Marguerite Eymery, known as RACHILDE (1860-1953). L.A.S., Pa - Lot 130

Marguerite Eymery, known as RACHILDE (1860-1953). L.A.S., Paris, October 2, 1936, [to Léon Delafosse]; 4pages in-8 on Mercure de France letterhead. One catastrophe follows another: in the absence of the journal's director, who has left to attend conferences in Brazil, the secretary has had a motorcycle accident and she finds herself alone to receive people of letters. "Ah, the good old days of Le Mercure are gone, when you could ask for the director from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m..." she says. She has called in an administrator and hopes "to see my book published at the end of November... but... but... it depends on so many things. [...] If you don't take care of setting the tone of your personality yourself, other people won't ever help you"... She regrets the attitude of France, which "has adopted indifference as its only fighting system, and we're reaping the rewards". She recounts an incident at Léo Poldès's Club du Faubourg, where she put "a quality Spanish anarcho to flight... by simply threatening to put a few bullets in his skin, because he had threatened the whole room with his fist, saying: 'Won't you give us arms and ammunition? We'll beat the shit out of you when we come back", textual. It ended with the room screaming. She notes that "the battellerie strike on the banks of the Seine (fifteen blockades of barges and tugs) was carried out by people who didn't know why and who didn't know the people who were giving them orders. After that, you can pull... the plank that connects the barges to French soil. Where do we go from here? I have my father's blood in my veins and I won't desert"... We enclose 2 works dedicated by Rachilde to Léon Delafosse: - La Tour d'Amour (G. Crès, 1916, on green Rives paper no. 97, green morocco binding, spine damaged): "A Léon Delafosse. Like "white peacocks before the faun" the clear splendor of your music and the broken crystal of your burst of laughter, so young, are before the savagery of my brain... who will know how to respect them. Rachilde 6 juin 1923"; - Madame de Lydone, assassin (Ferenczi, 1929; 1/100 on Alfa, cons. cover and spine, bound in half vellum by Asper in Geneva): "A Léon Delafosse En souvenir des Paons blancs... et pour l'amuser avec de la poudre à la Maréchale teintée d'un peu de sang. Rachilde 1929". Plus 2 other works dedicated to Léon Delafosse by André David, Le Citron d'or (Le Monde nouveau, 1925, 1/20 on Hollande, rel.), and Laura Wagnière-Huntington, From Dawn to Dusk (Vevey, s.d., 500 copies, rel.), ded. in 1929.