Eugénie KRANTZ despaired by the death of Paul VERLAINE.

(Paul VERLAINE ) – Eugénie KRANTZ (18-.1897)

Autograph letter signed to Edmond Lepelletier.

An oblong in-4° page and a ¼ in-8° page. Paris. April 24, 1896.

“In the name of those you love, don’t let me starve. What you will do for me will give me the courage to work without needing to prostitute myself and Paul Verlaine from heaven will reward you . »

Extraordinary letter from Eugénie Krantz, the poet's last companion, begging Lepelletier to come to his aid.

For easier reading, we have transcribed Krantz's missive – written in surprising phonetic French – with correct spelling. The original version of the text is reproduced below.

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“Mr. Lepelletier, Please, in the name of your great friend Paul Verlaine, come to my aid. I am completely abandoned. None of Mr. Verlaine's friends came to my aid, although Mr. de Montesquiou-Fezensac had promised me not to leave me in trouble and here are 4 letters that I sent to him without any response. However, I let him take 2 strong waters from Monsieur Paul Verlaine that he wanted. My landlord is asking me for the term, I don't have a single penny. I have to give him 100 francs on the 14th of next month, I only have 20 francs that Mr. François Coppée was kind enough to send me. See Sir, I'm missing 80 francs. Because the owner threatens to keep all my furniture. I went back to look for work at the garden ball but these gentlemen, under the pretext that I haven't worked for a long time, gave me 18-year-old double-quilted jackets all serged by hand for the sum of 3 francs; it takes two days to make one and 10 cents for supplies.

What to do with this? I am suffering from the cold that I caught on the day of Paul Verlaine's death. In the hope, Sir, that you will not abandon the close friend of your great friend Paul Verlaine, completely devoted, without any interest. Everyone would have compassion for me. Because no one but Monsieur Coppée has done anything for me. And the money that the notary owes me for all the costs is not over, it seems. Sir, in the name of those you love, don't let me starve. What you will do for me will give me the courage to work without needing to prostitute myself and Paul Verlaine from heaven will reward you . Please accept, Sir, my respectful greetings from your very devoted Eugénie Krantz, 39 rue Descartes. Please put on the registered letter, otherwise it could be taken from me by the concierge who gives me almost all the unsealed letters. If you want some little unpublished poetry, I could provide them to you because I still have 3 completely unpublished manuscripts, then a Louis XVII with the copy, and the first etching signed by Monsieur Zorn (Anders Zorn), and others little things so amusing. »

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Verlaine met Eugénie Krantz, known as “Nini-Mouton” in 1891. Variously a hosier, prostitute and cabaret coquette, Krantz shared the poet's last years until his death on January 8, 1896. Penniless, wanderer, and abandoned by everyone , she died in 1897. The posthumous testimony of St Georges de Bouhélier on the Verlaine / Krantz relationship is quite striking:

“From the beginning of this story, I indicated that fifteen or twenty days before the end of Verlaine, I had the opportunity to meet him and that we had dinner together. During this last meal (about which Cazals and Gustave Le Rouge said a word, according to what Verlaine himself had told them), the conversation must have turned to Eugénie Krantz. This is why I come back to it. To anyone who has studied Verlaine's life, his relationship with this person appears inexplicable. In the years they were together, Verlaine was obviously not an attractive man, nor even appetizing and acceptable, but when I remember Eugénie Krantz, all I find in my memory is a rather unpleasant-looking woman. , with a ruddy face strewn with wrinkles, with small and wicked eyes. The impression she gave was far from suggesting anything of even elementary sensual and physical power. Despite the verses he dedicated to her and in which he speaks of their "nights", the woman was not to act on Verlaine through the attraction of vice. (I cannot do without her, he wrote in one of his letters.) Before having moved in with her, and having publicly displayed her as his “almost wife” , he had been accommodated by her on rue Saint-Victor, and he had shown himself satisfied with life together. However, he never stopped complaining about his violence. She was not an easy woman. More often than not he found himself giving in to his hypochondriac impulses. It was to the point that he had to leave her. The dear home he so desired once again became something intolerable for him, he gathered up his poor clothes, packed up his manuscripts and began to wander the roads again, asking for asylum from anyone. But, once the storm passed, he always came back to Eugénie Krantz to ask her forgiveness. »