JAMES JOYCE | FRAMED ALS
[Evian-les-Bains]: 1933. Two page autograph letter signed by James Joyce on Le Grand Hotel, Evian-les-Bains (Haute-Savoie) letterhead addressed to Carola Giedion-Welcker. The sheet measures 10.5" x 7.25" and has been folded twice, with lines visible. Some light staining and wear. Upper corners possibly tipped onto matting. Not inspected out of frame.
1419705
Shelved Dupont Bookstore
Price: $9,500
NOTES
"8.7.1933 Dear Mrs Gidion: Can you let me know whether your kind offer of the villa for August is still open and, if so, the exact dates of your leaving and return. I delayed writing till now as I never know what is going to occur. If words are not complete in this epistle blame the ink not the drink. I am writing in a blaze of sunshine tempered by a pitch black room. And à propos of handwriting can you put me in touch with Mr Pulver and what does he charge for an opinion? I have something I feel inclined to submit to him. Friendly regards to Mr Gidion and yourself sincerely yours James Joyce"
This letter is recorded in Richard Ellmann's Letters of James Joyce Volume 3, page 282. From Ellmann's footnotes: "Joyce's regular misspelling of Giedion as Gideon has been corrected in these letters. Max Pulver (b. 1889), a well-known graphologist. Joyce wished to show Pulver some of Lucia's handwriting."
Joyce met the art critic Carola Giedion-Welcker in Zurich in 1930. She and her husband Siegfried Giedion recommended the Swiss surgeon Professor Alfred Vogt for Joyce's eye troubles and counseling him in his attempts to find treatment for the mental disorders which afflicted his daughter, Lucia. Joyce spent his last Christmas (1940) with the Giedion-Welckers and after his death she arranged for Paul Speck to take a death mask him.