Faulkner, William

An exceptional group of 16 autograph letters and 10 autograph postcards, signed ("Billy"), (most letters 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.; 267 x 210 mm — postcards 3 5/8 x 5 1/2 in.; 95 x 140 mm), with 3 pen-and-ink drawings by the author, Rapallo, Pavia, Milan, Stresa, Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Compiègne, Chantilly, London, Tunbridge Wells, Dieppe, 5 August–15 October 1925, to his mother, Maud Falkner, except one postcard each to his father Murry C. Falkner, his brother Dean Falkner, and his nephew James M. Falkner; vertical and horizontal folds, spotting on a few postcards, but condition remarkably fresh.  15 autograph envelopes and one typed envelope. 

Blotner, ed.  Selected Letters of William Faulkner, pp. 8–18, 20–31

Condition as described in catalogue.
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"Billy" Faulkner's first trip to Europe, recorded in 16 very fine, detailed letters and 10 witty picture postcards, most of them written to his mother, Maud Falkner.

These important and remarkable letters give us a very full picture of the young writer's crucial first trip to continental Europe and to England.  This trip was to confirm Faulkner as a life-long francophile and admirer of the French people and of the city of Paris.  It was also the first opportunity for this talented draftsman to study masterpieces of painting in the Louvre, in galleries, and in private collections.  The trip was also to give him material which he would draw on for his fiction for the rest of his life. 

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.  His first postcard was sent from Rapallo to his young nephew Jimmy Falkner: "Brother Will says 'Hello, Jimmy.' …. Starting out tomorrow to walk to Paris.  I have a knapsack—le sport baggage, they call it."  In a letter written the next day from Pavia, Faulkner 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, but apparently made no lasting connection" (Williamson). If Stein herself made no strong impression, her art collection and that of her brother and sister-in-law certainly did.  "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 never wrote his father a letter from Europe.  He did, however, send him a postcard from Chantilly with a picture of a fox hunt.  "A sporting place peopled principally by English.  Race course, private deer and foxes, and the best-looking horses you ever saw.  Every bar is full of bow-legged cockney grooms and jockeys, and swell-looking lords and dukes spinning along in carts behind trotting horses.  They go out hunting in red coats, and ride right over you if you don't dodge."  He also sent a card of a deer hunt at Chantilly to his brother Dean: "What do you think of a country like this?  But you can't kill a deer like this here unless you got a red swallow-tail coat."

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. 

The most important collection of Faulkner letters ever to come on the market.  Like Vision in Spring, these letters have not been seen in decades and were presumed lost.