CHURCHILL | Autograph letter signed, to Moreton Frewen, on prose style, 31 August [1896]

CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON 

Fine early autograph letter signed (“Winston S. Churchill”), to Moreton Frewen (“Dear Uncle Moreton”),

PROVIDING HIS EARLY THOUGHTS ON EFFECTIVE PROSE COMPOSITION ("…The only great prose writer I have so far read is Gibbon – who cannot certainly be accused of crispness. It has appeared to me – so far as I have gone – that composition is essentially an artificial science. To make a short sentence - or a succession of short sentences - tell – they should be sandwiched in between lengthy and sonorous periods. The contrast is effective…"), with an initialled postscript ("W.S.C."), 4 pages, 8vo, headed stationery of 35a Great Cumberland Place, London, 31 August [1896]

A letter by the 21-year old Churchill encapsulating his instinctive grasp of the rhythm of prose, and explaining a stylistic pattern that would shape his writing throughout his life. This letter was written to Moreton Frewen (1853-1924), his mother's brother-in-law and one of the more colourful members of his family. Frewen was a wayward entrepreneur whose ventures included running a cattle company in the American West. He was also a journalist and had given Churchill his first typewriter in 1893, hence Churchill's comment in this letter that "I know how much you use your typewriter". Moreton had written to Churchill about one of his earliest pieces of journalism, an article on the Cuban War in the Saturday Review on 29 August 1896. Less than two weeks later he sailed for India with his regiment, the 4th Hussars.

LITERATURE:

Allen Andrews, The Splendid Pauper (1968), pp.8-9

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 12 December 2002, lot 2