3 Rodborough Road
Golders Green N.W. 11

October 8th.1933.

Dear Rebecca West,

I am making a start with the new Rake's Progress only now, a cold having sapped my ambition during the last fortnight. I have had letters with Mealand and persuaded him to postpone the start until the February issue. I hope you will not mind.

I am wondering how I can get my drawings along to you. For the February issue I shall have to be ready at the end of November with the first. In the absence of any knowledge of your arrangements, I am unable to suggest anything but that the drawing should rest with you a while before going to the blockmaker - or that I should send you my rough notes a week before I finish. But would that be too late ?

In the meantime I enclose a list of the subjects. I should like to add, if I may, that I am honoured and delighted to have you as a partner in this crime.

3 Rodborough Road
Golders Green N. W. 11

November 19th. 1933.

Dear Rebecca West,

I am posting you today the colour 'rough' of the first RAKE drawing. The tale it tries to tell is that the so-far-unspoiled young man has been left a fortune and a title (vide newspapers, letters and telegrams on bed - DAILY BUGLE-"Fortune For Clerk-Millionaire in a Night - DAILY STAR-"Clerk Inhabits Million and Title" "Romance of Millions", etc.) The gossip writers of the popular press promptly arrive to start his undoing by making him cheaply famous.

I have conveyed to Mealand that in announcements of the series he should say that my drawings do not include actual likenesses of people, and that passing resemblances which readers may observe are of types rather than of individuals. But I am afraid that Castlerosse, Donegall, Hannen Swaffer and Lady Oxford have turned out plainly recognizable in the finished drawing. In the cases of the first three I do not suppose it matters, but I think it would be as well if you could mention in the letterpress that the lady in the left-hand foreground is not a mere gossip-journalist, but a famous diarist who knew and wrote about the young man's ancestors, and in making a socially call remembered to bring her notebook. (All characters mentioned should be given, of course, fictitious names.) The girl in green and her companion are half-likenesses of Eleanor Smith and Charles Graves. The gent-nosing under the bed could be James Douglas (poor old Jimmy!) There are two nondescript camera-men.

The potentialities for evil in the young man's character are hinted at more plainly in the finished drawing by a vivid sports suit lurking behind the blue suit of conventional respectability inside the wardrobe, by a suggestion of 'hot' shirts in the wardrobe drawer, and by copies of "DOG-RACING" and "THE FILM FAN" with solid books on the bedside cupboard. Otherwise the interior is just dingy boarding-house.

Further information will be supplied on request, as land-and-estate agents say. But I do not suppose you will want to know any more than this.

My kind regards
~~You're Sincere~~
Law