VERLAINE PAUL (1844-1896)

Lot 484
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Estimation :
1000 - 1500 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 9 885EUR
VERLAINE PAUL (1844-1896)
Autograph letter signed to the solicitor GUYOT - SIONNEST. Paris, Tenon Hospital, August 8, 1887. 2 and ½ pages, erasures and marginal additions in ink. Verlaine is ulcerated that his wife dared to say that he was asking her to "feed" him, and he reminds her that he is only asking her for seven hundred francs again "out of the twenty or so thousand francs she has taken, thanks to my perhaps too great scruples of honor, under particularly odious circumstances [....]" The second page of this draft letter has been cut after the signature and only part of the address "hl Tenon, salle..." is visible. (Verlaine was then in Seymour ward, bed 5bis. He left this hospital the next day to return to the asylum at Vincennes). Verlaine's widow writes in Memoirs of my Life: "When she died, my mother-in-law left little. My pension had not been paid for fourteen years. There was enough to pay me back. Me Guyot-Sionnest, my solicitor, having learned that Verlaine was destitute, I gave him a large part of it, against a receipt which I still have. For his part, Edmond Lepelletier replied to a journalist in the Echo de Paris of 19 August 1896: "He did not marry, as reported in the Figaro, a rich woman. Melle Mathilde Mauté only brought "her green dress with beehives". It was Paul Verlaine who foolishly acknowledged by contract to his fiancée a contribution of fifty thousand francs. This dowry was one of the causes of all Verlaine's misfortunes. It was later realized when Mme Verlaine obtained a divorce. Verlaine's money was used to found a new family which is said to be prospering..." Here we see how financial matters and Verlaine's inability to see his son again are intertwined. Autograph drafts to solicitor GUYOT - SIONNEST, circa 1887. 10 pages in-12 in pencil, freckled. Draft letters for the lawyer GUYOT - SIONNEST concerning his son Georges from whom he is separated, born from the union of Mathilde Mauté. "In the meantime Mrs. Mauté warned that I see from now on to do all my possible so that my son sees me again and knows me. I believe that the law offers me means and I am resolved to use them all, after competent advice, because I do not want to commit a single blunder in this fight that I am engaging in with her...
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