Influential British writer (1894–1963) best known for the twentieth-century classics Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. Fascinating collection of five ALSs and one TLS, each signed “Aldous” dating from 1938 to 1963, all to writer Claire Nicholas White and her sculptor husband, Robert White, discussing his own works and critiquing her novel.
December 30, 1938–Untranslated letter in French thanking Claire for a poem
February 14, 1949-In part: “We keep on expecting to go to Wrightwood but the snow keeps on falling and the wind keeps on blowing and the frost keeps on freezing and the doctor keeps on saying that the least arctic place in Southern California is this one…We vegetate in this desert, enjoying the beauty of sand dunes and the first flowers, of date palms and canyons and mountains covered with snow. In the intervals I have been writing some essays and making a dramatization of Ape and Essence. Oerhaps [sic] somebody some time will put it on. Who knows?”
July 10, 1962-In part: “Thank you for your letter & the check which I will use for Bonnie Maman’s needs in emergencies or to provide an occasional treat. Her health remains good, on the whole, and she runs her life remarkably well. I am glad you liked Island. It has had a curiously mixed reception—some people enthusiastic, others intensely hostile, nobody, it seems, indifferent…Every one of the world’s great tragedies from Aeschylus to Shakespeare—is concerned with the kind of things that one reads on the front pages of the tabloids—murder and sexual scandals.”
November 17, 1962-“Thank you for your sweet letter. It is always a great delight to see you & Bobby & the children and an enduring satisfaction to know that Matthew and his children have put down a set of subsidiary roots at St. James. Alas for Erasmus! How I shd [sic] like to be like him! And how sadly I realize that his sweet reasonableness made him abhorrent to both parties, who went on with their wars and afraid only in denouncing the apostle of good will, intelligence and compromise.”
March 9, 1963-Huxley critiques his friend’s work. In part: “I take the opportunity provided by a flight to Rome…to write you about The Death of the Orange Trees. I read it with a great deal of pleasure—for it is full of good things, well said—but also with twinges every now and then of disappointment—for there were things, I thought, which might have been better. What was good was the overall picture…things which might have been better were the relations between…her painter husband, which were never made very clear. E.g. were they sexually compatible?…Dear Claire, if I make these criticisms, it is not for the sake of carping, but simply because the rest of the book is so good that I feel you could do still better next time.”
No date-In the archive’s final letter, Huxley writes beneath a typed statement: “Here is the article with suggested emendation. Krishnamurti is not a vedantist, nor is Gerald Heard—tho’ both have affinities with Vedanta. I have omitted Prabhavananda’s name, because the significant fact is not that he personally is in S. Calif. but that the Vedanta Society has branches all over the USA, in S. America & in many European countries & their monks are trained in India to run these various branches.” In overall very good to fine condition, with some punch holes, wrinkling and creasing, light to mild toning, and scattered stains.
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Known for his novel Brave New World, numerous essays and short stories, as well as the editing of the magazine Oxford Poetry, it is not surprising that White would solicit Huxley’s input. He happily obliged in one letter here, noting how the work in question was “full of good things…but also with twinges every now and then of disappointment.” By the end of his life Huxley was considered by some to be a highly regarded intellectual—another point highlighted by his references to envy of Desiderius Eraumus and Jiddu Krishnamurti—both also serving as a commentary on his interest in spiritual subjects. RRAuction COA.
