BOOKS ON EVAN MORGAN, VISCOUNT TREDEGAR
Evan’s Letters and Prose.
Two compilations of the letters and prose of the charismatic Welsh peer
Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar, have
recently been edited by Newport ’s
William Cross, FSA Scot who is also Evan’s biographer.
Evan, Lord Tredegar, Selected Letters, Prose and
Quotations: The Mystic Muse of Evan Frederic Morgan ISBN 9781905914241 Book
Midden Publishing (2015)
This
book offers a wonderful selection of letters and prose including Evan’s
intimate correspondence to his beloved friend ‘Krylie’ (
Cyril Hartmann) culled from the Tredegar House Archive. In addition are
Evan’s letters to the composer Cecil Gray and to literary giants George Bernard
Shaw and G K Chesterton from the British Library Manuscripts Department,
published for the first time in ninety years. The letters reveal a surprisingly
whimsical, witty, whilst occasionally warped side to Evan thoughts,
relationships and deeds.
In
addition the compilation combines a broad base of prose articles by
Evan contributed to magazines and newspapers offering his own personal
memoir of time spent in Algiers ( 1918); Paris ( 1919); Rome ( for the
visit to the Pope at the Vatican of King George V and Queen Mary in
1923); and his view of Limehouse as its prospective Member of Parliament in
1929. Evan’s vision on Catholic matters is confronted in a serious
article, but there is a lighter note with a lyrical piece about how the
Victorians are remembered. The sizable collection of quotations about
Evan will amuse and provoke.
Evan, Lord Tredegar : Further Letters and Prose Pieces:
With Anecdotes About Evan 978-1905914388 Book Midden Publishing ( 2016)
Among the letters included are those to the Welsh artist
Augustus John, to The Archbishop of Cardiff ,
Francis Mostyn and to Marie Stopes who was involved with Evan and others in the
campaign to try to secure a pension for Lord ' Bosie' Douglas .
Other nuggets include two odd-ball letters featuring Evan from Aldous Huxley -
his friend from the tragically insecure days spent at Lady Ottoline Morrell's
Garsington Manor during the Great War. Here too are the letters from Evan to
Frances Stevenson, David Lloyd George's private secretary and mistress; Frances
later dubbed Evan " a hopeless liar and thoroughly degenerate". The
new prose pieces include Evan's essay on " Youth", his personal views
of what men and women of the 1920s would have made the ideal Prime Minister's
inner Cabinet, and a curiously vain piece about " This Age of Vulgarity"
as well as an equally heady essay entitled " I Believe in the Roman
Catholic Church".
These
books are rare, limited
numbers, the results of Will Cross’s ten years of research. The
work fills a gap as very little of Evan’s written words ( except his
poems and verse) are readily available in the public domain.
Copies can be obtained direct from William Cross at 58, Sutton
Road , Newport , NP19 7JF
