Autograph letter signed. Miller, Henry, American writer (1891-1980). Autographen: Literatur

4to. 1 p. Starke Faltspuren u. Rückstand einer Heftklammer. Einriss am Mittelfalz. Gebräunt. An Arnaud de Maigret, den er um Hilfe für einen Freund aus seiner Pariser Zeit bittet. In one of your letters I understood you to say that you go occasionally to Switzerland.Are you then anywhere near Vevey (canton de Vaud)? I ask because I have an old friend there who is in bad circumstances a man who was a very great friend to me when we were in Paris. I am now trying to help him as much as I can. One has to be tactful and discreet as he is naturally sensitive about his condition. He was once very well off.His name is Conrad MoricandHe wants to send me some of his manuscripts (written by hand) for possible publication here in America. But they ought to be typed first by someone who knows French and who can read his rather peculiar handwriting. Maybe you could help out there think of someone who would do this at a fee, of course, which I will pay myself. His name is Conrad Moricand. Where does C. F. Ramuz, the author, live, do you know?" - A singular figure of Montmartre and Montparnasse, the Swiss astrologer and occultist Conrad Moricand (1887 1954) was at first a collector and patron of the arts with a certain financial ease. He associated with, among others, Modigliani and Picasso, and became a friend of Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and André Breton. He published two famous works uniting astrological themes with the literary and artistic personalities he knew: Le Miroir d astrologie (1928) and Portraits astrologiques (1933).Henry Miller met Moricand in Paris in 1935, and tried as best he could to ease the financial distress into which Moricand had fallen. In 1947, he generously invited him to come live at his house in Big Sur, which he had just bought; Moricand lived there from January to March 1948, but the two friends eventually quarreled. Miller later recounted this episode in his book A Devil in Paradise (1956). The French translation of that work, published the same year, disguises Moricand s name under Téricand.The photographer Arnaud de Maigret, also the author of a novel, had been Miller s neighbor on the landing of the Villa Seurat in Paris during the 1930s.