Karen Blixen / Signed Autograph Letter / Out of Africa / Kenya / Nostalgia

  

Signed autograph letter "Karen Blixen" to the American writer and adventurer Negley Farson Rungstedlund, Rungsted Kyst, 20.12.1957, 3 pp. In-8° on baryta paper, in English.

Silver print (signed by photographer Lindequist) depicting Karen Blixen and her dog on the doorstep of Rungstedlund, her Danish residence. Touching letter from Karen Blixen, nostalgically reflecting on her past in Africa. Thank you very much for your kind letter and for your charming and delightful book [Last Chance in Africa] which I read with great interest. I seem to agree with you in almost everything you say!

- How I wish, when you write that you had David Waruhiu [probably a member of the Kikuyu tribe] staying with you, that you had invited me as well! - There are such a lot of things about which I should like to talk with you and him. I did, of course, start with your chapters on Africa. I have just received three letters from three of my former servants, whom I left 25 years ago.

And I can say myself that the greatest passion of my life has been my love for the Africans! Alas, I was not able to do them as much good as I would have wished. Still, Sir Philip Mitchell [Governor of Kenya from 1944 to 1952], when he dined with me here in Denmark, told me that it might have been a good thing, even necessary, if I had been able to stay in Kenya! - I hope that we will meet again, - Please let me know if there is a chance of you coming to Denmark.

A Danish native, Karen Blixen settled with her husband Bror von Blixen-Finecke in British East Africa to create a coffee plantation in 1914. She described her seventeen years in Kenya in her book Out of Africa, published in 1937. The writer paints touching portraits of her servants in her work.

They remained faithful to her and maintained correspondence with her, as evidenced by this letter. She eventually returned to Denmark in 1931 to join the family estate of Rungstedlund. Bankrupt, emotionally desperate, and having had to leave her farm and Africa, Karen considered her African farm experience at that time as a total failure. To fill the void in her life, she began writing in English, at the age of fifty. "No one has paid a higher price for entry into literature," she would later say.

Karen Blixen's letters are rare.