Eleven-and-a-half page heavily corrected typescript of a magazine article, "Miss Briton's Lady-Companion."
[Mallorca? 1967.]. This article, on twelve 11" x 8.5" sheets, appeared in Family Circle magazine on September 24, 1967. An affectionate account of the early life of Robert Graves's mother, who, while still a young girl, became "not only lady-companion but cook, housekeeper, secretary and nurse to an old recluse" named Miss Briton. Miss Briton, who lived in Kensington, suffered from a delusion of extreme poverty, and while Graves's uncles and aunt were leading a fairly extravagant life in Munich, Graves's mother had a lean time with Miss Briton. However, Miss Briton appointed Graves's mother her sole heiress, and when Miss Briton diied in 1890 she left "over one hundred thousand pounds." Graves explains these hardworking years as the prelude to her marriage (at thirty-six) to Alfred Percival Graves (a widower with five children) and her increasingly happy married life. The second half of the article contains Robert Graves's own childhood memories, an account of his being reported dead on the battlefield which lead to his mother's loss of faith, and his summary of his own qualities that he feels he owes to her, above all, the wisdom of her dictum: "Work is far more interesting than play." An excellent example of Graves's success in autobiographical prose. The extensive revisions and insertions, in black ink, with many deletions and much new and substituted autograph material (amounting to approximately 350 words), in addition to corrections of grammatical errors illuminate the methods of his comsposition. The lonest insertion is a 90-word anecdote of the young Graves' wish for a bicycle supplementing his mother's sincere belief in an afterlife. Item #45348
Price: $7,500.00
