Natalie Clifford Barney letter to Gilbert Seldes

Autograph letter from Natalie Clifford Barney to Gilbert Seldes, dated December 12, 1958. An interesting letter to the critic, Gilbert Sedes, recounting her reminiscences of Muriel Draper, the memoirist: "Your name is associated with many memories...But among them I can recall only having really met Muriel Draper once, when she invited me to her flat and offered me her presidential chair, which I refused....Romaine Brooks Goddard, who painted her portrait (of which I send you amongst others this picture) enjoyed Muriel's settings...and as paintings are often a desirable confessional, Muriel evoked her home-life where 'good manners...were placed over very little to eat,' and it seems to me that this tell-tale portrait conveys the rest!" In a postscript, Barney adds that someone (name illegible) "is editing this next spring a book of mine Souvenirs indiscrets, but in which M.D. does not figure."

The "presidential chair likely is in reference to the Congress of American Women which Draper co-founded, and of which she was president. Barney's relationship with Romaine Brooks Goddard (they met during World War I) lasted nearly fifty years. Barney's Souvenirs indiscrets, a description of her literary acquaintances, was published in 1960.