The Library of Roger Wagner - PBA Galleries

PHOTOGRAPHS OF AND LETTERS FROM ALFRED PERLES
208. perlès, AlfreD. Group of 41 original photographs, 1 postcard, and 1 original etching of Alfred Perlès. 41
original photographs, 1 postcard, and 1 original etching, of Alfred Perlès. 8x10 or smaller, some color,
but most black & white.
Various places: [c.1940s-1970]
Photographs depict Perlès in the British Pioneer Corps in the 1940s, in a Fleet Street pub, with
several women, with his new wife Anne in 1951, in Cyprus in 1965, with Henry Miller in the
1940s and again in the 1960s, portraits, etc. Most are labeled on verso in the hands of Perlès or
Miller (a few perhaps in Anne Perlès’ hand). Very good or better - a nice group.
(300/500)
209. perlès, AlfreD. Two typed letters signed, to Henry Miller. Two 1 page TLs from Alfred Perlès.
Dorset: May 11th and July 12th, 1976
They remained life-long friends; each called the other “Joey.” The first letter begins, “...It
feels good to be away from Cyprus and in an intelligible land again. Intelligible? The whole
country around here is impregnated with Hardy’s spirit and his novels, which I don’t seem able
to understand. It’s all very feudal still....” He goes on to discuss language differences between
Chinese and Turkish, and things in general. The second letter regards Miller’s Book of Friends,
of which he says, “Your former Rabelaisian lustiness seems to have given way to a new mood
of nostalgia, don’t tell me you’re getting old, Joey. Is there any more coming? Surely you can’t
end up with Alec Considine, the least sympathetique of your friends...Your sense of humour
still comes through in patches, in such sentences as `As everyone knows, there is no more
enjoyable fuck to be had than from a woman in tears.’ It’s the `as everyone knows’ that made
me laugh....” Condition of both letters is good as they were written on flimsy post-office issued
stationery; one with top section detached but present, the other with pieces of corners lacking
(a bit of text lost).
(600/900)
210. perlès, AlfreD. One-page typed letter signed to Henry Miller. 1 page TLs. One blue paper that
doubled as the mailing envelope.
Dorset: 6th July, 1978
Letter to Miller from his good friend, describing an anguished visit with his wife to his native
Vienna, which he hadn’t visited since 1947. Perlès gives a moving description of his sadness at
seeing Vienna after so many years: “Anne and I went to Vienna last month, where we spent a
week. It was my first visit to the place since 1947 when my home- town was still under the fourpower
occupation and the people were starving. Then I wept for the Viennese, but this time for
Vienna. The place has changed almost beyond recognition from the days of Emperor Franz-
Josef under whose reign I was born. Of course, much else has changed, too, in the last 81 years.
Including myself. I wandered through the streets in a haze, they might as well have belonged to
Philadelphia or Pittsburg [sic], Pennsylvania, where I’ve never been. I felt like an alien in my own
hometown. But then I’m an alien no matter where I go...The city is very prosperous now, with
a much harder currency than the English pound...I did take a day off and went all by myself to
H tteldorf, where I’d spent the best years of my childhood and early adolescence. Great changes
there, too. The garden of the house where we then lived and which, in memory, was the most
beautiful garden in the world, more beautiful even than the Luxembourg, has been turned into
a carpark! And the delicatessen shop across the street has given place to a supermarket. It was a
pilgrimage-cum-swansong to the remote past to which I can never return. Walking through the
old familiar streets I shed a few tears, just for good measure, and returned to town to meet my
beloved spouse in an expensive Konditorei....” About fine.
(500/800)
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