With charming original color illustration
Illustrated Typed Letter, Signed, to Elizabeth Weicker ("Carissima").
March 14, 1960.
Price: $7,500.00
About the item
8vo. One leaf Town & Country stationery, text and illustration on verso; illustration at bottom in black and yellow marker; date and signature in black marker.
Item #376166
In a missive to his dear friend, the American socialite and philanthropist Elizabeth "Liz" Weicker, Bemelmans humorously (and somewhat bawdily) asks if he could stay at her Paris apartment — nicknamed "le ciel" — during an upcoming trip to France:
"Carissima:
In the domaine of yes and no — I'm sailing on the 29th on the United States, for France — will be there April 3rd, to April 21st when I celebrate my 200th birthday, and then sail off to Israel, to help Otto Preminger with Exodus. Those two weeks in Paris could I have le ciel? I don't make love in your bed — I was kidding — I don't make love — I would consider it utterly disgusting — Chuchie is like my child, and that's why she loves me. But don't get me wrong, I'm not impotent yet — just a mystery inside and enigma — to myself at least —
Love — ."
St. Ludwig [in autograph black marker]
Below the typed text — and enclosing his signature — Bemelmans has added an original black marker line drawing of a smiling angel sleeping on an ornate bed, augmented by undulating rays of yellow marker.
While Bemelmans was close to both Liz and her then-husband, Ted, it was clearly she who he felt most intimate with, as documented by other letters he wrote to the couple. The relationship was such that he not only stayed at a number of the Weickers' properties over the years, but he also felt free to be a little bit risqué in his correspondence, as seen here. His Rabelaisian sense of humor is present, too, in his joking reference to assisting the director Preminger on the filming of his movie, Exodus. Bemelmans often added small illustrations in his letters to the Weickers, but this is among the largest of those examples, and one of the few to incorporate color.
A wonderful Bemelmans note, fully demonstrating his unique visual and written wit.
