Paul VERLAINE.

Fifteen days in Holland. Letters to a friend. With a portrait of the author by Ph. Zilcken. The Hague, Maison Blok and Paris, Léon Vanier, no date [1893]. Small in-4: green half cloth à la Bradel with corners, green morocco title-piece, entirely untrimmed, cover and spine preserved (period binding). First edition: it is decorated with a beautiful portrait of Verlaine in profile, drawn from life and etched by Philippe Zilcken. Edition of 1050 copies; one of 1000 on laid paper of Holland. "This is the report of a lecture tour made by Verlaine in the Netherlands in 1892. In The Hague, Leiden and Amsterdam, the poet spoke about Symbolism, the Romanesque school, and also evoked episodes from his life... The sonnet To Miss Renée Zilcken, written on this occasion and published in the collection, was included in the second edition of Dedications in 1894. (Christian Galantaris). A copy enriched in 1913 with twelve original gouaches by André des Gachons in the text, three of which are full-page. The painter André des Gachons (1870-1951), a former student of Bouguereau, had drawn the beautiful portrait of Verlaine reproduced in the frontispiece of the second edition of Romances sans paroles (1887); he illuminated several copies of Quinze jours en Hollande. Ex-libris H. Petit. Minor wear to the headpieces and some foxing in the text. (Galantaris, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, no. 153: the bibliographer points out that Verlaine stayed with the painter Philippe Zilcken in 1892 in The Hague.)