BARBEY D'AUREVILLY (Jules)
Les Bas-bleus. Paris, Victor Palmé; Bruxelles, G. Lebrocquy, 1878. In-12, midnight-blue, Jansenist morocco, gilt title on spine, interior lace, gilt edges on witnesses, cover and spine in slipcase (Ed. Klein).
First edition of this violent critique of women of letters, referred to in the 19th century as bas-bleus.
Striking autograph letter from Barbey d'Aurevilly, in the form of a quatrain, on the title page:
À Saint-Maur
Here! Take... No! Don't take all those bas-
-bleus, without buttocks, who make a literary cuckold of this century.
And make fun, my dear Saint-Maur, of these drôlesses, believing themselves to be geniuses and having no cu.
J. B. d'A.
It was Flavie de Glatigny, his relative, who introduced the poet Hector de Saint-Maur (1808-1879) to Barbey: the two men became fast friends and kept up an extensive correspondence. Barbey, who painted a portrait of his friend in Les Poètes (1893, pp. 288-305), described him as the truest of poets as he was the truest of men.
The dispatch is not recorded by Bonnefon, Les Dédicaces à la main de M. J. Barbey d'Aurevilly.
Barbey's quatrain is quoted in Les oeuvres romanesques (La Pléiade edition, II, 1964, p. 1599). It has been transcribed and corrected by a foreign hand on a leaflet mounted at the head of the volume.
Attached to the copy is an autograph letter signed by Barbey d'Aurevilly to M. Léopold Frinzine, bibliothèque des Deux-Mondes, Paris (one page in-12, envelope preserved); Barbey recommends to his correspondent: M. Victor Lalotte, un de mes amis. He is the one who bought my Bas-Bleus, part of the five volumes sold to Amyot. He knows all about my business. Unite your two wisdoms and draw the consequences of my folly. In 1885, the publisher Frinzine resumed the interrupted publication of Les oeuvres et les Hommes.
From the libraries of Jules Le Roy, J. S. Marchand (1936, no. 70), and comte de Hanot d'Octeville (Maurice d'Hartoy).
