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49 - [MANUSCRIT] - [BERTEAUX, Angèle (épouse Guiard)] "Souvenirs …
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Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
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[MANUSCRIT] - [BERTEAUX, Angèle (épouse Guiard)] "Souvenirs of a woman from 1900 to 1920". Chatou - Paris - Basque Country, 1900-1920. In French, handwritten in ink on paper. Small in-4 (175 x 225 mm), contemporary binding, green half-percaline with corners (binding by Marrim Pouey in Pau). Covered boards with speckled paper, smooth spine, tinted edges. Booklet of 92 handwritten leaves. Binding worn but solid, small loss at lower headpiece. Good condition inside. Manuscript written in one hand in black or blue ink in a regular and neat handwriting. Numerous autograph corrections and erasures, interlinear additions attesting to a careful editorial process. Autobiographical manuscript written in the first person by [Angèle] Berteaux (1878-1937), daughter of Maurice Berteaux (1852-1911), politician of the Third Republic, several times Member of Parliament for Yvelines and Minister of War. This is probably a preparatory manuscript for a personal memoir, with no known record of publication. The development is structured chronologically into several major autobiographical sequences. The first years of the century - Travels and bourgeois youth. At the turn of 1900, Angèle Berteaux, a young woman of 22 from a large Republican family, discovered the world in the elegance and freedom still allowed to the upper middle classes of the Belle Époque. Just married to Maxime Guiard (1874-1950), a stockbroker, she travelled to Italy and Switzerland. In Bellagio, she described the shores of Lake Como as a paradise of light: flower-filled terraces, palm trees, silver reflections on the water, walks through gardens and hotels. She marvelled at the crossing of the Gotthard Pass. In Interlaken, she discovered the majesty of the Alps, the gentleness of the valleys and the serenity of the holiday resorts. These pages, written with a vibrant pen, combine wonder and introspection: the beauty of the landscapes already awakened in Angèle a deep sense of the fragility of happiness and the passage of time. Domestic life and the first cracks. Back in Chatou, then in Paris, she was fully immersed in the life of the upper middle class Republicans. Her father, Maurice Berteaux, MP for Yvelines, played an important role in the political and military life of the Third Republic. She was surrounded by cultured, republican and patriotic circles. But her married life was slowly deteriorating. The marriage she thought was based on trust and esteem became weighed down by silences, disagreements and estrangements. Around 1913, the couple decided to break up. Angèle initiated separation proceedings, soon followed by a divorce - an act that was still frowned upon in the society of the time. She describes the court proceedings, the role of the presiding judge, the negotiations over custody of the children, the humiliations mixed with relief. These pages, imbued with painful lucidity, paint a rare portrait of the destiny of bourgeois women under the Third Republic. 1911 - The tragic death of Maurice Berteaux One of the most memorable moments in his life was the death of his father on 21 May 1911 at the Issy-les-Moulineaux airshow. The aviator Emile Train lost control of his aircraft and crashed into the VIPs present. Maurice Berteaux, then Minister for War, was killed instantly. In a sober and vibrant style, Angèle recalls the shock of the announcement, the scene at the first-aid post, the silent dignity before the coffin on display at the Ministry, and then the state funeral, shrouded in intense public emotion. This bereavement marked a decisive break in her life. She saw in it the end of an era - that of republican confidence before the storm of 1914. After a break in her writing between 1913 and 1920, Angèle resumed her notebook in September 1920 with a more assertive style and a more mature view of her last years. She was now 40 years old. It was a retrospective account written after the war. 1914 - The war and the exodus When war broke out on 2 August 1914, Angèle was in Paris. Mobilisation transformed the city into a tumult of anxiety and fervour. Faced with the enemy advance, she joined her family in the South-West: Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pau, Béarn. The exodus, the crowded railway stations, the convoys of soldiers, the fear of news from the front - all this fills her pages with poignant tension. Her husband, who had been mobilised, remained distant; leave was rare, letters colder than before. Angèle's emotional isolation increases as the war drags on. She describes life at the back: the alerts, the bombing of Paris, the food shortages, the women's work to replace the absent men, and above all the waiting, the endless suspension of mothers' and wives' time. Her lines reveal the inner transformation of a generation of women: from submissive wives to guardians of the home and, soon, of memory. 1918-1920 - The end of the war, loneliness and resilience. When the war ended, Angèle spoke of neither triumph nor euphoria. She spoke of silence, moral fatigue, broken families and lost promises. The widow of a father, separated from a husband, she strives to rebuild a life based on dignity, bringing up children and meditating on values. Her final pages are a moral reflection: on motherhood as a supreme duty, on sacrifice, forgiveness, simple faith and the moral rigour inherited from her republican background. She ponders the place of women in the new world born of war, their role in society, and the difficulty of returning to the ordinary course of life after so much upheaval. Epilogue. Thus ends the thread of Angèle Tissier-Berteaux's recollections, around 1920. Her manuscript, written in a sure hand and enriched with erasures and corrections, bears witness to thoughtful work, almost to a desire for publication that never came to fruition. More than a personal memoir, it is a feminine chronicle of bourgeois France between 1900 and 1920, a mirror through which the social, political and domestic upheavals of a generation can be read. This document is of major historical interest in several areas: In the political sphere on the one hand, direct testimony to the accidental death of a minister in office, the ruling circles of the Illème république, and the political and military networks. A historical interest in the Great War from a woman's point of view, testimony from "behind the scenes" on mobilisation, bombing, exodus, permissons and privations. An interest in social history and gender, with a detailed analysis of divorce at the time, child custody, the social solitude of separated women, and bourgeois moral standards; A cultural interest: introspective feminine writing, representative of the private memories of the early twentieth century. This manuscript therefore appears to be unpublished, and has certainly remained within the family circle. It is a private document of rare emotional and historical density. It is of interest in terms of social history and gender, with a detailed analysis of divorce at the time, child custody, the social solitude of separated women, and bourgeois moral standards; A cultural interest: introspective feminine writing, representative of the private memories of the early twentieth century. This manuscript therefore appears to be unpublished, and has certainly remained within the family circle. It is a private document of rare emotional and historical density.
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About the sale Prestige sale - Antiquarian and collectible books
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Auction time 06/15/2026 at 2:00 PM
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