Item 63 - Letter from Paul Valéry to R.C. Trevelyan

40 rue de Villejust, Paris. - Apologises for only now replying to Trevelyan's letter of last 14 June. Received the book by [Arthur] Waley with great pleasure, and has read part of it with interest; has been very tired and busy recently. As for 'pauvre [poor]' M. Teste [in Valéry's "La Soirée avec M. Teste"], he continues to bother Miss [Natalie Clifford] Barney. Knows the difficulties: when he wrote that 'fantaisie', he was 'half-living in the eighteenth century', loving the 'tone, the sharpness and the dryness' of the time of Louis XV, though the 'exaggeration' of his character belonged to the nineteenth century. He wrote it in Montpellier, in the fine old house his family then occupied; Auguste Comte had also lived there as a child, and his bedroom was the room in which Valéry wrote. Thanks Mrs Trevelyan for her offer of hospitality; has not been to England since 1896. Unfortunately he has little hope of seeing his English friends out of Paris as he is so busy.