Mar 31, 2011 - Sale 2241

Sale 2241 - Lot 220

Price Realized: $ 660
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
"I DID NOT EXPECT TO GO OUT INTO AN ENCHANTED CITY" (NEW YORK CITY.) Price, C. Matlack. Archive of a melancholy Manhattan art critic's letters to his fiancé. More than 100 Autograph Letters Signed, 0.25 linear feet; various sizes and conditions, a few dampstained but most in fine condition; most in original envelopes with stamps clipped. New York and elsewhere, 1918-23
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Charles Matlack Price (1887-1962) was an art critic and a lecturer on commercial art at the New York School of Applied Design for Women; he became editor of Arts & Decoration in 1921. These letters were written to his fiancé and business partner Marguerite M. Wurzburg (1891-1936), a writer on interior design who used the name Margaret Meade professionally. Almost all of the letters date from two extended periods when she was away in Grand Rapids, MI. The letters from April to September 1918 were written from his apartment on 23rd Street in Manhattan, followed by six months of military service in Camp Meade, MD leading up to their marriage in April 1919 (44 letters total). Another batch of 45 letters was written from February to May of 1922.
One of the earliest letters, dated 21 April 1918, is essentially Price's illustrated walking tour of Manhattan on a foggy spring night, extending over 5 pages. He begins "When I went out to supper, I did not expect to go out into an enchanted city--but it happened that I did." It is illustrated with two lovely pencil sketches, one of Times Square and one of "any side street." His other letters maintain a similarly melancholy tone, and some are also illustrated with small sketches. with--12 additional letters to or from Price dated through 1947.