"Mallarmé m'a écrit des choses pompeuses sur Lêda."

Autograph letter signed by Pierre [Louÿs], dated Christmas [18]93, addressed to Georges Louis. Four pages written in blue ink on a double blue sheet bearing the writer’s initials and headed 49 rue Vineuse.
A fine letter addressed to his brother Georges Louis, with whom Pierre Louÿs maintained a deeply intimate relationship and whom he regarded as his own father.
The question of Pierre Louÿs’s true parentage continues to fascinate biographers: “His father, Pierre Philippe Louis, [...] married Jeanne Constance Blanchin in 1842; she died ten years later, having borne him two children, Lucie and Georges. In 1855 he married Claire Céline Maldan, and from this union was born, in 1857, a son, Paul; then, in 1870, our writer, who received the given names Pierre Félix. This late birth, the differences in temperament between father and son, the father’s indifference toward the latter, and the profound intimacy that always united Louÿs and his brother Georges—all of this has led some biographers and critics to suspect that Georges was in fact the writer’s father. The exceptionally close and lifelong bond between Pierre and Georges might well support such an argument. Of course, no conclusive proof has ever been found, and doubtless never will be. Still, certain letters [...] are quite troubling. In 1895, for example, Louÿs gravely wrote to his brother that he knew the answer to ‘the most painful question’ he could ever put to him, a question that had been ‘on his lips for ten years.’ The following year, at the height of Aphrodite’s success, he thanked Georges effusively and closed his letter with these words: ‘Pas un de mes amis n'a un PERE qui soit pour lui comme tu es pour moi.’ Arguing from the close relationship between Georges and Claire Céline in 1870, and from the jealousy the father continually displayed toward his younger son, Claude Farrère did not hesitate to side with Georges Louis. And what are we to make of this dedication by Louÿs to his brother in a copy on japon of the original Pausole: Pour Georges, son fils aîné / Pierre.” (Jean-Paul Goujon, Pierre Louÿs)
Pierre Louÿs sent this letter to his brother when the latter had just taken up his post as France’s delegate to the International Commission of the Egyptian Debt and was in Cairo: “La lettre où tu me demandais d'acheter un cadeau de jour de l'an m'est arrivée trop tard (vingt quatre heures) pour que je puisse l'envoyer à temps. J'espère que tu auras pu trouver quelque chose là-bas.” Lacking a gift, Pierre sent his brother a portrait of himself: “En même temps que ma dernière lettre j'ai mis à la poste pour toi une photo du photographe ordinaire de Jane Hading, et qui représente un Pierre posthume et sentimental, assez ressemblant tout de même. L'épreuve n'était pas très propre, mais c'était la seule que j'eusse encore reçue.” Only a handful of photographic portraits of the writer are known today, and we have been unable to identify the photograph mentioned here.
The year 1893 marked several literary successes for Pierre Louÿs, who until then had published only Astarté at his own expense in 1891 and, together with his friend from the École Alsacienne André Gide and Paul Valéry, had founded La Conque, an ‘anthology of the youngest poets,’ whose first issue appeared on 15 March 1891. In quick succession came Chrysis ou la cérémonie matinale, the translation of the Poésies de Méléagre, and finally Lêda ou la louange des bienheureux ténèbres. The latter work is even mentioned in this letter: “Mallarmé m'a écrit des choses pompeuses sur Lêda; mais de sa part cela ne signifie rien.” Louÿs had been acquainted with Mallarmé since the early 1890s and met many leading figures at his celebrated ‘Tuesdays,’ among them Henri de Régnier. Deeply admiring the verses of the Symbolist master, whom he considered ‘the supreme incarnation of the artist, one who has sacrificed everything to his ideal’ (Ibid.), Louÿs seems here somewhat wounded by his elder’s remarks. Yet nothing could dampen his enthusiasm: “J'aime pour moi la surprise que j'ai eue la semaine dernière, étant dans l'arrière-boutique de Bailly, en entendant Mme de Bonn...[ières] en demander cinq exemplaires pour ses amies. Cela est en vrai plaisir.”
A splendid letter testifying to Pierre Louÿs’s early literary triumphs.