[Francis Gerard, thriller and science fiction writer.] Two Typed Letters Signed to Eileen Cond, discussing his plans for writing, and work for the ‘delightful old boy’ Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, and his Anglo American Corporation of South Africa.

Good letters, the second with biographical content about a prolific yet elusive author. The recipient Eileen Margaret Cond (1911-1984) was an enthusiastic collector of autographs, with the ability to draw a more than perfunctory response from her targets. Both letters in good condition, on lightly aged paper folded for postage. Each bearing large stylized signature ‘Francis Gerard’ and addressed to ‘Dear Miss Cond’. ONE (12 March 1950). 1p, 4to. He reports that he is ‘busy on a new thriller which I have given the provisional title of HORNED HAVEN’ (the title does not show up among Gerard’s published works). ‘The General Election in England was followed by us out here with an almost unbearable feeling of tension and, for my part, I realised that though I am now officially a citizen of this country that I will never make a good South African.’ He reports ‘a tremendous flap about the Seretse Khama business which seems to have been handled just about as stupidly as it could have been’. He is returning her bookplates, ‘with Gérard, his mark, upon them, though I still don’t know when you’ll be able to stick the second one into TRANSPARENT TRAITOR. I gather the whole printing and publishing trade is in a parlous condition in England thanks to machinery being worn out and not replaced owing to Cripps’ insistence on all such new tackle being for export only.’ He ends with a warning regarding ‘the temperature in Durban’ for her father. TWO: 2pp, foolscap 8vo. A long letter. He has been ‘wandering around Central Africa with a bunch of geologists and mining engineers’, and finding her letter, is ‘touched by the continuance of your long-range friendship’. There is ‘little chance’ of his producing another book for some time. ‘When I do, it will be a very different kind of book from what I have written in the past.’ The next two paragraphs describe his employment with the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa. ‘My job is a peculiar one, half industrial relations and man management, half public relations. The AAC is the biggest mining group in the world. It is also an enormously powerful finance house. At the head of it sits Sir Ernest Oppenheimer who, despite his fantastic wealth, is a most charming and delightful old boy.’ He describes how in his first year with AAC he ‘travelled nearly 30,000 miles about Southern and Central Africa by aircraft, car, jeep, horse or on my own flat feet. I went underground in diamonds, gold, coal, copper and base metals. I stayed in palatial guest-houses or at lonely Jesuit missions in the bush. I went through m[a]laria, tsetse-fly country where you shot for the pot and kept a wary eye open for crocodile, leopard or buffalo and once, was fortunate to have my pygmy friends drive a gorilla for me. You do not shoot these. They are Royal Game and if you kill one it costs you a £600 fine.’ He continues for a while before describing his family. A paragraph follows in which he claims not to have ‘sold myself to Mammon’. He praises the ‘Ernest Oppenheimer hospital for Africans at Welkom’ as ‘the finest thing of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere’. He winds up with a paragraph on his ‘financial benefits’ and another on his children’s school results, the former beginning ‘Well, there it is. This is why Francis Gerard has not appeared on the back of a book for some time.’