There are many unanswered questions concerning the lives of Will Arnold-Forster and Ka Cox. Here are just a few of them. If you can help, please use the contact page to contact me. Any information provided by you that appears in the biography will be fully credited. To save you repeating the question, I have given each question a number – please just put Q.1 or whichever number applies in your answer. I will revise the questions as I find answers (whether from you or my own research), and will probably be adding new ones as my research progresses. A warm thankyou for any help you can give me.
Q.1 WHERE ARE WILL’S SKETCH OF HERBERT HOOVER AND HIS OTHER NORTH AMERICAN DRAWINGS?
On 5th January 1937, Will met former US President Herbert Hoover at his home near Stanford University, California. The following day, Will wrote to thank the President and Hoover replied thanking Will for a sketch he had made during the visit, saying that he had enjoyed their dicussion and that he was glad to have such a personal momento of their meeting. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum has no record of this sketch – does anyone know what happened to it?
Will visited the USA and Canada on a number of occasions during the 1930s, and everywhere he took his sketchbook. We know, for instance, that he painted the Brooklyn Bridge and he almost certainly drew some of the gardens he visited. Some of these sketches might still be around. Does anyone know anything about them?
Q.2 WHEN DID KA AND WILL MEET?
We know that Ka met Will while she was working at the Admiralty, some time after her return from Corsica in the summer of 1916, and that she worked as Sir Arthur Salter’s private secretary from 1917/18, but when exactly did Will and Ka meet?
Q.3 WHEN DID KA STAY WITH MAYNARD KEYNES?
Ka knew the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes from her youth, and frequently visited him at his family home at 6 Harvey Road in Cambridge. In a letter dated 3rd August (without a year) she asked if she could stay with him, and in another letter dated Friday 13th August (again without a year) she thanked him for the visit and said she had enjoyed meeting the artist Frederick Etchells. All the evidence suggests that this would have been in 1912, when Keynes took over the Crown Hotel in Everleigh for the summer and invited his friends, including Rupert Brooke, to stay at different times. However, on 2nd August, Rupert left Everleigh and drove down to Bibury, where Ka was holidaying with her aunts, and told her he was breaking off their relationship for good. It seems hardly conceivable that Ka, who was heartbroken, would have written the very next day to Maynard Keynes and asked to stay in the place that Rupert had just left, and that she would have enjoyed her visit. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Q.4 WHY DID WILL ARNOLD-FORSTER CALL HIS FRIEND ELLIOTT SEABROOKE “MIKE”?
Will attended the Slade School of Art at the same time as the artist Elliott Seabrooke, and they became friends. Seabrooke later went to stay with Will in Italy. In his letters, Will always refers to Elliott as “Mike” and mentions his wife in a letter dated 1913, although Seabrooke did not marry until 1930. Elliott does not appear to have had any relatives called Michael, but was there in fact a Mike Seabrooke who was married by 1913, or did Will call Elliott Mike?
Q.5 DID YOU BUY OR SELL SIX OF WILL’S SKETCH BOOKS IN 2012 ON EBAY?
If so, please contact me via my contact page.
If you have the answers to any of these questions, or know where I might find them, or have any other information about Will and Ka, I should be glad to hear from you via my contact page. Grateful thanks to the many people who have helped me via the website already.
Thankyou so much for your help!