Leon Gambetta's crisis

Leon Gambetta—‘ the grand orateur et homme d’Etat’.

So reads the printed label stuck on the back of this carte de visite by a French dealer sometime early in the twentieth century. It is indeed a ‘ curieuse piece ‘, as the dealer avers. Gambetta has addressed in pencil, above his printed name, the following remark to an unidentified friend or colleague:

‘ Le crise dures toujours, impossible de mettre le nez dehors…’
(The crisis is lasting for ages, impossible to stick ones nose outside…)

Historians might debate what crisis Gambetta is referring to. There were doubtless several in the tempestuous political career of one of France’s greatest heroes. But the date of 12th December that Gambetta adds at the end of his message might offer a clue. In Paris from 23rd November to 15th December 1877 the improbably named President McMahon

A Bibliomaniac of the Boulevards 2

Jules Bollly (merci)

The five volume  auction catalogue of Boulard's vast collection showed up in auction at Christies New York in 2005. It made $5750. It does not appear to have ever left the book trade - possibly book dealers are almost the only collectors for them - and the exact same set is now on sale online at $20000. Christie's catalogue entry is below. It should be noted that Boulard was also a distinguished translator - the French Wikipedia list many of his  works (they put the size of his book collection at a mere 500,000.) He translated works from English (including much Dr. Johnson) Italian, German and Latin and also translated from French into German. During the revolutionary period publisher's note him as 'Citoyen Boulard.' Lawrence S. Thompson in his Notes on Bibliokleptomania, without much evidence, writes that Boulard "...had 'itchy fingers' whenever he saw a volume that could not be bought and excited the acquisitive instincts in him." Another interesting note of Thompson's is that '…when the collection was auctioned off in 1828-1833, it played havoc with the Paris market.' One wonders how long it took to recover and if such a thing could happen again in these less resilient times (for books) - if another Boulard style estate emerged out of Los Angeles or London with half a million good books the effect could be seismic…especially if, as happens, yet another collection emerged shortly after.   Nodier (that man again - note his mention of underbidding) gives this eyewitness account of the perils of bibliomania:

Boulard was once a scrupulous and fastidious bibliophile, before he amassed in his six-story house 600,000 volumes of every possible format, piled like the stones in Cyclopean walls! I remember that I was going about with him one day among these insecure obelisks (which had not been stabilised by our modern architectural science), when I chanced to ask with some curiosity after a certain item — a unique copy -which I had let go to him in a celebrated sale. M. Boulard looked at me fixedly, with that gracious and humorous air of good-fellowship which was characteristic of him, and, rapping with his gold-headed cane on one of the huge stacks (rudis indigestaque moles) , then on a second and third, said, "It's there — or there — or there." I shuddered to think that the unfortunate booklet might perhaps have disappeared for all time beneath 18,000 folios; but my concern did not make me forget my own safety. The gigantic stacks, their uncertain equilibrium shaken by the tappings of M. Boulard's cane, were swaying threateningly on their bases, the summits vibrating like the pinnacles of a Gothic cathedral at the sound of the bells or the impact of a storm. Dragging M. Boulard with me, I fled before Ossa could collapse upon Pelion. Even today, when I think how near I came to receiving the whole series of the Hollandist publications on my head from a height of twenty feet, I cannot recall the danger I was in without pious horror. It would be an abuse of the word to apply the name "library" to menacing mountains of books which have to be attacked with a miner's pick and held in place by stanchions!

Christies catalogue entry NY 2005:

BOULARD, Antoine-Marie-Henri (1754-1826) -- Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque... Paris: Gaudefroy & Bleuet et al., 19 May 1828-1833.

Five volumes in three, 8o (199 x 123 mm). Early 20th-century half dark-red morocco (light rubbing to edges).

