FAURE, Elie. 3 signed autograph letters addressed to Daniel - Lot 151

FAURE, Elie. 3 signed autograph letters addressed to Daniel Halévy. "You have acted, Sir, as a disloyal publisher, and, what is worse, as a bad colleague." 4 pages in-4, including one folio on lined paper (276 x 214 mm) and two folios on paper with serrated margins (259 x 210 mm). On the back of the first letter, a handwritten annotation in another aging hand: “Berth informs me of Sorel’s death.” “St-Aulaye” (Dordogne), n.d. [1922] and Paris “147 Boulevard Saint-Germain,” November 21 and December 3, 1923. Fold marks with two small tears on two pages. The essayist and historian Élie Faure (1873–1937) was planning to publish his essays in the “Cahiers verts” series, which Grasset had just entrusted to Daniel Halévy. In the first, cordial letter, he congratulates his correspondent on being awarded the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1922. He inquires about the upcoming publication of his essay on Montaigne. On November 21, 1923, he grew frustrated with Daniel Halévy’s procrastination regarding publication deadlines. The second letter, dated December 3, was a letter terminating their editorial collaboration. “It was not I, Sir, who asked you to contribute to *Cahiers Verts*. It was you—whose name and work were unknown just a moment before—who came to my home to solicit my support for this collection that had yet to be born [...] You are free not to like my writing. I understand that perfectly well, and I hold in the highest regard those who have the candor to say so—and even to write it down. But weren’t you even freer—when you didn’t know me—not to come begging me to publish it under your name, only to back out afterward with a series of evasions and about-faces devoid of any elegance?”... After this falling-out, Elie Faure published his essays with Georges Crès.