[Harkness Fellowships.] Five Typed Letters Signed and one Autograph Letter Signed from Lansing V. Hammond of the Commonwealth Fund to Mark Bonham Carter, discussing the organization, cultural matters and death of his father William Churchill Hammond.

Lansing Van der Heyden Hammond (b.1906), son of the distinguished organist and choirmaster of Mount Holyoake College William Churchill Hammond, was for many years Director of the Commonwealth Fund Division of International Fellowships. For Bonham Carter, see his entry in the Oxford DNB. The present group of six items shed light on the 1940s administration of the Commonwealth Fund. They are in good condition, lightly aged and creased. The autograph letter is 1p, 12mo; the five single-spaced typed letters total 6pp, 4to. All six are signed ‘Lance’. ONE: ALS, 10 January 1948. 1p, 12mo. Asking him to postpone a dinner engagement, because he has ‘learned that Allan McKelvie, one of last year’s Fellows, is to be in Chicago on the 28th., leaving the next day for Rochester.’ TWO: TLS, 29 December, 1948. 1p, 4to. With autograph postscript. ‘I was most intersted in hearing your reaction to Cambridge. We also had the good luck of hearing a candlelight evensong in King’s College Chapel; that I consider the most moving experience of the whole trip. I had never had a chance to realize before that the acoustics are as perfect as the architecture.’ He will be interested to have his ‘reactions to the plastic collars [...] the bell captain of the Yale Club, who first told me about them, assures me that one collar will last (continuous wearing) for more than a year.’ He ends with news of ‘Wick’ - Commonwealth Fund administrator Ezra Koster Wickman (1895-1981) - and his operation. THREE: TLS, 18 February 1949. 1p, 4to. Begins: ‘On the way to the office this morning I stopped in at Scribners and asked them to send you a copy of a book which I think will be of interest to you - President Conant’s EDUCATION IN A DIVIDED WORLD. Wick and I both think it excellent. As you know, Conant is probably our most distinguished college president’. He describes ‘a fabulous trip West’ from which Wick has just returned: ‘With his own eyes he saw (in Nebraska) mounds of snow sixteen feet high flanking the highways’. ‘The new Fellows are all doing well; but Freeman Dyson continues to hold the record. He’s just been given a five year appointment by the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, [...] What a man. Geoffrey Crowther has been over here again, winning customary acclaim and delighting his audiences.’ He ends with a reference to MBC’s ‘associations with William Collins & Son’. FOUR: TLS, 9 June 1949. 2pp, 4to. He begins by responding to MBC’s account of ‘the Flagstad SIEGFRIED’: ‘I heard her do Brunnhilde twice in the yers she was over here; and in some ways I think she was more remarkable in that than in any of her other roles. The way she did and responded to the “waking-up” music in the third act always made the part a new creation for me.’ He now turns to ‘another strong group of Fellows - and an unusually diversified range of subjects: among others, a composer of modern music (John D. L. Veale) from Oxford; John R. Wahl, from your college, who is doing a book on Rossetti, a classicist from Cambridge, a girl from Oxford and Hull in my 18th century field and an experimental psychologist from New College, Oxford (this is not Cambridge’s year!) in addition to the lawyers, medical men, engineers and physical scientists we always get. With the exception of the psychologist who may go to Chicago, no one will be heading for your old stamping ground; but there will be three or four on the West coast; and two at Yale. As you can imagine, I’m very happy about the selections and placements!’ He turns to the death of his father the organist William Churchill Hammond, in describing whose last days he writes: ‘He never played more gloriously than at the noontide Good Friday service; he returned to the church to put the finishing touches to his Easter programme; and the last two pieces played - according to a choir member who slipped in to listen - were the Bach chorale, “Come, Sweet Death” and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from THE MESSIAH - a fitting climax to the good life he led.’ He discusses newspaper obituaries, and stresses his versatility: ‘I’ve never known him to “warm up” before a church service or concert with jazz; he didn’t have to. [...] I remember once hearing a rehearsal of the Mount Holyoke College choir, preparatory to the annual Christmas Carol concert in Town Hall, N.Y.C. father had been working on enunciation and tonal quality; and it seemed to me the girls were singing unusually well. They came to a carol which had an echo chorus - “Joy! Joy! Joy!”: with a troubled look on his face father stopped them. “Ladies”, he said, “do you realize what it is you are singing? The whole of the Christmas message lies in those words. Sing them as though you also believed that the birth of Christ is an occasion for joy - as though you wanted your conviction to ring raround the world.”’ FIVE: TLS, 5 July 1949. 1p, 4to. He writes that ‘the house at Portman Square is to be entirely redecorated - and then made available to Senior Fulbright appointees; it will become (we hope) a place where former Fellows and Fulbright scholars can meet and discuss common interests. We’ve also been able to announce four more annual Fellowships: two for Home Civil Service technicians and two just for the Colonies; the Dominions were getting most of the Overseas awards. We are, of course, delighted; this now brings our number of annual awards up to 32.’ He discusses the ‘record-breaking heat’, and finds Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ ‘really horrible - saved only by the beauty of its form and the magnificence of the acting.’ He is pleased to learn that MBC’s mother is going to New York. The letter ends with his thoughts on ‘the present recession’. SIX: TLS, 3 May 1950. 1p, 4to. ‘The Wickmans are now in London, for the Spring meetings of the Committee of Award (next week) and the dinner at the Dorchester on the 20th - which I hope you are planning to attend. Wish I could be there for it, too; but at this period, one of us has to be in New York. However, if all goes well, Gorley Putt and I will exchange posts, for four or five months’.