COOPER, Duff.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Autograph letters signed to Lady Gwendeline Churchill. An intimate group of candid and flirtatious letters from the young Duff Cooper to Lady Gwendeline Churchill, written from the Western Front, while on leave, and after the war.Lady Gwendeline Churchill, née Bertie (1885-1941), known to her friends as "Goonie", was a daughter of the Earl of Abingdon and moved in aristocratic and political circles. In 1908 she married Winston Churchill's brother, Jack. She first appears in Cooper's diaries in May 1915, and the two remained close thereafter; Cooper records that Diana, his future wife, was irritated by the attention he paid Gwendeline. On 26 April 1917, after lunching with Goonie, Cooper wrote: "I am certainly very near to being in love with her. She is so charming and so unexpected" (Diaries, p. 52).The first letter, written from France while Cooper was serving with the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards, strongly suggests feelings beyond friendship. Although undated, it must date from June 1917 or later, when he joined the regiment. "My dearest Goonie, Why do you never write to me? And what has become of you?... tell me where you live and what you do, what you read and what you think, what you eat and what you drink, whom you see and whom you love. The last is the most important and I'm so afraid that it is the one you won't answer". He recalls a walk in Richmond Park: "That day was one of my favourite pages - and I knew at the time that it would be and that it was fraught with

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