COCOTTE 1900 - Yèle de GUESTRE(A Belle Epoque personality, w - Lot 1

COCOTTE 1900 - Yèle de GUESTRE(A Belle Epoque personality, wife of Baron Pichon Goubert de Guestre, she was often the talk of the town. Her name can be found in the wake of demi-mondaines, principally Valdesse de La Bigne, with whom she stayed not only at her Ville-d'Avray estate, Le Lys Rouge, but also at her Villa des Aigles in Monte-Carlo, suggesting that they were "tender friends": the famous 1594 portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrée and one of her sisters (a very lesbian subject!) was purchased from her estate in 1937) / Autograph letter signed, 4 p in-8, headed "Le Lys Rouge (Ville d'Avray)" [the property of the demi-mondaine Valtesse de La Bigne], June 27, 1905 (postmark on preserved envelope enclosed, with postage and gray wax seal with the motto "Acta non verba", "des acte et pas de mots"), to Monsieur Jakowski, at the journalLa Vie parisienne in Paris: "I have only just received, Monsieur, the charming words you wrote about me in La Vie Parisienne on June 17- I'd like to thank you most sincerely for them -Le Cygne de Bruges!... what a lovely title for a novel! as long as a dishonest writer doesn't take it from you! I'm flattered, yes very flattered, by this euphoric appellation - but confused because I don't deserve it -I must give back to Paris what belongs to Paris - alas! I'm a Parisian - what an ugly word!I know Bruges - too little - but enough to love it infinitely - You have evoked in me very pretty memories - in an instant I saw again through you the dead city - its canals, its swans and its primitives - The Memlings passed before my eyes [evocation of the works of the primitive painter Hans Memling] - all this I owe to you - thank you again Sir and all my sympathetic compliments".