[Literature] Jarry, Alfred Autograph Letter, signed

(Le Coudray, France:) Friday, 5:00, (April 18, 1902). One sheet, 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (140 x 114 mm). An amusing autograph letter in French, on Republique Francaise Carte-Lettre stationery, signed by Alfred Jarry to his friend and patron, Alfred Vallette, inviting him to his bolthole residence along the Seine River near Le Coudray, south of Paris: "Friend, We will remind you that you are expected at our getaway at our lock this Sunday in order to eat and drink...Terrasse and Fénéon will be present, and perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Lemarinier in the evening. I haven't back from Demolder...You are allowed and it would please us for you to attend both lunch and dinner also your wife and daughter…We have captured by means of a fishing net at each dawn the big eel...the laziness without which we would have personally been to Paris...To the greatest glory of Mr. Barbeau. Alfred Jarry;" addressed on verso by Jarry to Vallette's Paris address; two Le Plessis-Chenet postmarks on same, dated April 18. In fine condition. Letter includes a COA from the French Ministere charge de la Culture, ca. 1999.

Jarry writes amusingly to his friend, the founder and editor of the French Symbolist literary magazine Mercure de France, Alfred Vallette (1858-1938), inviting him, his wife Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery), and their daughter, to spend the day at his small riverside home in the countryside near Le Coudray, south of Paris, alongside his close friends Claude Terrasse (1867-1923) and Felix Fénéon (1861-1944). Terrasse, Fénéon, and Eugène Demolder (1862-1919) were Jarry's most frequent literary collaborators, and it was during this period that Fénéon was the editor of the literary magazine La Revue Blanche and was publishing Jarry's "Speculations" series of pataphysical articles on French life and culture. Terrasse, a composer, provided music for Jarry's plays Ubu Roi (1896) and Pantagruel (1911), the latter play a collaboration with Demolder.

Jarry had moved to his riverside shack in the summer of 1900 after visiting Demolder earlier that year with Rachilde, and not long after the Vallette's had themselves bought a large house slightly upriver. Jarry and Vallette were familiar with the region, as they spent almost a year living in an artist's commune in Corbeil-Essonnes that they called Le Phalanstère, from the spring though autumn of 1898.

Provenance

Les Autographes, Thierry Bodin, Paris, 1999

From the private collection of Asher D. Atchick, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania