Writing
Pens on the table where Audrey worked (2013)
Audrey had a lifelong love of language and the written word. As a young person, she diligently read every work on a list of the canon of great literature. At the end of her life, those books still stood on her shelves. As a writer, she was a perfectionist, punctuating and spelling faultlessly, which would certainly have served her well in the typing pools of 1960s London where she made her living.
Explanatory titles, precise dates and, where necessary, descriptions were often a feature of the sketches Audrey made. Alongside her prodigious artistic output, she wrote copiously every day, sending numerous letters and noting in precise prose the facts of her days. The result is an incomparably detailed record of a life, a place and a time, keenly observed, but coloured by recurring mental illness.
Annotated sketch (1970s)
Accounts books
Accounts book (2002) © Wellcome Collection
Audrey started keeping comprehensive records of her finances in 1996 in large lined notebooks. She attached all of the receipts for her shopping, often commenting on the interaction in the shop and whether she had been given the correct change. She filled nearly fifty of them before her death.
Most of Audrey’s Account books have been scanned by Wellcome and can be viewed online in the archive.
Record books
Audrey wrote dozens of letters every week, both to family and friends as well as to institutions and public figures including the Queen and the Prime Minister. Her local MP was the recipient of regular missives on areas that concerned Audrey, such as animal welfare and the rights of mental health patients. She was concerned about how she had been medicated for her mental illness, often talking about the drugs she was prescribed and how they had been accompanied in the late nineteen-fifties by electric shock treatment. She seemed to be concerned about both over- and under-medication and blamed specific doctors, and the police in general, for her mistreatment. She carefully summarised the contents of each letter she wrote in her Record Books, its length (8 pages was the average); and noting the cost of the postage and the type of envelope. She did not keep most of the letters she would have received in return, though a few are pasted in her scrapbooks.
Although some are ‘Closed’ records for privacy reasons, many of Audrey’s letters are ‘Restricted’ which means they may be consulted by appointment in the library at Wellcome, but not photographed.
Log books
Box of Audrey’s logbooks at Wellcome Library
These are diaries which note the details of Audrey’s life, starting with the time she wakes up, how she has slept and her ablutions. She describes what she has heard on the radio, then she reviews her supplies to decide whether it is necessary to go to the shops. Many of her speculations seek to explain apparent coincidences of people and events in a stream of consciousness (Robert Louis Stevenson - Adlai Stephenson - Steve Davis - [a whole stream of Davises], and finally a Davis she had known whom she believed had organised a drugs ring). In a photo of two TV actors, she misidentified one as an entirely different celebrity and the other one as a woman from her youth. This seemed to confirm a hidden truth she already knew about. When she identified an aspect of the “conspiracy” as she called it, she described it as “a breakthrough.”
Many of Audrey’s log books may be consulted by appointment in the library at Wellcome, though most may not be photographed for privacy reasons.
Calendars
Audrey’s annotated calendar for January 2013
Audrey recorded her life minutely on a set of several calendars in which the same daily information is recorded, down to the last letter. She believed that dates were unreliable due to missing days and she recorded them as a range, such as 6/7/8 July 2013. There are also uncracked number codes written around the edge of the calendars, again identical on each copy.
Audrey’s calendar for 2013 is available to read by appointment in the library at Wellcome.