Pattie Boyd is to auction the letters from her love triangle with Eric Clapton and George Harrison, saying that she still finds them heartbreaking to read.
Boyd, the 1960s model and muse who inspired Clapton to write Layla and Wonderful Tonight, and Harrison to write the Beatles ballad Something, says she has Clapton’s blessing for the auction of the letters and other memorabilia of the era.
She was married to Harrison but pursued by Clapton, his close friend, who poured out his feelings for her in a series of passionate letters.
Eventually, she left Harrison and went on to marry Clapton, although his alcoholism and infidelity put paid to the relationship several years later.
‘Dear Layla’
Letters from both men, along with paintings, photographs, jewellery and fashion, will be offered for sale at Christie’s next month.
“I’ve had them all for so many years – far too long,” Boyd, who will celebrate her 80th birthday next month, told The Telegraph. “I thought, why don’t I just sell everything and let everybody else enjoy it?”
The first letter from Clapton was written in 1970, when she had been married to Harrison for four years. In immaculate handwriting, the letter, sent to the Harrisons’ Friar Park home in Oxfordshire, asks Boyd if she still loves her husband or has another lover. “All these questions are very impertinent, I know, but if there is still a feeling in your heart for me… you must let me know!” it reads.
It is signed “All my love, E,” and at first Boyd mistook it for a letter from a fan, until Clapton called her that evening to reveal that he was the author.
The second letter was written several months later, on a torn-out title page from a copy of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Clapton was bereft that Boyd was still with Harrison.
“Dear Layla,” Clapton begins, using his nickname for Boyd. “For nothing more than the pleasures past I would sacrifice my family, my god, and my own existence… Why do you hesitate, am I a poor lover, am I ugly, am I too weak, too strong, do you know why?
“If you want me, take me, I am yours… if you don’t want me, please break the spell that binds me. To cage a wild animal is a sin, to tame him is divine. My love is yours.”
By contrast, a 1971 letter from Harrison to his wife, sent from New York’s Plaza hotel while he was in the city arranging the Concert for Bangladesh, is less feverish.
The couple met when Boyd was cast in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, and married in 1966. In the four-page letter, Harrison asks her to give him a call “to say hello to Hubby” and chats about shopping for cushions.
“Hope you’re ok. I miss you. I’m starving - many grilled cheese sandwiches. Love you,” he wrote.
Each letter is estimated to fetch £10,000-15,000.
‘They’re too painful in their beauty’
Also included in the sale is a doodle by Harrison (est £3,000-5,000), depicting himself sitting beneath an apple tree. “How divine is that?” Boyd said. “To me, that says an awful lot about George. It’s so gentle, so sweet, and the idea is quite lovely.
“Another thing in the auction is a most lovely Christmas card that George painted for me. That, again, says a lot about the gentleness of this man.”
Speaking about her reasons for selling Clapton’s letters, Boyd said: “The letters from Eric – they’re so desperate and passionate, a passion that blooms once in a lifetime, I think. Even now, if I were to read those letters, it makes me terribly sad.
“I’ve had them in a little trunk and occasionally I’ll have a look and start to read, and my heart beats, it jumps, because it’s heartbreaking. They’re too painful in their beauty.”
The sale will be led by the original artwork (est £40,000-60,000) for the cover of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the 1970 Derek and the Dominoes album. Clapton originally acquired the painting from the son of the artist Frandsen De Schomberg during a stay at the artist’s home in France, because he thought it resembled Boyd.
“He loved this particular painting and decided to call it Layla,” said Boyd. “When I left George and years later started seeing Eric, Eric gave this painting to George, so George had it for a long time.
“And then when Eric and I split up, George gave it to me. So this lovely painting has done the rounds between the three of us.”
‘I doubt very much he’ll buy them back’
After giving up modelling, a career which saw her grace the cover of Vogue four times, Boyd became a photographer. Her favourite lot in the sale is a photograph (est £4,000-6,000) in which she and Harrison, with whom she remained friends until his death in 2001, stand in front of a wall of red roses in the garden of their Surrey home, Kinfauns.
Boyd recalled: “I love that because, like a lot of beautiful things, it happened in a way that I wasn’t prepared for.
“I just wanted to photograph the roses because I was so happy that they’d finally bloomed. I thought I might as well have George and me in the picture. We’d been hanging around the pool and I said, ‘George, come here,’ and I set up my tripod and set the timer.
“George is clearly so bored of waiting and looking into the lens that he looks away, and then it clicks. I imagine him thinking of music, thinking of a song. Even when he was sleeping he was still thinking of music, and I only know that because his toes would be tapping when he was asleep.”
Other lots include the original handwritten lyrics for Harrison’s Mystical One (est £30,000-50,000) and a Polaroid which Boyd took of Clapton with his favourite Fender Stratocaster guitar (est £800-1,200).
Fashion items included a psychedelic mini-dress by The Fool Collective (est £1,000-1,500), who designed clothes and artworks in the Swinging Sixties.
Boyd said she had offered her vintage clothes to her nieces. She added: “But they are not really that interested, and they’re different sizes. I must say, in the 1960s we were really thin. I understand that Christie’s had a bit of trouble finding a mannequin to put one of the outfits on.
“But, you know, in those days I don’t remember eating. I think we just drank or smoked dope! Eating wasn’t high on our agenda, unlike today when I just love eating and cooking.”
Boyd says she looks back on her life with fondness. “Not everything goes the way that we want it or we plan it to go. We have to be open to what life throws at us. I continue to live life to the full and enjoy every minute.”
The Pattie Boyd Collection will be offered online from March 8-22, and will be on public view at Christie’s headquarters in London from March 15-21.
Boyd said she has informed Clapton of the sale. “He asked if I was selling the Layla painting, and I said yes. He said, ‘Maybe there are other things you could sell as well.’ So he’s absolutely fine with me auctioning everything.”
Does she think he might bid for his old letters? “I would have imagined that, like me, he’s moved on. He’s got such a different life,” Boyd said. “I doubt very much he’ll buy them back.”
