comprising 32 autograph letters signed, 6 typed letters signed, and 12 cards, to Meraud, an important correspondence covering their early friendship, his mental breakdown of 1964 and subsequent years of illness, and his renewed activity from the mid-1970s following his marriage, January 1956 to December 1984; as well as an additional 6 autograph letters and 15 cards to her daughter Alladine (Nini) Lacroix, with regular news of his activities including travel, readings, and publications (such as the "marvellous reviews" of his Paris Journal of the 1930s), as well as news of her mother, especially her ill-health, mutual friends, and one letter also detailing his first meetings with Meraud for use in her biography of her mother, 1979-93; and one additional autograph letter signed to Douglas Cleverdon ("...I write to you at present because at last, quite recently, I have begun to be able to see again, and consequently to believe myself capable of saying something worth while...", and asking him to send a copy of the Medieval Mystery play The Harrowing of Hell, 18 March 1964); also 9 letters and cards by Judy Lewis, later Gascoyne's wife, to Meraud, notably a long letter introducing herself and explaining how she had met Gascoyne "in a very depressed state at the mental Hospital on the Island [the Isle of Wight], where I visit once a week to read and talk about poetry", 5 letters by others (including David Wright and Isabel Gascoyne), to Meraud, concerning Gascoyne, a photographic portrait of Gascoyne by Thérèse Le Prat signed by the artist and inscribed on the reverse by the sitter ("To dearest K.J.R. with all my love | David Gascoyne. | Xmas 1953"), various cuttings and a copy of Gascoyne's funeral service; altogether over 185 pages, various sizes, plus many autograph envelopes, 1955-2001

R. Fraser, Night Thoughts: the Surreal Life of the Poet David Gascoyne (Oxford, 2012)

Condition is described in the main body of the catalogue, if appropriate.
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Meraud Guevara (1904-1993) was an heiress of the Guinness brewing family who studied at the Slade, became a noted painter, married the Chilean artist Alvaro Guevara, and was an important patron to many artists in France in the post-war decades. She befriended David Gascoyne in 1955 and over the next ten years he spent long periods living at her flat in Paris and summer residence near Aix-en-Provence. He was finding it almost impossible to write poetry at this time, but Guevara encouraged him to experiment in the visual arts. Gascoyne's letters during this period were mostly written when he was in the UK, and are replete with news of the art world, as well as the affairs of mutual friends (such as his former lover Rachel Jacobs), complaints about the English weather (London in winter is "a damp grey maze full of flickering dead souls", 25 January 1956), and apologies for his "idiotic paralysing inability to write letters" (10 May 1962). He was writing little original poetry during this period but interest in his work never died away ("...I had a letter - entirely unsolicited request - from the Oxford University Press, who want to publish a volume of my collected poems...", 10 May 1962).

A major crisis in Gascoyne's life came in March 1964 when he suffered a serious manic episode - attempting to strangle Guevara - and a major breakdown. Gascoyne wrote a series of letters to Guevara in the weeks after his breakdown from the Clinique de Vaucluse outside Paris, repeatedly asking for money, describing his life in hospital and the effects of medication ("...It suddenly occurred to me that I was perhaps going to be more or less permanently a malade mentale, that I should never again be able to use my talent, and should have to spend a large part of the rest of my life in institutions ... I realise perfectly now that all this was a delusion - an artificially stimulated one...", 13 May 1964). Gascoyne returned to England after his discharge from hospital, settling on the Isle of Wight. He wrote to Guevara that "David the poet is completely dead; and what you say about a stake through the heart is realistic, as that is exactly what acute depression feels like actually" (1 November 1964), and their correspondence thinned in the desolate years that followed. Gas✤coyne was acutely aware that his illness had damaged their relationship, admitting in a long letter from the Chelsea Arts Club, written when he was on the cusp of another serious manic episode, that "losing one's friends is one of the worst results of the kind of auto-destructive psychological 'thing' that I was suffering from" (9 May 1969). Gascoyne's renewal after meeting Judy Lewis was little short of astonishing, as he himself admitted: "it's amazing how much I've got to say now, about all kinds of things, and how easily the writing comes. I really have gone through a sort of phoenix rebirth" (16 April 1979). His late letters write of writing, lecturing, poetry readings, visits back to France (as well as other foreign travel) and his happy domestic life, as well as his concern over her health. He continued to castigate himself for his shortcomings as a correspondent, but assured his friend that: "If I were to write to you as often as I think of you, you would have a large collection of my letters" (23 February 1984).