Hugo (Valentine) - Lot 64

Hugo (Valentine) Ɵ Manuscript set with drawings. Uncropped notebook of some forty manuscript pages of an unpublished dramatic project with graphite drawings (22 x 17.5 cm), and other documents, 1913. Devauchelle box. This set of unpublished documents dates from Valentine Gross's first stay in Switzerland, when she was involved with the painter Maurice Mathey (whose 3 love letters are enclosed). It contains an astonishing project for an unpublished play, fixing the date of her meeting (previously thought to be much later) with Paul Éluard, who was taking a cure at Clavadel in 1913. The notebook containing the manuscript of the unpublished play is not titled, the main characters being "Calmet" and "Marianne", perhaps in reference to Augustin Calmet's (1672-1757) Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Bohême, de Moravie et de Silésie (Debure, Paris, 1746). While their meeting is often dated to 1926, this document is the first unpublished trace of contact between Valentine Gross, the future Valentine Hugo (1887-1968) and Paul Éluard (who was still called Paul Eugène Grindel), who in 1913 was at the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos to treat tuberculosis, where he met his wife Gala. Inserted in the manuscript notebook is an in-4° sheet on Éluard's father's letterhead "E. Grindel / 3, rue Ordener, 3 / Paris (18e) / Les Samedis et Lundis / de 2 à 7 heures", filled in by Valentine Hugo in graphite with a table of contents for a project entitled Loisirs, and another project entitled La Ballade de Pierrot blanc et laid, mentioning the date of June 13, 1913 at Clavadel. We know of photos of Éluard from this period, in which he is dressed as Pierrot blanc. As for Valentine, she would later marry Victor Hugo's great-grandson, the painter Jean Hugo, in 1919, but by this time she was being courted by the Swiss painter Maurice Mathey (1878-1975), whose 3 letters are attached (one dated February 24, 1913, evoking their love affair: "I went this morning to a meadow where the trees are fragile and mauve and I abandoned my study that I loved. Your thought was sweeter to me than the morning sky, and you occupied all my desire for beauty [...]". 1913 was a particularly important year for Valentine Hugo, with the Ballets Russes and the meeting of numerous personalities, from Erik Satie to Roger de la Fresnaye, via Léon-Paul Fargue and Gaston Gallimard. Provenance: Valentine Hugo; E. Morssen; Charles W. Sachs.