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an open book with writing on it sitting on top of a tablean open book with writing on it sitting on top of a tablean open book with writing on it sitting on a table
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495 - Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de MALESHERBES.
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Estimate €2,000 - €2,500
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Description
Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de MALESHERBES. Autograph manuscripts, Works on Botany, 1783–1793 and undated; approximately 130 pages, mostly in-4, bound in a single in-4 volume with a modern marbled-paper cardboard binding, with a title label. An important collection of notes on botany, some in the hand of André Thouin. [Malesherbes was passionate about botany and had attended Jussieu’s lectures; he corresponded on this subject with numerous botanists. He organised extensive plantings in his park at Malesherbes.] These notes and lists of plants, generally in quarto-sized notebooks, are sometimes supplemented by octavo or duodecimo-sized sheets. The lists of plants are often accompanied by personal comments. Some notes are in the hand of a secretary; others are in the hand of the botanist André Thouin (1747–1824). The first list, dated 1783, includes buttercups, anemones, hellebores, hydrastis, clematis, nigella, etc. ; on an inserted sheet, in a secretary’s hand, are observations by Thouin on *Hydrastis canadensis*, with a note by Malesherbes: ‘The English call it “plate beer” because they make beer from it. Mr Williams, a settler from New York, knows it very well’. Other lists and notes concern the poppy, Papaver, etc. An 8vo notebook is devoted to ‘questions concerning the catalogue of the King’s Garden’. One leaf lists ‘some botanical notes by Mr Thouin’; another lists ‘plants to be requested in the month of March’. Following the account of a ‘conversation with Mr Thouin and Mr Lheritier de Brutelle on 6 December 1789’ comes a handwritten note by Thouin on hemp: ‘The variety of hemp brought from China to England, which was the subject of the paper addressed to Mr Banks, died without producing any seeds, because it had been sown too late […] We have cultivated in the Jardin du Roy a Russian hemp entirely similar to our own, except that it was taller’… Malesherbes compiles long lists of ‘indigenous’ plants, ‘umbellifers’, ‘indigenous monadelphas’, roses and willows, and ‘roses which are not indigenous to the country’, ‘succulents’, etc. ; some are accompanied by comments, sometimes at great length; for example, regarding roses: ‘the rose I call sennelle, a species which I do not see that botanists have designated, though it is very different. I have named it the ‘sennelle’ rose because of its round, coloured seed; the first time I saw it in winter, I mistook it for a small sennelle. But this characteristic, which one might regard as a variety, is not the only one that distinguishes this rose bush. I have not examined it as a botanist, but my gardener now recognises it and is never mistaken […] I have sown it and resown it; it has always produced the same variety, and the fruit is sennelle’. Written by a secretary, a ‘Note on plants of the Sedum and Saxifraga families that I would like, if possible’ is annotated in the margin by Thouin, who adds in his own hand: ‘Note on some plants of the Sedum and Saxifraga families that may be provided next spring’. The collection concludes with a ‘List of seeds sown in the open ground in the garden, in a bed prepared for this purpose, on 20 September 1793’, in the hand of a secretary [Malesherbes was arrested in December and guillotined on 22 April the following year].
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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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