A SET OF FOUR GILT- COMPOSITION TWO-BRANCH WALL-LIGHTS

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THE COUNTESS OF AVON: A TRIBUTE BY HUGO VICKERSThis sale represents a remarkable and yet living time capsule. It is rare that the collection of a man born in 1897 comes to the market 125 years later, having remained in the same private hands all those years. And yet until last year, the pictures and furniture were very much part of a life – they furnished the London apartment of the Countess of Avon. It was here, where she entertained an eclectic group of friends until very recently. She died last November at the great age of 101. Due to her longevity, it is only now that the distinguished collection of the Earl and Countess of Avon is presented for sale. It affords the rare opportunity to buy works of art and furniture that belonged to Anthony Eden, not only one of the most distinguished politicians of the 20th century, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, but a man of high artistic and aesthetic discrimination, and of his highly intelligent and intellectual wife, the former Clarissa Churchill, who possessed exquisite taste, without question the most developed taste of any Prime Minister’s wife in the 20th century. Over the years, these pictures and works of art sat firstly at Number 10 Downing Street, and later at Fyfield Manor, Wiltshire between 1958 and 1966, where they were illustrated by Country Life in 1961, The Manor House Aldvediston and then settling, in the 1980s, in Clarissa Avon’s London flat on Bryanston Square. It was here, in Clarissa Avon’s drawing room with its fabulous apple green walls that became the later backdrop to this collection of art. At Oxford, the study of painting had been Anthony Eden’s passion and all consuming interest. With fellow Oxonians Lord David Cecil, Chips Channon and Robert Gathorne-Hardy, he had founded the Uffizi Society. He wrote a paper on Cézanne, which was hailed as one of the most brilliant papers ever written by an Oxford undergraduate. In forming his collection of art, he started young, buying a Constable in Munich in 1921 for £200, and later works by Degas, Braque and Picasso. Denys Sutton hailed him in Apollo as ‘an amateur of the arts who if circumstances had been different might have been a painter.’ Segonzac was an appreciative admirer (see lot 36 for Segonzac’s portrait of Lord Avon). Sometimes paintings were gifts. In August 1958 Eden thanked Winston Churchill, his predecessor in Downing Street, for one of his paintings: ‘The picture has arrived & we are both delighted with it. It is hung in the drawing-room & looks very well, all in its shimmering green.’ Eden’s love of art was matched by Clarissa’s. They did not always agree about friends, but they did share taste in art. She was a friend of the Welsh painter and wood engraver, David Jones. She was sketched by Jean Hugo (the great-grandson of Victor Hugo) and painted in later life by Lucian Freud. She was photographed by her lifelong friend, Cecil Beaton and by Horst. The dining room at Bryanston Square was also the library. She transferred Eden’s books from his library at Alvediston. I photographed all the books in that library so that she should recreate it perfectly, with the books in the right order. (Further volumes from Lord Avon's Library will be sold at Bellmans, Sussex in December). While at Christ Church, Eden had impressed as an aesthete and a linguist, fluent in Arabic, Turkish and with a considerable knowledge of Persian literature. No visit to Paris was complete without a visit to the second hand bookstalls on the south bank of the Seine. For relaxation at Oxford, he read Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal and Zola and he collected and devoured the more serious French literature and philosophy, and relished the work of the Russian novelists. His library represented what his biographer called ‘a comprehensive survey of French culture’ and furthermore contained many rare Persian books, some of them given to him by the last Shah of Iran. Furthermore he was a sophisticated judge of furniture and ceramics. Clarissa will be remembered differently by many whose paths she crossed. Some found her distant and disapproving – she could be (rather enjoyably so, I always thought), and others no doubt found her somewhat authoritarian (such as the youthful steward, John Prescott, aboard the ship that took them to New Zealand in 1957). Perhaps Raymond Carr was apt when describing her in 2007 that ‘in her prime the stare of her intense blue eyes and the sting of her sharp tongue would drive self serving politicians and their pushy wives to take refuge in silence’. But to those whom she admitted into her world, she is remembered for her sparkling intelligence, her exquisite taste, her unique sometimes impish sense of humour, her love and knowledge of literature, music and the arts, her extraordinary Garbo-esque beauty, and also for her quality of unswerving loyalty as a friend. There were three parts to her life – her early haute Bohemian youth – her marriage to Anthony – and then the long years on her own as a widow. Born in 1920, she had led a Bohemian life in her early days. She used to say that it was surprising she had good aesthetic taste, since her family’s home in the first years of her life was in Cromwell Road, overlooking the Natural History Museum, but fortunately the Victoria