Waugh, Evelyn (1903-1996)
Three first editions from the library of his lover Joyce Gill
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 21 June 2023 at 11:00 BST
Description
Decline and Fall, an Illustrated Novelette; Black Mischief; The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1928-32-57.
3 works, first editions, first impressions, 8vo, original cloth, Pinfold with dust jacket, Decline and Fall and Black Mischief each with ownership inscription 'Joyce Gill, 10 Pitt St, W8' and Pinfold with gift inscription 'Joyce, for her birthday, with love from Louis, 1957' to front free endpaper.
Decline and Fall: spine rolled, fraying to spine-ends, Mudie's Select Library label to front cover, tips bumped, textblock toned, abrasion to front pastedown, cut-out magazine portrait of Waugh pasted to half-title, half-title spotted, small marginal hole to pp. 31-4, small closed to pp. 93/4, old adhesive repair to rear inner hinge, a few other marks. Black Mischief spine rolled, rear joint split, light spotting to front. Pinfold: spine rolled, light spotting to outer leaves, dust jacket spotted and chipped.
Together with a collection of Evelyn Waugh first editions from the library of Joyce's son (Dominic Gill): Basil Seal Rides Again, 1963, 2 copies, respectively one of 1,000 for the USA and 750 for the UK and rest of the world, both signed by the author, UK issue spine sunned; Scoop, 1938, 2 copies, spines sunned, one spine also marked; Black Mischief, 1932, spine sunned and rolled, spotting to outer leaves; Put Out More Flags, 1942 (with dust jacket); and 9 others (Remote People; Love Among the Ruins, 2 copies, with dust jackets; Men at Arms; Put Out More Flags; Remote People; Labels; A Tourist in Africa, with dust jacket; Waugh in Abyssinia, rebound, ex-library; and Helena, first US edition)
Footnote
Note: Joyce Gill (née Fagan) was a long-standing friend of Waugh's with whom he had a passionate affair during the unhappy period of the drawn-out annulment of his first marriage to Evelyn Gardner ('She-Evelyn').
A sometime music-hall performer, and later secretary and assistant to the author Clifford Bax, Joyce was introduced to Evelyn by his brother Alec at the Cave of Harmony nightclub, Fitzrovia, around Christmas 1923. She was enchanted by his stories of Oxford life, and once term restarted she was invited to a party hosted by Evelyn in Oxford, successfully dressing as a man in order to evade the attentions of the university proctors. From that point they maintained a flirtatious if casual friendship. In 1928, following Joyce's marriage to American businessman Donald Gill and Evelyn's to Gardner, the Waughs lived in Joyce's flat on Canonbury Square — their first marital home.
Though the full nature of Joyce and Evelyn's relationship remains obscure, a letter written to Evelyn by Joyce in 1938 after his second marriage and excerpted in Selina Hastings's 1994 biography is evidence of a powerful and enduring connection. According to Hastings, ‘Joyce was lively, attractive, intelligent, and fun. Half Irish and a couple of years older, she could hardly have been more different from Evelyn in taste and temperament: very musical, a committed socialist, an agnostic briskly dismissive of religion, she was unconventional even by the standards of the bohemian world in which she moved … Whatever happened between Evelyn and Joyce must have come to a head during the summer of 1935, for shortly before his departure for Abyssinia Evelyn asked Joyce to leave her husband and go with him. The probability is that although deeply in love with Laura, Evelyn was overwhelmed by the depressing likelihood that he would never be able to marry her. On the point of going abroad for an indefinite period, in a state of heightened emotional and physical responsiveness, the temptation of an affair with Joyce was irresistible ... It was, she later told one of her daughters-in-law, the most painful decision of her life: the affair was a passionate one, the prospect of adventure extremely tempting; but she loved her husband, by whom she now had two little boys, and so decided against running off with Waugh’ (Evelyn Waugh, pp. 328-9).
The 'Louis' who inscribed this copy of The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold for Joyce was the man of letters Louis Wilkinson (1881-1966), best known under his pseudonym Louis Marlow, and remembered as a champion of Oscar Wilde and for his association with the Powys brothers and Aleister Crowley.
Provenance: By direct descent from Joyce Gill (first three items).