Louis-Hyacinthe Bouilhet (1822-1869) poet and playwright, a friend of Flaubert’s. Rognures. Signed autograph manuscript. 1840-ca. 1862. Notebook in-4°. [4], 63 pp., 81 blank leaves, [3] pp. of table, 1 blank leave. Contemporary half-percal, back in midnight blue chagrin, marbled paper covers.
Louis Bouilhet, a classmate of Flaubert’s at the Collège de Rouen, was a medical intern at the Hôtel-Dieu, which was run by Dr Flaubert, Gustave’s father. He abandoned medicine for a career in literature, enjoying some success, particularly in the theatre (Madame de Montarcy). He possessed ‘a verve, a playful imagination and technical perfection which still captivate curious minds in this work. Bouilhet may be regarded as the forerunner of the Parnassian school’ (Talvart and Place: Bibliographie des auteurs modernes de langue française ‘1801–1927’, II, 142, 3). A loyal friend of Flaubert’s, he was the dedicatee of Madame Bovary; it was he who had drawn Gustave’s attention to the news item that inspired the novel. Flaubert wrote to George Sand on 12 January 1870: ‘In losing my poor Bouilhet, I have lost my midwife, the one who saw into my thoughts more clearly than I did myself’. He served as curator of the Rouen library.
A precious collection of poems, most of which are unpublished, carefully handwritten (with a few corrections and marginal variations); it comprises 50 «”rondeaux – sonnets – triolets – apologues – contes – épigrammes – fantaisies – traductions”. Some of the pieces are dated between 1840 and 1859. A table at the end of the notebook lists the poems.
A monsieur le conseiller Clogenson ; Baiser de muse ; Le déjeuner de Durandeau, triolet ; Rencontre, triolet ; A Th. de Banville, triolet ; Invitation (à M. Courteville), triolet ; L’Œuf Politique, apologue (1840) ; La Chenille et le Papillon, apologue ; Sur la 1ère page d’un album ; A une magnétiseuse ; A un médecin-poète ; Tables tournantes, to a lady ; Compliment, pour une enfant de cinq ans (1845) ; Compliment, deux petits orphelins, à une sœur aînée, qui se marie (1858) ; Au chapeau de Caudron (1845) ; A Blaise ; Timidité (1843) ; Opium, An impromptu poem for my friend Boivin, who wanted to sleep, and to whom I had, for that very purpose, sent my poems (1840) ; Sur le pavé, rondeau, to P.H. ; A une jeune fille, translated from Anacréon (1840) ; impromptu à Melle X** (answer) ; Le Vieux, translated from Anacréon ; Au pamphlétaire du Figaro ; Trente ans ! (to E. Morisse) ; Il fait très noir, rondeau (Rouen, june, 1845) ; On veut savoir, rondeau (1845) ; A une demoiselle d’Estaminet (1844) ; Le Diable est là, (tale) (1840) ; L’Ivrogne, (tale) (Cany, 7ber 1845); Le Retour (romance) (23 août 1841) ; A Mulot (triolet) may 1859 ; A L. B. , [signed] Edw. Shortown , 24 August 1859 [A quatrain by Edouard Courteville to Louis Bouilhet on the occasion of his being awarded the Legion of Honour on 15 August] ; Les cinq doigts ; Souvenir [acrostic for Victor Lepley] ; A Dorylas ; Le debteur [i.e. Le Débiteur] ; Epigramme (trouvée dans les ruines d’Herculanum) In Causidicos et Cinædos [in Latin, obscene parallel between lawyers and prostitutes] ; Chant nuptial, fragment, translated from Catullus ; A Lesbie ; A un poëte qui s’était fait marchand de pierres… ; A Mr Francis de Saint-Lary, et a Mme, le jour de ses noces, rondeau, and Envoi du rondeau ; A une dame, en lui offrant un porte-montre ; Impromptu, pour l’inauguration d’une fontaine (St-André de l’Eure) [1862, the year the Saint-André de l’Eure fountain was unveiled] ; Proportions (in Montmartre cemetery) ; A Champfleury ; A Rosette (1845. Rouen) ; Imité du chinois (Iu-Kiao-Li) ; A Ismerie (Rouen, 1847) ; Traduit de Juvenal ; Menace (1846) ; Au moineau de Mlle M. D. (April 1st, 1857).