and Albert Museum was not far away and that she explored eagerly. She was remote as a child. She once said that Cecil Beaton had to escape from his family background and find his own world, and to some extent that is true of her too. She declared that she never spoke unless she had something pertinent to say and so she very often remained silent. She was never destined for a conventional life. The social world held little allure and she eschewed the traditional aristocratic rural pursuits. She loved to read – and she read voraciously and very fast (I once saw her devour a novel in an afternoon). Besides art, she loved music – especially opera. In later life she often went to Covent Garden with her friend, Lord Goodman. As the bodies piled up on the stage at the end of the performance, Lord Goodman was inclined to comment: ‘Nothing a good lawyer could not have sorted out!’ Clarissa soon found her way into an interesting intellectual set, being taught philosophy by Freddy Ayer, and studying with Lord David Cecil at Oxford. Here the gifts of being exceptionally beautiful, intelligent and well connected stood her in good stead. Her world was enriched by her friendships with James Pope-Hennessy, Evelyn Waugh, Lord Berners at Faringdon and others. Later she undertook a variety of jobs, including working for the film producer Alexander Korda, and the energetic publisher George Weidenfeld. When in 1952 at the age of 32, she married the then foreign secretary Anthony Eden, her world was suddenly peopled with de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Khrushchev and Bulganin. An enjoyable feature of reading her letters from those years was to find distinguished politicians of that era being dismissed as buffoons, and she was no fan of Harold Macmillan, believing that he played a significant role in the fall of her husband, at which point, of course, he took over as Prime Minister. She came into Anthony Eden’s life at a difficult time. Her uncle Winston Churchill played a cat and mouse game, one minute about to retire, then staying on, then about to go, and finally lingering until 1955. ‘He resigned for the tenth and last time’, she said. At Number Ten, she and Anthony hardly ever dined alone, and even in the private apartments, secretaries were forever rushing in. She used to have her friends in for drinks, but then realised that the last thing Anthony wanted to find was a group of them in the drawing room at the end of a long political day. A notable exception was when Cecil Beaton brought Garbo to see her. At that point, he deserted his office and bounded up to meet the star. Eden’s landslide General Election victory in 1955 hinted at some years longer in Number Ten, but the Suez crisis brought that to an end. She described that phase as a nightmare, but a living one, and said in later years that her joke about the Suez canal flowing through her drawing room haunted her till the end. After Suez, when Eden stepped down in 1957, Clarissa devoted herself to caring for him – and never was that loyalty more fully engaged. She looked after him beautifully, surrendering her own interests to that cause, and it was by all accounts a very happy marriage. They travelled widely and enjoyed winters on Becquie and later in Barbados. Though retired from politics, they were still closely involved, visited by politicians in the UK and abroad, with figures such as Sir Robert Menzies and Vincent Massey coming to call, and in 1975 Mrs Thatcher arrived for lunch at Alvediston by helicopter. It was only after Eden died that she resumed her London life, the opera and theatre and her more Bohemian friends. She even took to deep sea diving and, while on the ocean bed, would swim with her air bottle strapped to her back and carrying a stick. In those later years, she was fiercely protective of Anthony’s memory. Dissatisfied with one biography, she commissioned D.R. Thorpe to write another. During those years she made copious investigations into Eden’s health and state of mind during the Suez crisis in order that he be fairly assessed in these biographies. She was confident in her opinions, and I found that more often than not she was right. She was unique in that if a biographer consulted her about say, Evelyn Waugh, she would take it for granted that he knew she knew him and then assess him in the third person. She did not do what most sources do and talk about herself. Living in Wiltshire as she did for so many years had, what might be called, the hazard of Cecil Beaton as a neighbour. Clarissa and Lady Anne Tree suffered somewhat from the misconception that they got ideas for their houses and gardens from him, that he influenced their taste. Invariably it was the other way round. I asked them both if they would in any way reorganise or tidy the house in the knowledge aware that Cecil was coming for a visit and that his all-encompassing eye would be taking everything in. ‘Reluctantly yes,’ was the answer. He was inclined to pass judgement on any improvements: ‘Oh ten out of ten, Clarissa!’ I loved Clarissa’s acerbic take on life. I told her that in Australia James Fairfax, a friend we had in common, had sent a car to collect me from Canberra, to bring me for lunch to his country home, Retford Park, in Bowral, and then take me on to Sydney, a drive of 180 miles. Did she say: ‘How kind of him?’ Not a bit. Her comment was: ‘He must have been desperate for company.’ And when she expressed her wish to leave a dinner party in Patmos in 1983, she expressed this as: ‘I think we’ve exhausted the social possibilities of this evening, don’t you?’ She had a quality of positive negativity. This sale represents a very particular and considered taste. It is one of the most special collections to come to auction for many years. THE GREAT STATESMAN - ANTHONY EDEN: A CAREER BY OLLIE RANDALLAnthony Eden was probably the greatest British diplomat of the twentieth century. He served three remarkable stints at the Foreign Office between 1931 and 1955, with an unparalleled range of achievements and experiences that included five years in Churchill’s War Cabinet. There followed an unhappy twenty months as Prime Minister, best remembered for the Suez Crisis, but his career was much more multifaceted and laden with success than is often remembered. Born in 1897, Anthony Eden was the fourth of five children born to Sir William and Lady Eden née Sybil Grey. Anthony was aware of a persistent rumour that he was in fact the son of George Wyndham, a close friend of his mother’s whom he resembled, but the dates do not appear to match up. Sir William Eden was a colourful, fiery eccentric known as “the Bloody Baronet.” His temper and impetuosity were legendary, and his hobbies were painting and violent boxing matches with acquaintances. Lady Sybil was a charming, hard-partying spendthrift, whose ability to burn through money became a regular headache to her children in later years. From this mixture Anthony inherited his father’s volatility and aesthetic taste, and his mother’s glamour and good looks. His parents’ overbearing natures seem to have left Anthony with a lasting melancholy that was only tempered later in life by his marriage to Clarissa. As a teenage volunteer in the First World War, he earned a Military Cross as a Captain of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, but two of his three brothers were killed in action. After the war, he studied Persian and Arabic at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1923 he married his first wife, Beatrice, and a month later he was elected to Parliament as the Member for Warwick and Leamington. His marriage to Beatrice was not a success, though they had two sons, Simon and Nicholas. In 1925 he began his Government career by becoming the PPS (Parliamentary Private Secretary) to the Under-Secretary to the Home Office; he then embarked on a world tour, which he wrote about in a 1926 book, Places in the Sun. From July 1926 until the Conservative defeat in May 1929, Eden was the PPS of the Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain: this was an unrivalled opportunity for the Oriental Studies graduate to get to know the Foreign Office. In August 1931, a grave financial and political crisis led to the creation of a National Government under Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Eden became the new Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, taking up the job on 1 September 1931. Eden appointed, as his unofficial PPS, Viscount Cranborne, later 5th Marquess of Salisbury, who became his closest adviser and greatest political ally, buttressing all of Eden’s decisions. Soon they were catapulted from the national to the global stage. In 1933, Eden took over as Britain’s lead delegate at the World Disarmament Conference, an unsuccessful attempt by the League of Nations to impose legal limits on the military capabilities of each country. His bold attempts to resolve the deadlock made him an international celebrity, but were scuppered by the newly-elected Nazis. Nonetheless, the experience had proved to Eden that a combination of pragmatism and vision could yield real results for Britain in the role of honest broker in international affairs. Already internationally famous as a dashing young politician and a great hope for peace, Eden was promoted to Lord Privy Seal in January 1934. In this role he undertook two remarkable journeys across Europe in search of a basis for new peace agreements. These trips took him and Cranborne to Berlin, Rome and Moscow, for a unique series of meetings and dinners with Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. Following the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934 by a terrorist trained in Hungary, Eden averted a near-inevitable war by personally brokering a settlement between the Yugoslav and Hungarian Governments. In the same month, he pioneered the world’s first international peacekeeping force to oversee the Saar plebiscite in early 1935. In December 1935, the Foreign Secretary was sacked for his mishandling of Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia. Eden became the new Foreign Secretary, at the age of thirty-eight. Much earlier than most of his colleagues, Eden saw that it was naïve to expect goodwill and fair dealings with Hitler and Mussolini. He believed in re-arming to strengthen the British bargaining position, while never giving way to the dictators’ threats or pleas except in exchange for tangible British gains. Under Eden’s robust leadership, a pan-European Non-Intervention Committee was set up to prevent the Spanish Civil War from developing into a continental conflict; this committee was a masterpiece of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to keep the dictators in check. When it became apparent, for example, that the Italian