Jehan RICTUS (1867-1933). L.A.S., Paris August 22, 1930, to Jeanne Landre; 4pages small in-4. After evoking the Dutch critic Beversen, Henry Poulaille and his book Le Nouvel Âge littéraire, Frédéric Lefèvre, Léon Daudet and a certain "Madame Timorée", Rictus mocks the Bon Bock society: "I don't dare go to these good people anymore. I feel a kind of embarrassment. The kind that a tiger would probably feel if, having aimed at a stable to snatch a pig or sheep, it fell into a henhouse! [...] Those "Bons-Bockeurs"! One day, they were bugging me to write them an Invitation in verse! I was distraught. I literally didn't know what to lay... At the last moment I came up with a piece rhyming only with the syllables "Pine" and "Con", but proper words of course. "Chaliapine", "Falcon", "Aubépine", "Rubicon", etc., etc... So I had found a discreet way of showing them the kind of esteem in which I held them. I went to the feast. I was surrounded by ambiguous smiles and in no way complimented for the verve deployed in the making of their "Invitation". Since then, they've never asked me for anything again. And I've achieved what I set out to do"... Attached is a L.A.S. to Madame Sauce (Renée Pingrenon), May 6, 1906 (on the back of the subscription form for Fil de fer).