Ex-libris G.R. Piclin, in Rouen, and the sale tag for the third George Sand auction (Me Blache, Versailles, Hôtel Rameau, 11 June 1965, lot 108). The manuscripts of Louis Bouilhet, who died aged 47, are extremely rare.
The calligraphy, the meticulous corrections, and the selection and number of poems (50) – ranging from his very early years, in 1840, to his mature years, in 1862, and evoking a broad spectrum of his multifaceted inspiration – suggest that Bouilhet intended to have this notebook published; The title itself, Rognures , suggests a collection of pieces omitted from previous works – a sort of poetic remnant. With the exception of three pieces included in Dernières Chansons (a posthumous collection published in 1872 by his friend Flaubert), Baiser de muse, Sur la première page d’un album et Imité du chinois, as this last poem has many different versions, the poems have remained unpublished. The poet sings the praises of his friends from Rouen (Mulot, to whom Festons et Astragales is dedicated, and Clogenson, whose name appears at the beginning of the collection and to whom he had already dedicated a poem in the same collection in 1859), alludes to Melænis (Paulus the rhetorician and Melænis the debauched woman in “In Causidicos et Cinædos”, Lesbie, and through his translations of Anacreon, Catullus and Juvenal), refers to artistic and literary circles (Durandeau and the ‘Attic graces’ of Louise [Colet], Banville, Courteville, Caudron and his ridiculous hat, Francis de Saint-Lary, Houssaye), includes two political poems (which is rare from Bouilhet), one against constitutional monarchy, L’Œuf politique, the other revolutionary, La Chenille et le Papillon, mocks a doctor-poet—he himself having studied medicine—mocks magnetism and table-turning, ‘that circular nonsense’, attacks the critic Francisque Sarcey (the ‘idiotic articles’ signed by De Suttière in Le Figaro) and Champfleury’s Le Réalisme, a collection ‘read less with the eyes than with the ass’, and presents a veritable aesthetic manifesto in Imité du chinois , which Flaubert would place at the head of Les Dernières Chansons; at last, the poet opens up intimately, something he rarely does in his works (Timidité, written at the age of 21, young man, Trente ans!, age of maturity, and Le retour, in which he reflects on his own death). It is worth noting that the collection concludes with an exceedingly rare libertine poem, Au moineau de Mlle M. D.[To Mademoiselle M. D.’s Sparrow], as Bouilhet’s licentious works are uncommon:
Petit moineau d’humeur traitresse
Qui le matin, de ta maitresse
Viens becqueter la noire tresse,
Et qui, poussant de petits cris,
Vas, plus fier que les colibris
Te percher sur son cli***is !
Tandis que ta tête mutine
De ça, de là, cherche et butine
Parmi la mousse libertine,
Et que l’écho de ta chanson
Fait tressaillir à l’unisson
Tout ce qui dort dans le buisson ! […]
Es-tu celui qu’Amour aida,
Qui fut son cygne, et qui b**da
Entre les cuisses de Léda,
Es-tu le pigeonneau mystique
Dont le baiser diplomatique
Effeuilla la rose mystique ?…
On sait assez que, sous les cieux,
De ces commerces radieux
Sortent des astres ou des dieux,
Et que ce sont de grandes fêtes
Quand les religions sont faites
De ces amours avec des bêtes !
[Si tu n’es pas un Dieu, petit moineau,]
Nous t’enfermerons, jour et nuit,
Dans quelque sinistre réduit,
Où tu devras, pour tout pécule,
Sur le perchoir où l’on t’accule,
Frotter ton engin ridicule ! […]
Tant pis pour toi, Dieu sans vergogne,
Ce temps qui forge, brasse et cogne,
Juge des gens, sur leur besogne !