navy was most likely responsible for a spate of submarine attacks on Mediterranean civilian vessels, Eden did not confront the Italians for fear that they might quit the Non-Intervention Committee. Instead he and Cranborne devised a scheme of patrol zones to ward off “Spanish” submarines, even roping in the Italians to patrol a zone of their own. The outmanoeuvred submarines disappeared. However, Eden found himself increasingly undermined by Neville Chamberlain, who took over as Prime Minister in May 1937. Chamberlain deliberately ambushed his Foreign Secretary with public proclamations and private newspaper briefings that forced Eden to modify his policies. He opened a clandestine back-channel with the Italian Embassy via secret agents; and he told his sister-in-law in Rome to give Mussolini assurances that Eden had not agreed to. All this made Eden’s position increasingly untenable. In January 1938, President Roosevelt privately approached the British Government with an offer of cooperation – something for which Eden had been working strenuously for years. But Eden was on holiday that week, and Chamberlain poured cold water on Roosevelt’s proposal without informing Eden. A month later, the last straw was Chamberlain’s insistence that formal negotiations must be opened immediately with Mussolini, despite the fact that Mussolini had flagrantly violated Eden’s preconditions for such a step. On 20th February, Eden and Cranborne resigned. At this juncture, Eden was the national emblem of hope and peace. It was not at all clear whether the Government could survive his departure. But he was not a political killer, and he faded into the background rather than lead a revolt against Chamberlain. When the Second World War began a year and a half later, Eden and Churchill were brought back into the Government: ostensibly a unifying move, in practice this silenced Chamberlain’s two most potent critics. Eden was Dominions Secretary until Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 and appointed Eden Secretary of State for War. And in December of that year, Eden was promoted to his former position as Foreign Secretary, entering the inner sanctum of Churchill’s War Cabinet. The War Cabinet, never consisting of more than eight members, was the nerve centre of the British war effort. As Churchill centralised as much of the running of the war as he could, the War Cabinet’s role was pivotal, and enabled Eden to play a leading part in strategic decision-making. Sometimes exasperated by the difficulties of working with Churchill, Eden nevertheless formed a very close partnership with his chief. At the same time, Eden had to keep up the diplomatic work of the Foreign Office, meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt amid ongoing efforts to coordinate the Allies’ objectives. In 1942, Churchill wrote to the King to formally nominate Eden his successor should he be killed or incapacitated. As Eden was the most senior Tory in the War Cabinet after Churchill, and the Conservatives were the largest party in the wartime coalition, Eden was the obvious choice; but nonetheless this official recognition of his status as heir was to hang over him for the next thirteen years. Later in 1942, he was given the additional role of Leader of the House of Commons, which he held for the remaining duration of the war. In 1945, Eden was a leader of the British delegation to San Francisco for the conference that set up the United Nations; he returned early to England for the general election, to receive the news that his son Simon had been killed in South-East Asia. This bitter blow led to his divorce from Beatrice, from whom he had been drifting apart for years. Following the Conservatives’ election defeat, Eden was one of the frontrunners to become the UN’s first Secretary General. Instead he became the day-to-day leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, with the ageing Churchill happy to take a hands-off role. It was unclear when Eden would become the formal head of the Party, though many expected it to be soon, and in 1947 came the first of several attempts by senior Conservatives to advise Churchill to stand aside in Eden’s favour. These attempts to install Eden continued through Churchill’s final term of office, from 1951 until 1955, but Eden himself played no part in them. If he had lacked the killer instinct to move against Chamberlain, he certainly wasn’t going to depose Churchill, his war comrade and – from 1952 – his uncle by marriage as well. His marriage to Clarissa Churchill, through producing no children, brought him fulfilment and happiness that his first marriage had not. Eden’s third stint at the Foreign Office (1951-5) was marked by astonishing diplomatic success. He played a key role in solving several of the world’s trickiest international disputes: the control of Trieste, the independence of Austria, the management of Iranian oil, and the future of Indo-China – the latter of which had threatened to turn into a war between China and the USA. Eden also played a key role in brokering closer integration between continental European countries, single-handedly pushing through his own proposal for a Western European Union. However, a botched gall-bladder operation in 1953 left him near death, and his old ally Bobbety Cranborne (now the 5th Marquess of Salisbury) became acting Foreign Secretary until he could recover. In 