Bristol autographe daté et signé adressé à Jane Bathori

Autograph card signed and dated by Marguerite Yourcenar, 12 lines in black ink written on both sides, addressed to Jane Bathori.

The ink has slightly faded.

With the original manuscript envelope addressed to Jane Bathori.

"6-III-54,

Dear Madam, I thought of you this morning as I was passing through your neighbourhood, and was reminded of the charming welcome you gave me last month. I did not have the time to try to call on you, but these flowers will at least convey my warm remembrance and friendly regards. Marguerite Yourcenar."

Jane Bathori was a French mezzo-soprano, choir director, teacher, theatre director, and filmmaker.

"Yourcenar [belongs] to those generations for whom homosexuality was a calling reserved for a small number of chosen spirits" observed Dominique Fernandez. It was precisely to another of these chosen spirits that Yourcenar addressed this charming note, to the singer who premiered numerous songs by Debussy, Ravel and Satie, as well as works by Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, among many others. The lives of the singer and the writer followed remarkably similar paths: both went into exile during the Second World War with their respective companions: Jane Bathori to Argentina with the actress Andrée Tainsy, and Yourcenar to the United States with Grace Frick, at whose side she would settle permanently in the country.