An unpublished card from Evelyn Waugh to Christopher Sykes. One side of a Combe Florey House postcard, addressed and stamped on the reverse, signed "E. Waugh (late Pinfold)".The card follows up on Waugh's letter to the Sykeses nine days before on 2nd January 1961, accusing that Sykes, in jealously, destroyed "part of my recent letter which was addressed to your p.y.w?" as "she has not acknowledged my commission."It then gives notice of Waugh's coming to London the next weekend, offering himself to "meet any of your broad-casting colleagues who want to consult about Wodehouse panegyric during the week-end." A single central fold, with Sykes's pencil markings.

On the 2nd of January 1961, Waugh had written to Sykes to thank him for giving him Boxing Day lunch at his house at Donhead St Mary, where Sykes had informed him that his proposed radio broadcast for Wodehouse's 80th birthday had been green lit by the BBC's Director General.
The second part of that letter is addressed "Now here is a bit for PYW / Dearest Camilla," PYW being Waugh's code for 'pretty young wife' and the name by which he called Camilla Sykes. Mrs Sykes, herself a professional furniture buyer, had been engaged by Waugh in that letter to source two drawing-room chairs for him "in which corpulent novelists can doze." She had by this point evidently not responded to his commission, but when she did and chairs were eventually found they were, by Waugh's own admission, too small for a man of his size and weight.

PROVENANCE: From the estate of Christopher Sykes. One letter of seven housed in an envelope marked "Letters not given to Mr Amory". Mark Amory was the editor of The Letters Of Evelyn Waugh, in which this letter is not published.

Stock ID: 37549