ROSAMOND LEHMANN - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 02/17 - HFSID 287367

ROSAMOND LEHMANN
This signed handwritten letter to an ailing "Papa Carl" discusses the opening of her play, No More Music
Autograph Letter signed: "Rosamond", 4 pages (front and verso) 8x6. Ipsden House, Ipsden, Oxford, February 17, no year, but probably 1938. To "Dearest 'Papa' Carl", in full: "I was so enchanted to get a letter dictated by Miriam with your own signature, and to know from your own lips that you are better. I do do hope the improvement goes on, and that quite soon you will be able to read and write yourself again. It has been a great deprivation, and I am afraid you have had a wretched time. I am so glad Miriam is with you. I can imagine what it means to have her. I think of you a lot, and all the family inquires for you. Yesterday I went to Nina's wedding (Nina Soames, who has just married a man named Vijoyan Drury - nice - middle aged - well off!) and saw Archie, John & Mother, who all asked me for the latest news and were so happy to hear it was good. Darling, I enclose the bill of my play, and I wish you were all going to be able to see it. Rehearsals are going excellently, everybody is excited about it. The first night has been sold out over, over again, I hear. I can't think how I shall get through it; but I sometimes feel I shan't be horribly nervous. So many other people have a share in it now that it scarcely seems to belong to me anymore; and I feel nervous for the actors & producer almost more than for myself. I don't think it will really be so bad as publishing a novel! The children are very much better, but the weather is so terrible, terrible, I can't let them go out. Ipsden is blotted out in snow & sleet & rain & it's hard to believe spring will come. I wonder how you feel about Hitler, Austria. Needless to say we are all deeply concerned, especially John. Get better soon, dear 'Papa'. Our best love to you, Tante Thise, Mirisam. Yours affectionately".  Rosamond Lehmann (1907-1989) was an English novelist whose first book, Dusty Answer (1927), was a best seller, controversial at the time for its open portrayal of gay and lesbian relationships at Cambridge, her alma mater. In all, she wrote seven novels and a short story collection, translated two French works into English, and authored some nonfiction, including an autobiography. Her only play, No More Music, discussed in this letter, opened in 1939. Her novels The Weather in the Streets (1936) and The Echoing Grove (1953) were made into movies, the latter re-titled Heart of Me (2002). Lehmann was a member of the "Bloomsbury set," which included literature luminaries such as Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. She was honored as a CBE in 1982. The reference to Hitler and Austria dates this letter from the late 1930s, probably 1938, when Germany absorbed Austria (March 11). Ipsden House was the home she shared with Wogon Phillips (later a Communist member of the House of Lords), the second of her unhappy marriages. The identity of "Papa Carl", not her own father (journalist and parliamentarian Rudolph Lehmann, who had died in 1929), merits further research. Rosamond's siblings were fellow author John Lehmann (mentioned in the letter) and actress Beatrix Lehmann. Vertical fold crease, not affecting signature. Lightly soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.