KIPLING, Rudyard. Autographed letter signed ("Rudyard Kipling"), to Monsieur Guyot, Bateman's, Burwash, Sussex, 30 December 1921.
1 page, 12mo, on Bateman's Burwash letterhead. Kipling thanks Guyot for translating a piece ("my little absurdity") for L'Information Universitaire, "It was most admirably done, and it 'went' with a lightness that I could not myself get into the original." Kipling also sends his greetings to "your small Franois whose New Year card lies before me as I write and tell him that when next I have the pleasure of seeing him I demand that he shall be 8.410 kilos heavier than he is at present and 150 centimeters more round his chest. Anyone can work (unfortunately, I myself have done so sometimes) but we and the world need solid young large Gauls in the future" He makes reference to an enclosure at the head of the letter which contains a holograph copy of an excerpt in the French, entitled "Jamet Brayer," the captain of Pantagruel' s fleet, from Rabelais's Pantagruel, Book IV (included with this letter). Kipling met the French politician and economist Yves Guyot in 1905 through Louis Fabulet, one of Kipling's earliest and most productive of his French translators.
Property from the Robert L. McKay Collection, North Tustin, California
