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125
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Alexandre Dumas the Younger. Approximately 130 autograph, si…
See original version (French)
125
-
Alexandre Dumas the Younger. Approximately 130 autograph, si…
See original version (French)
Estimate €1,000 - €1,500
Voluntary lot
Description
Alexandre Dumas the Younger. Approximately 130 autograph, signed letters to Princess Aurélie Ghika. 1872–1895. Approximately 630 pp. in-8 and in-12
Henriette-Aurélie Soubiran (1820–1904) was the daughter of a rather unsavoury adventurer, who appears to have given her an excellent education. She frequented Parisian literary and artistic circles and began publishing in 1841. An attempt at a career in the theatre came to nothing. In 1849, she married Prince Grigore Ghika, one of the sons of Grigore IV Ghika, the Hospodar of Wallachia, for love. Widowed in 1858, she lived for a few years in Romania before settling in Lectoure in 1866, where she died. In this provincial town, where the memory of her father’s dubious past had preceded her, she was initially kept at a distance from society before people began flocking to her home and her salon became the centre of high society.
Alexandre Dumas the Younger wrote the preface to one of her last books, *Pensées de la Solitude*.
An interesting exchange of friendly letters in which Dumas the Younger expounds his ideas, chiefly on women, confident that he would be understood by a cultured and highly intelligent correspondent who was not put off by philosophical questions.
– 1872. ‘Lectoure! That’s a long way off. At least 150 leagues for a man so busy – it’s impossible. Only my memories and my gratitude can make the journey there. But I cannot be there in person.’ – 28 March. ‘That is quite remarkable. You have both form and substance. Why not write the Bible for women!’ – 21 March 1875. ‘Your handwriting is neat, clear, upright, firm, and somewhat angular—the mark of great minds… You know that one can judge people’s character by their handwriting… By taking all sorts of things into your mind and soul, you have altered, consciously or unconsciously, your handwriting—that is to say, one of the outward signs of your mind and soul… ’ – 26 June 1875: ‘As for the melancholy you thought you detected behind my laughter, I would not have done you the insult of hiding it from you. For intelligent people, laughter is merely the mask behind which they conceal their thoughts when they are in contact with a world that does not deserve their trust…’ – 1876. ‘You ask me, with dread, what we would put in place of what is? We would put what ought to be. Everything that disappears is replaced by something that was behind, beneath, above or within it. There is no void in nature… ” – 18 May 1876. On the death she fears: “Is it not rest? Is it not the end of realities that are more or less deceptive, and whose continuation would be a veritable torment? Is it not the beginning of the possible realisation of the ideas in our minds?...” – 4 August 1876: “Everything you tell me about G.S. [George Sand] is perfectly true. Her defence is that she portrayed a great many women of her time and the phase of rebellion and emancipation of French women. The harm she seemed to cause would have happened without her, and less poetically than with her. We have gained a few fine pages from it, for she leaves behind not a true masterpiece, but a vast number of fine pieces. She was a great writer with very little depth of thought…’ – 22 April 1877. ‘I once advised you to write the Bible for women. Now that I know you better, that is no longer what I would advise. You have a vague, indecisive, poetic, drifting, superstitious, supernatural religion… You do not have hands strong enough to tie the knot between nature and the creature… ’ – 1878: ‘A woman is always at the mercy of others, and she always will be because she lacks her own direction… because she needs a man and, when a man is lacking, God to bring about her providential evolution… ’ – 1878: ‘Divorce must not be open to every whim, but it must, in certain specific cases, be available to whichever of the two is suffering too much in the marriage, in which the innocent truly pays too dearly for the guilty party… ” – June 1884: The friendship I feel for you goes beyond mere sentiment. You are not merely a soul that loves; you are a soul that thinks – which is the rarest of qualities – 1882: Mademoiselle Jeannine, whom you will not recognise at first, is exceptionally tall; her sister is well, as is the baby, and even Madame Dumas, who sends me her warmest regards. She envies you for always being in the countryside. She thinks she loves him! ’ – 1882: ‘I know of no one but you who writes so well. I have, without naming you, of course, shared a few sentences from your latest letter with that honest and excellent Jules