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CHURCHILL, Winston S. Autograph letter signed ('Winston S. Churchill') to Pamela [Plowden, later Countess of Lytton], 35a Great Cumberland Place, 23 July [1898], 2 pages, 8vo , bifolium. Provenance : by descent from Pamela, Countess of Lytton; Christie's, 2 December 2003, lot 43.
CHURCHILL, Winston S. Autograph letter signed ('Winston S. Churchill') to Pamela [Plowden, later Countess of Lytton], 35a Great Cumberland Place, 23 July [1898], 2 pages, 8vo , bifolium. Provenance : by descent from Pamela, Countess of Lytton; Christie's, 2 December 2003, lot 43. 'YOU EXERCISE A STRANGE FASCINATION OVER ME': Churchill's first surviving letter to his first great love. Churchill sends the manuscript of his novel Savrola (here entitled 'Affairs of State'): 'I am conscious of its faults ... It is however ... the mirror of my mind. I do not know whether you will care ... to look into that mirror --; but if you do I am sure that it will gain beauty by the reflection'. He hopes they may meet again, to 'improve our acquaintance. I shall make no attempt to conceal the fact that you exercise a strange fascination over me ... please believe me, for some time an admirer -- and always a friend'. Churchill had met Pamela Plowden in Hyderabad in November 1896: she was the daughter of the Resident, Sir Trevor Chichele-Plowden. He immediately wrote to his mother that she was 'the most beautiful girl I have ever seen'. As the present letter shows, he was slow in declaring himself, but by November 1898 he was writing to her that 'I love one above all others', and they even seem to have been informally engaged for a time in 1900; in 1902 however she was to marry Victor, 2nd Earl of Lytton. Writings of Sir Winston Churchill © Estate of Winston S. Churchill