Ellis, Havelock | A collection of letters by Havelock to Mr. Morgan-Browne

Ellis, Havelock

A revealing collection of letters to Mr. Morgan-Browne, principally written in Brixton and West Drayton, 1912–1916

Forty-six autograph letters signed, each accompanied by a typed transcript. Together 108 pages, various 4to and 8vo sizes, on printed letterhead, each mounted on a guard. Scarlet levant morocco binding by Riviere, spine gilt-lettered; extremities rubbed. Slipcase.

A remarkable and deeply revealing series of letters to an engaged reader, spanning more than four years—from 2 May 1912 to June 1916—and ranging across an unusually wide field of subjects: literary, musical, biographical, and personal. The correspondence had its origin in a request from Mr. Browne-Morgan, who approached Havelock Ellis for personal particulars with a view to writing a biographical essay on him, and who later conceived the more ambitious project of publishing a volume of selections drawn from Ellis’s work. In the course of the exchange that followed, Ellis offered an extraordinary wealth of material for understanding a figure at once eminent and famously reticent. The identity of the recipient is not known (and there is no apparent mention of him in Ellis’s autobiography), but it is possible that it was an H. [or H. W.] Morgan-Browne who published a number of literary and educational handbooks at this time.

Ellis is forthcoming and revealing from the start, sharing in his first letter: “I feel fairly certain that neither Wagner nor Burne-Jones had the slightest influence on my development…” Such intimacies continued: “I do not think that I can admit that my scientific work is merely undertaken for benevolent motives… My most characteristic scientific work (especially the volume ‘Sex in Relation to Society’) certainly springs from a genuine personal impulse and contains some of my most intimate ideals” (18 May 1912). “​​It can scarcely be possible to forecast a writer's personal peculiarities from his writings. A high-pitched voice is not so very uncommon among mentally active people. I am naturally slow, and I think my movements have perhaps become quicker and more nervous in comparatively recent years. I am not muscularly skilful and have never been any good at games (also not uncommon). I certainly think my emotions are much more fundamental than my reason, but I dislike crude emotion and always have the impulse to wait until it is transfigured into intellectualised forms” (9 July 1912). He says that Affirmations and New Spirit are his favorites amongst his own books (17 July 1912). Ellis is occasionally mildly caustic, as in this reply, “With regard to the dancing essay, I cannot help regretting that you sometimes seem to seek more from a single sentence than a single sentence can legitimately expect to contain” (11 June 1913).

Overall, Morgan-Browne proved a sympathetic and discerning correspondent, and the letters are accordingly full of intimate personal allusion—invitations to call at Brixton and West Drayton, frank exchanges of opinion, and confidences of a kind Ellis rarely committed to paper. He sets out his aims and his temperament with disarming candor. “It is perfectly true that I am a dreamer first, and a man of science afterward,” he writes, adding that he has “always sought to express what I may call fine shades of emotion.” The remark goes to the heart of a sensibility that hovered, throughout his career, between the scientific and the contemplative.

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​​His literary judgments range widely, touching on Keats, Hardy, Heine, Nietzsche, H.G. Wells, Gourmont, Symons, Pater, and Viereck, among others, as well as periodicals such as the International Review.

“[Charles Augustin] Ste. Beuve does not seem to us today very ‘physiological’, but I think he may be so considered with reference to the current criticism of his own time. I had not been especially impressed with his insistence on character formation and self-control. Perhaps, however, he was preaching morality to himself, character scarcely seems to have been a strong point with him, and what we are told of his devotion to the brothel in decrepid old age is not attractive” (24 May [1916]).

In music, his enthusiasms and aversions are pronounced and unguarded: he admires Dukas and Sibelius, yet declares that “Beethoven seems to me to have destroyed music,” and dismisses Mahler as “pretentious.” Throughout, there is much of real bibliographical value—commentary and self-criticism bearing on his own principal works, among them Impressions and Comments, Affirmations, and his landmark Studies in the Psychology of Sex.

“It is amusing as to ‘fat mystics’. I think it quite likely that Oriental Mystics, spending much time in inactive contemplation, may tend to be fat. – I always regard myself as a mystic of a sort, what sort would be clear if you ever read an essay I am now writing” (n.d.).

Taken together, this is a superb correspondence, showing Havelock Ellis at the peak of his reputation looking back over the most vital portion of his literary and scientific life. While discrete letters by Ellis appear on the market with some frequency, a comprehensive correspondence—running to more than 100 pages—is very scarce.

PROVENANCE:

Harry F. Marks (descriptions loosely inserted)