Jules CLARETIE (1840-1913). Autograph manuscript signed, Journal d'un Parisien, Les Fous, [1899]; 12pages in-8 (cut out for printing and pasted back together). Moving article on Toulouse-Lautrec's internment at Dr. Sémelaigne's clinic in Neuilly (March 1899). "An artist of great talent, who bore one of the greatest names in France, has just been taken to a nursing home. Fin de race", said a newspaper the morning before yesterday. The descendant of Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec [...] is now - as André Gill, comte de Guines once was - locked up in a madhouse. [...] I do hope that Toulouse-Lautrec will escape final madness [...] All I know of him is his work. It is original and striking. There was, in these strange visions, in his posters with their flat tints and crushed lines, something bizarre and disquieting that attracted, gave the special thrill of the poems of a Baudelaire or the tales of a Poe. They were plastered and frightening girls, sitting in fantastic bars [...] The man, it seems, was singular. He is described as a Hoffmann character, very small, with enormous lips, carrying under his arm a cardboard box almost as big as himself"... Etc.