William Faulkner Autograph Letter Collection.

FAULKNER, William.

Item Number: 140020

An exceptional collection of sixteen very fine, detailed autograph letters signed and entirely in the hand of William Faulkner, each one sent to his mother, Maud Falkner, during his first trip to Europe which would inform his writing for the rest of his life. The sixteen letters each measure approximately 10.5 inches by 8.25 inches, each entirely in the hand of William Faulkner and signed “Billy” with three original pen-and-ink drawings within the text including two self-portraits in the letters from September 6th and 22nd, all but one letter is accompanied by the original transmittal envelope addressed to Mrs. M.C. Falkner with postmarks dated August 6th 1925 to October 15th 1925 from Rapallo, Pavia, Milan, Stresa, Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Compiègne, Chantilly, London, Tunbridge Wells, and Dieppe. The sixteen remarkable letters offer a very full picture of a crucial three-month period of August to October 1925 when Faulkner traveled through continental Europe and England for the first time, spending the majority of his stay in Paris and throughout France where the French people impressed him deeply and he was afforded, as a budding draftsman, an opportunity to study masterpieces of painting in the Louvre, galleries, and private collections. In July 1925, Faulkner and architect William Spratling sailed from New Orleans and debarked in Genoa on 2 August. They were to travel through Italy, then to France via Switzerland. They settled in Paris for most of their stay, with Faulkner taking excursions to various French cities and to London and Kent. During this time, Faulkner had set aside Mosquitoes (which would become his second novel, published in 1927), began work on Elmer (an unfinished novel which was published posthumously in 1983), and received notice of Boni & Liveright’s acceptance of his first novel, Soldier’s Pay (published on February 25, 1926). He was also writing long, descriptive passages of his travels that would inform his fiction for the rest of his life. Faulkner’s closeness to his mother is in part responsible for the depth and self-revelations of these letters. He wrote Maud Falkner regularly, noting on August 26th – “While I think of it: I have written every Sunday and Wednesday since August 4th. They may come irregularly, but don’t worry – just remember when Sunday and Wednesday come, that I am all right, feeling fine, and sitting down at a table writing you a letter” – and proved himself a keen reader of her emotional life as well, writing on September 2nd, “Tell me about everyone – Pop and Jack and Whiz, and Jimmy especially. I can always tell how you feel in your letters. You cant [sic] fool me, even if you think you can.” Though Faulkner confessed in a letter of August 23rd that he did not feel “quite old enough” to write Mosquitos “as it should be written – dont [sic] know enough about people,” the letters collected here are a testament to his devotion to observation, with daily walks around Paris, visits to its museums, and hours spent in the Luxembourg Gardens. Each of these activities fed Faulkner’s writing life, and led to moments of singular artistic intensity. While Faulkner’s long writing hours would occasionally slacken – he writes on September 10th: “I waste half the day watching youths and taxi drivers and senators play croquet in the Luxembourg. Used to be I’d run out and have coffee and a piece of bread, buy bread and cheeses and wine for lunch, and go to work by 9:30. Now I never seem to get back before noon” – his hours away from his desk are just valuable to him, and those spent in the Luxembourg Gardens most profitable of all. In addition to notes on his travels and updates on his writing life, the letters include Faulkner’s commentary about American, English, and French attitudes, with Faulkner almost always admiring the French above all, particularly their treatment of children – “The French treat their children like they were grown people, and even 5 year old children are as polite as grown people” or their tolerance for old men in the Luxembourg Gardens who sail toy boats – “In America they laugh at him if he drives a car even, if he does anything except play checkers and sleep in the courthouse yard.” In the first letter Faulkner sent to his mother, postmarked August 6th, he includes a sketch of an Italian locomotive for his mother and explains its workings to her. He then describes his fifteenth-century hotel, the Pesce d’Oro: “You are conducted with honor to a vine-covered court, all around are old, old walls and gates through which mailed knights once rode …. and here I sit with spaghetti ….” The next day, 7 August, finds the young artist staring up in amazement at Milan Cathedral: “Can you imagine stone lace? or frozen music? All covered with gargoyles like dogs, and mitred cardinals and mailed knights and saints pierced with arrows and beautiful naked Greek figures that have no religious significance whatever.” After cutting hay with farmers near Stresa and passing through Switzerland, “Billy” is in Paris and settled on the Left Bank by 13 August. He begins a round of sightseeing with a trip to Père Lachaise, “an old cemetery …. I went particularly to see Oscar Wilde’s tomb, with a bas-relief by Jacob Epstein.” On 18 August Faulkner finds a room at 26, rue Servandoni, near the