"Mon souhait, ce serait que nous choisissions deux petites maisons contigües près de Paris. "

Autograph letter signed by Pierre [Louÿs], addressed to Georges Louis. Four pages written in purple ink on a double sheet. Envelope included.
Fine letter addressed to his brother Georges Louis with whom Pierre Louÿs maintained a very intimate relationship and whom he considered as his own father.
The question of Pierre Louÿs's real paternal identity still fascinates biographers today: "His father, Pierre Philippe Louis, [...] had married in 1842 Jeanne Constance Blanchin, who died ten years later after giving him two children, Lucie and Georges. In 1855, he remarried Claire Céline Maldan, and from this union was born, in 1857, a son, Paul; then, in 1870, our writer, who received the first names Pierre Félix. This late birth, the differences in character between father and son, the first's disaffection toward the second, the profound intimacy that always reigned between Louÿs and his brother Georges, all this has led certain biographers and critics to suspect that the latter was in reality the writer's father. The exceptionally intimate and constant relationship that Pierre and Georges maintained between them throughout their lives, could be an argument in this sense. Of course, no irrefutable proof has been discovered, and none will probably ever be discovered. Nevertheless, certain letters [...] are quite troubling. In 1895, for example, Louÿs writes seriously to his brother that he knows the answer to 'the most poignant question' he could ask him, a question he has had 'on his lips for ten years.' The following year, in the midst of Aphrodite's triumph, he thanks Georges effusively and ends his letter with this sentence: 'Not one of my friends has a FATHER who is to him what you are to me.' Arguing from the close intimacy of Georges and Claire Céline during the year 1870, and from the jealousy that the father never ceased to show toward his younger son, Claude Farrère did not hesitate to conclude in favor of Georges Louis. And what to think of this dedication by Louÿs to his brother on a Japan paper copy of the first edition of Pausole: To Georges, his eldest son / Pierre." (Jean-Paul Goujon, Pierre Louÿs)
Written from Tamaris where the writer is on vacation and attempting to buy Psyché, this fine letter forms a veritable ode to literature and bibliophilia. Louÿs "fill[s] two pages of letter on this question" and indeed writes: "When I leave I always lock everything up so that my maids don't browse through my books in my absence, which would be disastrous. I unfortunately have book titles that could sometimes tempt them. [...] What to do? Leave you the keys? I would certainly do so if I were leaving for six months, but for a short absence... [...] I don't have duplicates and [...] the key to my study locks up my desk which is the soul of the house." Georges very quickly transmitted to his brother the love of books and texts and the latter recalls here this profound spiritual communion: "When I look at my library, I constantly regret that you don't benefit from it more. I would always like to unite it with yours, and that the day when your life is free, you would only have to leave your bedroom to take from my place what you desire." Although happy to take some leave, he misses his brother: "That's somewhat what prevents me from loving Biarritz, it's that I see there a threat of such complete separation for us both. [...] I couldn't follow you there and I would only see you one or two months a year; that frightens me. My wish would be that we choose two small adjoining houses near Paris. [...] But it's not time to speak of it." This sentimental reverie of a future together quickly gives way to a long passage concerning international politics and the game of European alliances. Georges is then Director of Political Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay and the two brothers naturally discuss this subject: "The circle of alliances built in recent months around Berlin is very remarkable; but how can one ally with us, I mean with our current Parliament? [...] Whatever the case, these agreements certainly do honor to French and English diplomacies and do not honor German diplomacy which appears quite feeble. To be so strong and find as allies only two nations in full political and ethnographic putrefaction, Austria and Turkey, is extraordinary."