AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS)
Paris: [6 April 1947] Easter Sunday. Letter. Superb closely written four-page AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED composed within a year after Gertrude Stein's death on an 8" x 10-1/2" sheet folded into fours to friend Tony Scott SIGNED "Alice Toklas." With the original envelope addressed in Toklas's hand and SIGNED by her. Fine letter to Scott while he was attending Pomona College in Claremont, California, studying creative writing. Toklas begins: "And a very happy one to you -- are you going to roll eggs or rather did you. Mrs Truman's refusing to supply them or even permit them to be brought to the White House.... In all these weeks that I haven't answered your letters I haven't forgotten you -- on the contrary I've been agitating myself on your behalf but alas not to much purpose. I saw Joe Barry shortly after his return from New York and at once asked him about his printing books in Switzerland, that I had heard about it from U.S. He said he had been astonished to hear about it too -- that there was absolutely nothing in it at all. In fact he expects to go back to New York after he has finished some work for Newsweek. I asked him if Newsweek didn't want to take on a well educated capable and active young man to which he replied that they were a drug on the market. That has not been my experience…." She then suggests that Scott pursue a lead to work at a branch of a Parisian library and discusses several service men they both knew before talking about a new poet. "There is a new poet -- that is Gertrude discovered her just about a year ago -- two of her poems were in one of those innumerable English reviews. Her name is Kathleen Raine -- she is probably not English but Irish. Now she has sent me a small book of some thirty poems -- none of them long -- but it's real poetry and I'm much taken with them -- not that that means anything for modern poetry has an unfortunate way of choking me. What do you think of this
Sparrows in March -- innocent of time
More light of heart than Augustine
Perch on the peas buds in a Chelsea garden--
It's perhaps the least characteristic. I'll see if I can't send you a copy of the book. Well I must get to giving Basket his food -- he intimates that retarded meal hours make him nervous." With a copy of a letter written by Scott to the NEW YORK TIMES in 1995 describing his relationship to Stein and Toklas. Crease from mailing. Fine with Fine envelope. Item #021789
Anthony Scott was a playwright and novelist who visited Toklas and her partner Gertrude Stein on a regular basis when he was a G.I. in Paris.
Price: $1,750.00