Les Convictions

First edition.

Half brown-red chagrin binding, brown marbled paper sides, spine with four raised bands, blind-tooled panels between the bands, gilt author and title, green marbled paper doublures. Binding rubbed, with surface losses and abrasions, headcap torn away, spine sunned, leaves browned at the margins, occasional foxing.

Valuable autograph inscription signed by Maxime Du Camp to Charles de La Rounat on the half-title: "à Charles de la Rounat son tout dévoué Maxime Du Camp".

Long, rancorous manuscript note, dated October 1871 and signed C. de la Rounat, on a front free endpaper.

Some thirteen years after receiving this work as a gift from its author, Charles de La Rounat vents his full spleen against Maxime Du Camp in a text inscribed in ink on the front flyleaf. The playwright, journalist, and former director of the Théâtre de l'Odéon recalls the circumstances in which his former friend allegedly displayed political opportunism. "Réactionnaire" before 1848, then a Bonapartist in 1851, and a republican by spite thereafter, he was ultimately denied a Senate seat because of the war of 1870. It should be noted, in support of La Rounat's remarks, that a few years after this accusation, Maxime Du Camp would excoriate the Commune in a book that earned him a seat at the Académie française in 1880. Seen in this light, as recounted by Charles de La Rounat, the title of this collection appears particularly provocative.

This biting text sums up Maxime Du Camp's shifting "convictions" and allows Charles de La Rounat to settle a score over a personal injustice he believed he had suffered at his hands. From 1855, Du Camp regularly published La Rounat's articles in his Revue de Paris, but once his friend began contributing to the French government's official newspaper, the Moniteur universel, Du Camp refused to publish him in the review any longer.

As this last anecdote reported by La Rounat suggests, his resentment likely stemmed as much from a personal blow to his career as from genuine political grievances. Oscillating between republican enthusiasm and devotion to imperial power, Maxime Du Camp above all reflects the torments of nineteenth-century men of letters amid the political upheavals of the age.

An amusing diatribe against Maxime Du Camp's political and professional career, and a delightful testimony to the discord between two friends and literary collaborators, rooted in Charles de La Rounat's disapproval of what he saw as Maxime Du Camp's political opportunism.