke-Wake Dirge’.