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Octavo. Original cream cloth-backed white paper-covered card folder. 44pp stapled and then bound into folder with single cord. Folder illustrated with a Vorticist design by Lewis. Heavily marked, stained and darkened, edges rubbed, slight area of loss to paper cover to top edge of upper cover, a series of tiny prickmarks to upper cover, staples rusted. One of 200 copies (though Pound & Grover speculate that perhaps only fifty copies of the folder were made). With an ink presentation inscription from Lewis 'To dear Alic(k) Schepeler from P.Wyndham Lewis 1/12/17'. Alick Schepler, lover and friend of Lewis and other writers and artists notably W.B.Yeats, worked for the Illustrated London News. Addressed in letters by Lewis variously as 'Alic.' 'Alick' and 'Alec'. from 1914-1917. Alick Schepeler who worked as a secretary on the Illustrated London News , was interested in the arts and had been the model and mistress of Augustus John in 1906-7, she had been born in Russia in the same year as Lewis and grew up in Poland where her mother became a governess after the death of her father. The moody and highly-strung girl. who was obsessed by clothing, had luxurious brown hair, deep blue eyes and a rich slightly accented voice. She was unpretentious, passionate and (unlike most of her contemporaries) eager for love affairs. John who was fascinated by Alick for a time and did some very successful portraits of her, called her his "jeune fille mystérieuse et gaie". In mid 1915 Lewis wrote apologetically to Alick; "I cannot describe my resentment against a woman who made me drunk last Saturday afternoon.I was maudlin and very insolent." And in June he wrote a tantalizing letter, describing his fascination with her nightgown, and his temporary escape, which suggests she was also his mistress: "You caused me this morning to almost alter all my arrangements: for the pink nightgown on sunday (though I don't believe you've got one) captured my my sense, over-susceptible as you know. But I kept my head, and the result is that I regret to say that I shall be away on Sunday next. I am going to the country again.& could not, save by extreme dislocation of arrangements, get back in time for the pink nightdress. Prehaps when you can once more move, and our no longer wrapt round with the odour of disinfectants [She had been ill], I may yet hope tpo have a glimpse of the garment?". Lew wrote to Alick while he was at the front in 1917: and he continued to see her until 1930 when he apparently suspected her loyalty and quarrelled about malicious gossip that had been attributed to her. MEYER, JEREMY. The Enemy. A Biography of Wyndham Lewis. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1980. Vorticist period inscriptions by Lewis are of the greatest rarity. Seller Inventory # 017929
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