[Louis Gabriel Bourdon]. Le Parc au cerf, ou l’Origine de l’affreux déficit. Paris, no name, l’an deuxième de la liberté 1790. In-8°. 187 pp. Frontispiece and 3 hors-texte engraved plates. [Preceded by :] [Antoine Mongez]. Vie privée du Cardinal Dubois, Premier Ministre, Archevêque de Cambrai, &c. A Londres, no name, 1789. In-8°. 298 pp. [the first 6 in Roman numerals]. Fawn half-sheepskin with corners, flat spines decorated with gilded fillets, green morocco label (contemporary binding).
Le Parc au cerf. Rare, violent pamphlet against Louis XV and La Pompadour, with considerations on the financial cost of Ancien Régime debauchery. Second edition, revised, corrected and considerably enlarged, published the same year as the original. The Parc aux cerfs was an area of the Château de Versailles where, according to popular legend, the Marquise de Pompadour kept young women to satisfy the concupiscence of King Louis XV. Over time, the expression Parc-aux-cerfs became synonymous with a place of debauchery. Anti-royalist propaganda used this popular rumor to portray Louis XV as a depraved sovereign, and this book is a prime example. Our copy is complete with the frontispiece, portraits of the Duchesse de Châteauroux and Mme de Pompadour,
and the original erotic plate, “often missing”, says Gay, depicting banker Peixotte with Mlle Dervieux and her famous peacock feathers.
Complete, p. 127 erroneously bound after p. 122. Small brown stain on Peixotte plate, but no damage to the drawing.
Cohen, 182 et Gay, V, 429 [quote only the original edition] ; Pia, Les Livres de l’Enfer, 1079-1080 [« ouvrage rare »].
Vie privée du Cardinal Dubois. First edition. Mongez (1747-1835), an archaeologist and member of the Académie des Inscriptions, contributed the Dictionnaire des Antiquités to Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie méthodique. He rallied to the French Revolution, espousing its most extreme views. In 1792, he was entrusted with the administration of coins, a post he held under various governments.
A fanciful and scandalous biography of the Regent’s damned soul, purporting to come from a manuscript left by Dubois’ secretary. Cardinal Dubois was credited with finding the Regent mistresses to his liking, hence Roger Peyrefitte’s aphorism on his elevation to the cardinalate: “le pape est un fin cuisinier qui sait faire d’un maquereau un rouget”. “Ouvrage spirituel, très curieux et peu commun” (Gay). The various in-12 editions do not seem to contain the same text, or at least the entire text of the in-8° of 1789. Without the portrait that sometimes enriches the copy.
Not in Barbier ; Gay, III, 1351 ; Cioranescu, 45974.
Rubbing to covers, one spine fragile, old library label glued to spine. Modest binding in the spirit of the times.
750 €