Ce sera justice, après tout :
Le seul Dieu que le monde absout,
Ô moineau, c’est le Dieu qui fout !…
As in Festons et Astragales and Les Dernières Chansons, ‘we find small canvases painted with masterful brushwork, in which line and colour rival one another in accuracy and precision. […] Alongside these delightful little canvases, Louis Bouilhet delights in painting humorous scenes for us. […] A true forerunner of the Parnassian movement, Louis Bouilhet is constantly concerned with the purity of form, with ‘perfection’” (Gérard Walch, Anthologie des poètes français contemporains, 1924). The pieces brought together in Rognures are compositions of high quality to which Flaubert’s praise of his friend’s poetry in the preface to Dernières Chansons applies perfectly: Bouilhet “excelled at epigrams, quatrains, acrostics, rondeaux, rhyming couplets and other “light-hearted pieces” composed for amusement, as if in revelry. […] he had a gift for amusement – a rare quality in a poet. […] he was prolific and ingenious. […] his style is entirely his own, free from any school’s bias, without a quest for effect, supple and vehement, rich and vivid, always musical. Even the humblest of his pieces is carefully crafted. He has mastered the art of enjambment, interlacing, rhyme and all the secrets of metre; thus his work teems with fine verses, those verses that flow naturally and are effective wherever they appear.”
Due to the war with Prussia, the author of Madame Bovary did not have published Les Dernières Chansons (a posthumous collection) until 1872, by Michel Lévy.
Baiser de muse and Sur la première page d’un album are faithful to the manuscript, despite a few variations in punctuation; however, Imité du chinois contains numerous variations, with the final version probably copied out by Bouilhet.
Flaubert had this collection in his possession, as his correspondence shows:
Bouilhet died on 18 July 1869. On the 22nd, Flaubert wrote to Feydeau: ‘I have today brought home all our friend’s papers, and nothing will be lost’ (Flaubert, Correspondence, Bibl. de la Pléiade, IV, p. 70); the following day, he wrote to Maxime Du Camp: ‘Yesterday I went to Rouen to collect all his papers’, and specified that, according to his will, ‘all his books and papers belong to Philippe [Leparfait, Bouilhet’s adopted son]. He [Bouilhet] instructed him to consult four friends to decide what should be done with his unpublished works: myself, d’Osmoy, you and Caudron. He leaves behind an excellent volume of poetry, […] ’ (p. 73), ‘enough to make a very fine volume of verse’ (to Agénor Bardoux, 26 July, p. 76). Furthermore, he wrote to Jules Duplan on the 29th: ‘I am the one who possesses all his papers; there remains a very fine volume of verse by him, which I intend to publish […] ’ (p. 78), ‘Around January, I shall publish a volume of his poems, previously unpublished and very fine’ (to Princess Mathilde, 30 July 1869, p. 79). To this end, and to honour his friend’s wishes, Flaubert sent the notebooks of poems to Maxime Du Camp,
who replied to him on 4 April 1870: ‘I spent the day going through Bouilhet’s notebooks. […] In Rognures I had noted: Rosette and Imité du chinois, which have been copied into the final notebook. In the other notebooks, nothing; in the quatrains, nothing. I think you would do well to mention the piece Imité du chinois in the biographical note; it sums up all of Bouilhet’s views” (p. 1012). Flaubert began the collection with Imité du chinois and did not include Rosette from our collection, which remained unpublished, as the poem of the same name in Dernières chansons is entirely different. He retrieved the notebooks and lent them to Alfred Guérard, another close friend of Bouilhet’s, and finally got them back in March 1872: ‘Guérard has not yet returned the notebooks to me, which I find a little impertinent. Du Camp […] returned them to me after two days” (Letter to Philippe Leparfait, 19 March 1872, p. 497), “Guérard has sent the notebooks back to me” (to the same, 20 March 1872, p. 498). Could he subsequently have given Rognures to George Sand, his dearest friend and confidante (label from the third George Sand auction in 1965)?
We do indeed know that the good lady of Nohant was fond of Louis Bouilhet: ‘He was no second-rate figure, that one. […] I can see now why he died so young; he died from having lived too much in the realm of the mind. […] His premature death is a great loss to art. In ten years’ time, there won’t be a single poet left.” (Letter from George Sand to Flaubert, Nohant, 28 January 1872, Correspondance, XXII, p. 722).
An extremely rare manuscript with an exceptional provenance.
4 800 €