Luxembourg Gardens. This most romantic of all Paris parks will remain the focal point of Faulkner’s Paris, the one place in the city he would consider his own. His letters are full of the pleasures of the children and their fathers floating toy boats in the fountains, the croquet games, the quiet corners for reading, writing, and observing Parisians. It is also at this time that Faulkner meets up with New Orleans photographer William C. Odiorne, who will make a series of compelling portraits of the young writer in the Luxembourg Gardens and near Notre Dame (see the following lot). On the day of his move, Faulkner writes to his mother, “I spent yesterday in the Louvre, to see the Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo, the real ones, and the Mona Lisa etc. It was fine, especially the paintings of the more-or-less moderns, like Degas and Manet and [Puvis de] Chavannes. Also went to a very very modernist exhibition the other day—futurist and vorticist. I was talking to a painter, a real one. He won’t go to the exhibitions at all. He says it’s all right to paint the damn things, but as far as looking at them, he’d rather go to the Luxembourg gardens and watch the children sail their boats. And I agree with him.” It is not long before Faulkner is making day trips to Meudon, Fontainbleau and Versailles (“Marie Antoinette’s hang-out”). Foreshadowing the celebrated final scene of Sanctuary, in which Temple Drake sits in the Luxembourg Gardens with her father, Faulkner writes on 6 September, “I have just written such a beautiful thing that I am about to bust—2000 words about the Luxembourg gardens and death. It has a thin thread of plot, about a young woman, and it is poetry though written in prose form.” Faulkner is at pains in these letters to prepare his mother for the beard he is growing. He ends this letter with a small ink sketch of himself bearded and satyr-like. He writes, “My beard is coming along fine. Makes me look sort of distinguished, like someone you’d care to know.” By 10 September, “Beard’s long enough to hold water.” Although Faulkner did not meet Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or James Joyce, he did visit Gertrude Stein’s salon a few times. “I have seen Rodin’s museum, and 2 private collections of Matisse and Picasso (who are yet alive and painting) as well as numberless young and struggling moderns. And Cézanne! That man dipped his brush in light like Tobe Caruthers would dip his in red lead to paint a lamp-post ….” (Caruthers was a jack-of-all-trades back home in Oxford). This is from the three-page letter of 22 September, the longest letter in the group. Here Faulkner also takes pleasure in describing the Moulin Rouge for his mother: “Anyone in America will tell you it is the last word in sin and iniquity. It is a music hall, a vaudeville, where ladies come out clothed principally in lipstick. Lots of bare beef, but that is only secondary. Their songs and dances are set to real music—a ballet of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s, a Persian thing; and two others, a man stained brown like a faun and a lady who had on at least 20 beads, I’ll bet money. It was beautiful. Every one goes there—often you have to stand up.” The third leaf of this letter contains a very fine pen-and-ink self-portrait, about which the artist writes, “I did this from a mirror my landlady loaned me. Didnt notice until later that I was drawing on a used sheet. This [is] part of ‘Elmer.’ I have him half done, and I have put him away temporarily to begin a new one. Elmer is quite a boy. He is tall and almost handsome and he wants to paint pictures. He gets everything a man could want—money, a European title, marries the girl he wants—and she gives away his paint box. So Elmer never gets to paint at all.” Elmer was an unfinished novel Faulkner began in Paris. It was published posthumously in 1983. Ideas from the novel were appropriated for Mosquitoes, The Wild Palms, and The Hamlet. The typed page of Elmer found on the verso of this letter is paginated “39” and comprises the last four lines of section 3 and the beginning of section 4. Faulkner made an excursion to England in early October, which was not to be as successful as his stay in Paris. “London is awful expensive. I am leaving tomorrow. Oh, yes, I arrived this morning in the usual fog. The stuff is not only greasy, but it is full of coal smoke: worse than Pittsburgh about spoiling clothes.” On 9 October he writes from Tunbridge Wells, “The country is beautiful—south-eastern England; county of Kent …. Quietist most restful country under the sun. No wonder Joseph Conrad could write fine books here. But it is so expensive!” 15 October finds Faulkner returning to Paris via Dieppe: “I’m going back to Paris tomorrow. I have got started writing on my novel again, glory be …. I am expecting to hear from Liveright when I reach Paris. I waked up yesterday with such a grand feeling that something out of the ordinary has happened to me that I am firmly expecting news of some sort—either very good or very bad.” Faulkner’s premonition was correct. Upon returning to Paris, he received Boni & Liveright’s acceptance of his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay. Blotner, edited Selected Letters of William Faulkner. In near fine condition. An exceptional rarity; easily the most important collection of Faulkner letters ever to appear on the market.