Claretie, whom I have authorised to quote them. Do not be surprised to find yourself in print one of these mornings in *Le Temps* or *L’Indépendance belge*…’ – 1883. ‘I have started writing a play, which is exhausting me greatly. The easier the theatre becomes for others, the more difficult it becomes for me, as I do not wish to confine myself to what others say. It is true that they draw heavily on what I myself have already said… ” – 1885: “If there is anything to criticise Hugo for – and there is much to criticise him for – it is certainly not his atheism, since the final words of his will and his philosophy are: ‘I believe in God’. No one was asking him for a profession of faith, which, I well believe, will change nothing in the views of others; but in any case, he did make that profession of faith – what more do you want?... ’ – 28 December 1886. ‘I do not entirely share your views on Renan. He was a priest. That explains a great deal. In the upbringing and education of those destined for the Church, there are mixtures, strange mixtures of mysticism and obscenity, combinations of seraphic ideals and carnal pleasure, of ecstasies and spasms which you could only begin to grasp if you were to read the books on moral theology by St Alphonsus Liguori, for example… ’ – 8 December 1887. ‘Ah! For example, I have a lovely friend here! Yet I declare her to be the most intelligent woman there is, and she believes me capable of some sort of infidelity…’ – 19 August 1889. ‘ The worst that can happen, after all, is to die. It can’t be all that difficult, judging by the number of fools who have died.” – 2 December 1889: “So I am not dead, but I am hardly any better off. For the past three months in particular, I have had to give up all work and almost all correspondence. I have put the play that the French theatre was expecting on hold, and I have shut myself away alone in the countryside…’ – 23 March 1890. ‘Literature turns my stomach, including the books sent to us for the Academy’s competitions, which we are obliged to read and on which we must write reports in the committees appointed for that purpose – what a load of platitudes!…’ – August 1890. “Certainly I am with God, but not when He is given the narrow, inconsistent and ridiculous form of your Catholic Church, which is ignorant and hypocritical. I shall take care of your preface myself.” – 30 October 1890. Whilst proofreading your galley proofs, I find, on page 58, a thought that is unclear—or, at any rate, untrue. Here it is: ‘If there exists anywhere a woman who has remained virtuous without religion, her virtue will have a bitter edge that smacks of regret… Only the Christian woman will remain humble in the fulfilment of her duty…’ Everything I have underlined is untrue. The Bible is full of examples of incomparable virtue, starting with Rebecca…’ – 16 November 1891. I haven’t replied to you because I have nothing to say to you. I’m going through a thoroughly trying time and I detest whingeing. Nothing I could tell you can be put into writing; it can only be spoken by the fireside, or on those walks along the wide avenues… ’ – July 1893: ‘Renan once said to me: “I would like to live forever so that I might always be working.” I feel the same way… I need to be constantly active. When I come up against an obstacle that I cannot overcome straight away, I get exasperated. – 29 December 1894. On his appointment to the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour: ‘You are the only person apart from my daughter to whom I am announcing this. I do not expect you to love me any more for it, nor even that it will please you. To tell the truth, every time I have received an honour of this sort, I have felt a little sad and even somewhat humiliated at the thought that it would raise the opinion people had of me or that they might resent not being in my position…’
Enclosed are
- Princess GHIKA. Autograph signed letter to a supplier. 15 February. 2 pp. in-8
- CALMANN-LÉVY. 2 letters to Alexandre Dumas the Younger concerning the publication of the Princess’s book, with a preface by Dumas the Younger.
- Colette DUMAS. Signed autograph letter to Mr Daussos, 7 February 1907, asking to buy back these letters. And Daussos’s reply, refusing the request. He had received them from the Princess’s heiress ‘to preserve them, if necessary, from any unnecessary prying’ and does not feel entitled to part with them.
- Various documents: correspondence with booksellers and collectors; a handwritten preface for an edition of the letters that never saw the light of day; handwritten notes on Lectoure and Soubiran. Information provided to Jean Hournon by correspondents…
- Henri SALES. Preliminary study on Princess Ghika. Auch, Bouquet, 1968. In-8 booklet, stapled cover. 24 pp.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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