Mémoires et Voyages

2 volumes 8vo, brown Russian half-calf, smooth spine, gilt monogram on the spine.

206 x 128 mm.

« Very rare first edition » (Clouzot).

Undoubtedly one of the most interesting writings of Astolphe de Custine and the most difficult to obtain.

« La Russie en 1839 », Custine’s major work was published 13 years after his « Mémoires et Voyages ». If it’s not a common book one can easily find it. « Le Monde comme il est », Custine’s love novel was published in 1835 at 550 copies and is also less rare.

« Astolphe de Custine spent a lonely childhood at the family castle of Fervaques, in Calvados. His mother was once the mistress of Chateaubriand, whose influence made itself felt on the young man.

Very early on, he begins to travel. From 1811 to 1822, he travelled in various countries of Europe, which provided him with the material for «Memoirs and Travels or Letters written at different times during races in Switzerland», Calabria, England and Scotland (1830)».

His correspondence with the Marquis de La Grange, translator of Jean-Paul Richter, testifies that Custine was one of the introducers of German romanticism in France. Kept deliberately out of society by his openly homosexual nature (moral order reigns under Charles X), he tries to gain favour by his own talent.

Custine, this «charlus of romanticism», is much more than a scandalous figure in the literary and social history of the last century. In the morality scandal of 1824 which caused him to be excluded from the society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the melancholy teenager found paradoxically his release and the opportunity to finally be what he was. His remarkable analytic gifts, which he had until then exercised in vain on his own «case», he turned them to others and became a particularly lucid judge of his time and of his contemporaries. His insight and independence of judgment are also great in the literary field, as shown by the «Memoirs». Custine was one of the first to give their true place to Balzac and Stendhal, and one of his last letters was to salute «Les Fleurs du mal» by Baudelaire.

« Mémoires et Voyages » were written in the form of letters : the first entitled « Journal adressé à l’ami que j’aurai » was dated from “Basel, May 29th, 1811”. The last letter written in England bears the mention « Cheltenham, September 20th, 1828 ».

The following extract from the letter entitled « Shrewsbury, September 22^nd, 1822 » perfectly illustrates Custine’s style and analytical mind.

« We had this morning for travel companion, a child of fifteen days, carried in the arms of his mother. This poor woman, barely out of her diapers, had undertaken, at the risk of her life, a tiring journey to attend her father’s funeral. The respect of the English for their dead parens is very touching and would be more so if they were more tender to the living. But here, the family feelings are concentrated in conjugal love and respect for the tomb. In general, the English are too calculating to be sensitive; they are passionate or indifferent. Society, in them, is based only on marriage, and brothers, children, parens occupy very little place in their affections: interest, intrigue, jealousy divide their families more than ours, because money is more valuable to them than it is to us. The pursuit of inheritances, which, fortunately in France, occupies very few people, is a state, in England, where this vile bait is offered to greed by the extreme freedom that the laws grant to testators!

But let’s get back to my funeral story. We keep here the dead in their homes for a long time, and we hate as an ungodly use, the eagerness that we put in France to bury the bodies.

Despite the cold, despite the rain that strongly whipped our face, despite its extreme weakness, the poor birthing woman who traveled with us, could not stay in the car. The English have an inexplicable need to breathe freely the air so unpleasant of their country. This young mother, without uttering a complaint, fed her newborn at the top of the moving pyramid that carried us away: one would hardly look for such an example of resignation outside this country, because patience is one of the great virtues of the English. I have noticed that the English render to women, even the most common ones, care, respects which, without having the brightness of our feeble gallantry, seem to me preferable to these affected graces, because they resemble the expression of real feelings ».

One of the most attractive copies listed bound in its elegant contemporary binding with the monogram of Catherine Moncada, Princess of Materna (1795-1878).

The volume comes from Alphonse de Bauffremont’s library (1792-1860). Duc of Bauffremont, prince of Bauffremont, Pair of France, Prince of Carency, Knight of Saint-Louis. He was created a count by Napoleon and became aide-de-camp to Murat. He distinguished himself at the Battle of the Moskowa, as well as in the campaign of Saxony in 1813. During the Hundred Days, he was commissioned by Murat to bring confidential dispatches to Napoleon. As he returned to Italy, the Austrian police arrested him and sent him to Paris. Later he took some time from service in the Russian army. A decree of 26 January 1852 called him to sit in the Senate. He voted for the so-called law of general security. He married in 1822 Catherine Moncada, princess of Materna, born in 1795 and died in 1878, daughter of Jean Louis Moncada, prince of Paterno and Jeanne des Baux.

From Louis de Sadeleer’s library, with ex-libris.