MAUPASSANT (de), Laure (1821-1903)

MAUPASSANT (de), Laure (1821-1903)

Autographe card signed « Laure de Maupassant » [to Robert Pinchon]
[Nice, c. 1890 – 1891], 2 pp. in-24° on her name card, mourning edges, very small and tight handwriting

A autograph card from Laure de Maupassant, nostalgically evoking a bygone past and giving news of her son Guy

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Here we transcribe only a few fragments of this unpublished testimony:

« Veuillez agréer, cher Monsieur, mes meilleurs remerciements et mes plus chaleureuses félicitations. J’ai lu votre beau drame avec un vif intérêt, et je vous sais aussi un gré infini de ne m’avoir point oubliée, et d’être venu me chercher au fond de ma solitude¹[…]. C’était un heureux temps, que celui où l’on jouait la comédie dans la maison d’Étretat² […] L’état de votre pauvre camarade s’était beaucoup amélioré ; mais les grandes chaleurs le fatiguent […] les docteurs ne peuvent encore se prononcer en aucune manière. Il faut attendre. Agréez, cher Monsieur, mes meilleures pensées.
Laure de Maupassant »

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1 – Often deceived by the adulterous affairs of her husband Gustave de Maupassant, Laure (née Le Poittevin) had filed for divorce in 1860 and had not remarried ever since.

2 – Following her divorce, Laure de Maupassant and her two children (Guy and his younger brother Hervé) moved to Étretat to live in the Grand Val. From his first literary success with La Maison Tellier, Guy had “La Guillette” built, a small house surrounded by a balcony on the first floor.

This autograph business card must have been written after 1889. Laure de Maupassant used the mourning border after Hervé’s death on November 13, 1889. Referring to the “great heats” here, a plausible conjecture would be the summer of 1890 or 1891. It was also from 1890 that Guy de Maupassant was subjected to hallucinations accompanied by psychotic episodes that became more and more severe. He was finally interned in January 1892 and, like his younger brother, died of syphilis on July 6, 1893.