1955, the Cabinet finally compelled Churchill to honour the last of a string of promises to Eden about his transfer of leadership, and Eden became Prime Minister on 6th April 1955. The night before, Churchill told a confidant, “I don’t believe Anthony can do it;” whether this was prophecy or bitterness is impossible to judge. Despite having been tipped for the top job for the past twenty years, Eden had never made the slightest effort to obtain the office that he now inherited. He immediately called a general election, and the incumbent Government increased its majority for the first time in nearly a century. But after this high point, the subsequent twelve months were hard going. Eden’s reshuffles seemed half-hearted – once again, he lacked ruthlessness. His government appeared to lack direction, and the shine was taken off his public image by a ferocious press campaign against him (largely driven by personal vendettas against the Edens by Pamela Berry, whose husband ran the Daily Telegraph, and Winston Churchill’s son Randolph). On 26 July 1956, Eden held a crisis meeting of his inner circle to discuss his precarious position. A few hours later, the President of Egypt, Colonel Nasser, nationalised the Suez Canal. The Canal had been under British and French ownership, and British oil supplies depended on it. At stake were British prestige and economic independence, and the seizure of the Canal set off four months of crisis within Eden’s government. Eden, Salisbury and the Suez subcommittee of the Cabinet were convinced that Nasser could not, at any cost, be allowed to win. For Eden, Nasser was another Mussolini, whose rapaciousness must be met with vigorous opposition rather than appeasement. An international conference came up with a compromise arrangement, which Nasser rejected when the USA made clear that they would not enforce the deal. In increasing desperation, Eden secretly colluded with the French and Israelis to create an artificial military crisis which would give Anglo-French forces an excuse to seize the Canal. When this plan went ahead at the end of October, there was international outrage. Eden had been led to believe that the Americans would stay neutral, and he had also convinced himself that the Labour Party would support him to preserve national unity. Instead, the Americans lined up against them at the UN and facilitated a run on the pound, while Labour ferociously attacked the Government in the House of Commons. Under pressure from every side, Eden aborted the military operation midway through, before the full length of the Canal could be seized. Eden’s fragile health broke down under the strain; even a much needed holiday to Jamaica was not enough for him to recover, and on 9th January 1957 he resigned. It was widely rumoured that he was driven out by a political coup; although this was not the case, he may well not have lasted much longer in any event. Eden’s health continued to trouble him for the rest of his life, and the Edens spent every subsequent winter in the Caribbean. He continued to believe that his actions over Suez had been both right and largely successful, and he was horrified by his successor Macmillan’s abandonment of the Suez “gains.” In 1961 he was elevated to the House of Lords as the Earl of Avon. His retirement was largely spent writing four volumes of memoirs, whilst pursuing his lifelong interests in art, the Islamic world and literature. Living quietly in retirement with Clarissa, he was still viewed as “The Great Statesman” and always enjoyed visits from contemporary politicians. He died aged seventy-nine in 1977, the last surviving member of the War Cabinet. Of the many tributes offered in both Houses of Parliament on his death, perhaps out of all the most potent is the most personal: his former PPS, Lord Carr of Hadley, commenting “Nobody who knew him well could ever be with him for long without feeling that life was indeed worth living”.Ollie Randall is currently undertaking a History PhD at King's College London. He is also the researcher for a project on 'Bobbety', 5th Marquess of Salisbury.

A SET OF FOUR GILT- COMPOSITION TWO-BRANCH WALL-LIGHTS

EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Details

A SET OF FOUR GILT- COMPOSITION TWO-BRANCH WALL-LIGHTS
EARLY 20TH CENTURY
Fitted for electricity
Each 35 1/2 in. (90 cm.) high; 18 1/2 in. (47 cm.) wide

Literature

C. Hussey, 'Fyfield Manor, Wiltshire - III, the Home of The Earl and Countess of Avon', Country Life, 5 October 1961, p. 753 (illustrated in situ in the Dining Room).

Special notice

This lot will be removed to Christie’s Park Royal. Christie’s will inform you if the lot has been sent offsite. Our removal and storage of the lot is subject to the terms and conditions of storage which can be found at Christies.com/storage and our fees for storage are set out in the table below - these will apply whether the lot remains with Christie’s or is removed elsewhere. Please call Christie’s Client Service 24 hours in advance to book a collection time at Christie’s Park Royal. All collections from Christie’s Park Royal will be by pre-booked appointment only. Tel: +44 (0)20 7839 9060 Email: cscollectionsuk@christies.com. If the lot remains at Christie’s it will be available for collection on any working day 9.00 am to 5.00 pm. Lots are not available for collection at weekends.

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