Mémoires d'outre-tombe : "Tout à vous du fond de ma tombe"

Rare and sought-after first edition, first issue, with exceptionally added plates from the first illustrated edition, publisher that same year. 34 full-page engravings after Demoraine, Gagnier, Staal and engraved by F. Delannoy.

Includes the subscribers' list and the foreword, lacking in the second issue when the remainder of this edition was sold to another publisher, Dion-Lambert. It also features the pagination error in volume two: page 164 instead of 364. With a letter by the author, bearing his autograph signature, written and dated 14 April 1839, in the hand of his secretary. One page written in black ink on a leaf. Slightly darkened at the upper edge, with occasional foxing, and the usual folds from postal handling.

With an exceptional, prophetic and macabre letter by François-René de Chateaubriand: "mais moi je suis mort, absolument mort et s'il me fallait écrire un mot dans un journal, j'aimerais mieux être enseveli à mille pieds sous terre." ["but I am dead, utterly dead, and if I were required to write a single word in a newspaper, I would rather be buried a thousand feet underground."]

Signed with the author’s faltering hand, this apparently unpublished letter was penned by his secretary: "Vous connaissez la main de [Hyacinthe] Pilorge que j'employe pour remplacer la mienne souffrante de la goutte" ["You will recognise the hand of [Hyacinthe] Pilorge, whom I employ to replace my own, suffering from gout,"] the author explains in the introduction to the letter.

Black half-morocco bindings, flat spines with double gilt fillets and double blind-stamped compartments, black paper boards, slight superficial rubbing to some boards, marbled paper pastedowns and endpapers, sprinkled edges; contemporary bindings. Sparse foxing.

"Vous connaissez la main de Pilorge que j'employe pour remplacer la mienne souffrante de la goutte. Je vais lire avec un plaisir extrême vos souvenirs […] mais moi je suis mort, absolument mort et s'il me fallait écrire un mot dans un journal, j'aimerais mieux être enseveli à mille pieds sous terre. J'en ai fini avec la vie ; il me serait bien doux de ressusciter pour vous être utile […] Soyez bien sûr que personne ne prendra un intérêt plus réel et une part plus vive que moi à vos succès. 

Tout à vous du fond de ma tombe

Chateaubriand

le 14 avril 1839 "

["You will recognise the hand of Pilorge, whom I employ to replace my own, suffering from gout. I shall read your recollections with the greatest pleasure […] but as for me, I am dead, utterly dead, and if I were required to write a single word in a paper, I would sooner be buried a thousand feet underground. I am done with life; it would be a sweet thing indeed to rise again, if only to be of some use to you […] Rest assured that no one will take a more genuine interest nor share more wholeheartedly in your success than I shall.
Entirely yours, from the depths of my grave,
Chateaubriand
14 April 1839 "]

 

This letter was dictated by the author to his secretary, who provided invaluable assistance in the very preparation of the Mémoires: "Having remained in Chateaubriand’s service for twenty-five years, Hyacinthe Pilorge was the principal hand behind the transcription of the Mémoires d'outre-tombe." His task was to make a legible copy of Chateaubriand's texts, progressively transcribing everything his master wrote or dictated. Chateaubriand revised and corrected from these copies, and when the newly written pages became excessively amended, Pilorge would write another new copy. Pilorge was tasked in 1840 of transcribing the first complete copy of the Mémoires d'outre-tombe. For many years, this manuscript served as the reference text. It comprised over four thousand pages, assembled by quires and kept in cardboard folders, with each leaf designed to be corrected, moved, or replaced at will. Once this monumental task was completed (in 1841), Chateaubriand set his work aside for some time. Yet, thanks to its highly adaptable structure, the Mémoires d'outre-tombe continue to stand as a living, evolving work - a perpetual work in progress." (Bibliothèque nationale de France)

The recipient of the letter is the author of Souvenirs, which Chateaubriand here declines to promote. The writer speaks as though from beyond the grave, almost ten years before his actual death: “as for me, I am dead, utterly dead, and if I were required to write a single word in a paper, I would sooner be buried a thousand feet underground. I am done with life; it would be a sweet thing indeed to rise again, if only to be of some use to you”. These masterful lines carry the humour so often encountered in the pages of the Mémoires, which André Lebois described as “the sarcastic expression of the derision cast upon our actions by the certainty of death […] Humour is a form of armour, the final refuge of the sensitive, the most vulnerable, against the anguish of living. René used it as he did all things: superbly” (André Lebois, L’Humour dans les Mémoires d’outre-tombe).

The dismissed  correspondent may well have been the Comte de Marcellus, a confidant of the writer who had indeed published his significant Souvenirs d'Orient that same year. Their diplomatic careers had previously crossed in Rome in 1822, where the Comte had loyally served Chateaubriand as his embassy secretary, later maintaining "regular contact in Paris, followed by a long and intimate correspondence," as the Count himself would recall. In his Souvenirs, the philhellene renowned for his role in bringing the Venus de Milo to France, frequently refers to the master's works: "To enjoy this pilgrimage once more […] I prefer to reread the descriptions of M. de Chateaubriand rather than my own notes. […] If my account appears inaccurate or incomplete, the Itinéraire is there to correct and complete all.” It is also worth noting that, unlike Chateaubriand, weighed down by illness and entirely absorbed in the writing of his great work, the Comte de Marcellus would gladly engage in the commentary of his friend’s œuvre. He later published a volume-by-volume commentary on the Mémoires d'outre-tombe, entitled Chateaubriand et son temps (Paris, Michel Lévy, 1859).

A rare first issue of one of the most important texts in French literature, finely bound in elegant contemporary bindings. With the most pertinent of epistolary additions, dictated by Chateaubriand "from the depths of [his] grave" and written in the very hand that contributed to the creation of his eponymous Mémoires.