"j'ai honte d'avoir fui dans ma verdure au moment même où Whistler parlait de mon portrait à faire"

Autograph letter-card signed by Stéphane Mallarmé addressed to Alidor Delzant, written in black ink on both sides. With the original envelope.
Enclosed with this letter is a quatrain in Mallarmé’s hand: "Tout en les éternisant / Bracquemond ici fait vivre / Les traits d'Alidor Delzant / A nous ouvert comme un livre."
Alidor Delzant was a lawyer, collector, and bibliophile. A friend of the Goncourt brothers, he devoted a book to them and served as Edmond’s secretary and testamentary executor.
A delightful card in which the “poëte ordinaire” refers to the making of his portrait by his friend, the painter Whistler: "j'ai honte d'avoir fui dans ma verdure au moment même où Whistler parlait de mon portrait à faire".
"On June 1st, as he had promised Whistler who, in his last letter with an affection verging on tenderness, addressed him as ‘mon Mallarmé’, he went to the painter’s studio on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. ‘You will see someone from the woods, somewhere between the wild boar and the nightingale,’ he had warned playfully in announcing his visit. Painter and poet ended the day dining on the rue du Bac, where the all-too-ephemeral Trixie was now absent. In the half-light after dinner, Whistler, near a lamp, seemed to resurrect, in appearance, the extraordinary Poe. Doubtless he then repeated to Mallarmé his intention of painting him. The next day, without waiting for the Monet exhibition soon to be held at Georges Petit, the Mallarmés went on to Valvins.” (Jean-Luc Steinmetz, Stéphane Mallarmé) This was most likely the execution of another portrait of Mallarmé, of which no trace remains, Whistler having already produced one that served as the frontispiece to Vers et Prose in 1893.
He also alludes to Bracquemond’s etched portrait of Delzant: "Je comprends, du reste, l'eau-forte valant cet exil de Paraÿs [...] Redites mon affectueuse admiration toujours à Monsieur Bracquemond."