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Ader

407 - [Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, comprising 13 …
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Estimate €4,000 - €5,000
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Description
[Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, comprising 13 signed autograph poems, tributes or reflections, [1838–1840]; oblong in-8 album comprising 31 numbered pages (the remainder blank), contemporary aubergine calfskin binding, decorated ribbed spine, covers adorned with a broad frame of embossed motifs enclosing, in the centre, a rectangle of gilt lines and motifs, with small inlays of green calfskin at the corners, gilt edges, moiré blue paper endpapers (binding signed Pierret) (in a slipcase and case). A precious album by Ondine Valmore, then aged 17. Hyacinthe, known as Ondine (or Line) Valmore, daughter of the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, born in Lyon in 1821, also wrote poems and stories, but she died of tuberculosis at the age of 31 in 1853. Writers and artists who were friends of her mother have inscribed poetic tributes to the young girl in this album. The album opens with a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, entitled ‘To Line’, signed ‘your mother, Marceline Valmore’ and dated ‘June 1838’, consisting of eight lines: ‘Thérèse too, a timid and cautious dove In this world that passes, trembles and falls’… The opera singer Caroline Branchu takes up two pages with a poem of seven quatrains, *Invocation*, dated ‘20 November 1838’, dedicated ‘to her dear and beloved Line’: ‘Divine Word made flesh, my soul adores you’… The actress Mademoiselle Mars has written a charming and affectionate tribute: ‘Dear little one, I shall not enrich your album with a piece of verse of my own making; heaven has denied me the wit required for such a thing; but the feeling that comes from the heart makes itself understood in every language’… Étienne Coignet (a friend of Marceline’s from Lyon, who went on to become a librarian in Saint-Chamond) sent a poem of eight quatrains, pasted into the album, addressed to Ondine Hyacinthe Valmore: ‘Are you the moving, transparent and pure wave’… Sainte-Beuve inscribed a sonnet, modelled on Uhland: ‘Two young girls, there, on the hill, in the evening’… This is followed by another poem by Étienne Coignet, consisting of six sizains, To Hyacinthe Valmore: ‘ In the humble retreat / That fate has granted me’… The Lyon-based poet Victor de Laprade composes a poem of 10 quintils, ‘At Lake Thun’: ‘If one day I break my chains, / I wish to flee to the waters’… Next comes the Lyon-based printer Léon Boitel with a poem of 14 lines, To Ondine Hyacinthe Valmore: ‘Yes, it is a celebration in my heart, just as in my finest days’… Alphonse Karr contributed an untitled poem of seven quintils: ‘Around the old bell tower with its pointed spire’… In 1840, it was the turn of Louise Crombach, a woman of letters and Marceline’s protégée, to inscribe a 39-line poem across four pages, *To Ondine Valmore, a reply*: “Sing on, O my graceful one! / You have done me so much good with your voice from the heart!’… More unexpected is the witty poem that Honoré de Balzac inscribed on 16 December 1840, entitled ‘A Young Wife’s Wish’: ‘Even when this hair, whose tresses so often Have felt the dreamy caresses of her fingers, Has turned white beneath a heavy shroud; May my memory still take pride in it then! May I live on in her heart, and always be dear to her; unless………………………………………’ Amable Tastu has copied out a 14-line fragment from his poem dedicated to Madame Desbordes Valmore: ‘Alas! when before him you shed your tears’… Finally, a prose passage by Émile Souvestre: ‘Morality in a child is nothing but experience’…, followed by a ten-line stanza whose signature is illegible (Alice Ozy?). A pencil drawing and two watercolours are pasted at the end of the album, and a few dried flowers are tucked between the pages.
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part II
Auction location
Auction time 10/14/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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