The extraordinary sale catalogue of an extraordinary library, and according to Hofer the largest library ever formed by an individual. At his death, he owned more than 300,000 volumes "of unequal value, but including veritable curiosities" (DBF). The dealers who organized the auction were faced with an almost impossible task; many volumes were simply discarded; "we are told that a hundred and fifty thousand volumes were set aside as not worth listing separately and were sold in bundles of thirty and forty books... Four volumes (of the Boulard Catalogue) contain French books, and a fifth contains books in other languages. The fact that the first volume lists some thirty thousand volumes of theology, law and science gives an idea of the collection" (Taylor). Richard Heber bought all the historical books. The five sales contained 17,000 lots, but many of these consisted of up to ten or twelve titles, all individually listed. The sales were catalogued by: L.F.A. Gaudefroy, J.A. Bleuet and J.F. Boisverd. The dispersal took 248 days. "Boulard's library was intended to be sold in 5 parts; part 5 sold a few months after part 1, beginning in November 1828, part 2 was sold in 1829, and part 3 in 1830; part 3 combines the losts originally intended to form parts 3 and 4 of the sale, and although a catalogue labeled 'part 4' was issued in 1833 it is in fact a supplement to the main series" (North). Boulard, Notaire au Châtelet, had a considerable reputation as author and collector under the Ancien Régime, but, for all his wealth, was not victimized during the Revolution, becoming "maire" of the XIth Arrondissement, and deputy under Napoleon. He was the literary executor of La Harpe, and made numerous translations from the English and German, being an excellent linguist.

This is the end of Jot's excursion into this not so gentle madness. The last word is with the amazing Charles Nodier (who may, or may not, have  killed a man for outbidding him at auction during one of his trips to Spain.)

The bibliophile appreciates the book; the bibliomaniac weighs or measures it. The bibliophile works with a magnifying glass, the bibliomaniac with a measuring-stick.

Some are known to compute the growth of their libraries in square metres. The harmless, deliciously enjoyable fever of the bibliophile becomes, in the bibliomaniac, an acute malady bordering on delirium. Once it has reached that fatal stage of paroxysm it loses all contact with the intelligence and resembles any other mania.

A Bibliomaniac of the Boulevards 1

Max Sander's article Bibliomania, freely available from Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons, yielded the gripping tale of the murderous monk/ bookseller Don Vincente (see recent jots) . He talks of other crazed collectors including the English bibliomaniac Richard Heber who filled 8 houses with books, but for all his acquisitiveness was a discerning collector. The sale of his books took 184 days. The following collector, Boulard, was very much of a quantity man and may have accumulated more books than any individual in the history of the world - 800,000 by some accounts and half that by others… the sale of his books took 248 days.150,000 were sold as scrap. Sander writes:

The most amusing [case] has to do with the Frenchman, Antoine Marie Henri Boulard, who lived in Paris from 1754 to 1825. Here also, as in the Affaire Libri, we have a youthful prodigy of erudition and zeal for learning, for Boulard was gifted enough to be able to take over his father's law office when he was only eighteen. In 1803 he was elected a member of the Corps Legislatif, published works on history and linguistics, and since he was a rich man, established a school for teaching drawing to poor children. His passion for wild book buying made him

Hope Mirrlees 'Paris' 1919

Hope Mirrlees. Paris. (Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, Richmond 1919-1920)

The rediscovery of the Scottish writer Hope Mirrlees (1887 – 1978) may be principally due to the merits of her one masterpiece, the long poem Paris, which the Woolfs published in 1920. Only 175 copies of the 600 line poem were produced, which means that it now belongs with Pound’s early privately printed work as a true rara avis of modernism. In 2011 a dealer had a superb copy for $8,000 which has now sold. Predictably, critics today use the modish term 'psychogeographical' to describe the poem, which is a daring, impressionistic tour in French and English through the French capital and has been described as the 'missing link between French avant-garde poetry and The Waste Land.' The stylistic parallels are obvious, and the influences of Pound and other Imagists, are noticeable too:-

…Gambetta 
A red stud in the button-hole of his frock-coat
The obscene conjugal tutoiment
Mais, c’est logique
The Esprit de Francais is leaning over him
Whispering…

…Cloacae
Hot indiarubber
Poudre de riz
Algerian tobacco

Monsieur Jourdain in the blue and red of the Zouaves
Is premier danseur in the Ballet Turque
‘Ya bon
Mama mouchi…

And so on. Paris is undoubtedly a brilliant debut and deserved the care and attention that the Woolfs devoted to it. The paper for the covers, for instance, is the same paper used as endpapers on the first edition of Jacob’s Room. Virginia Woolf hand-set the proofs herself and hand-corrected the final copies. From her diaries it would seem that the novelist /publisher regarded her brilliant, multi-lingual, young protégé, whose family fortune derived from diesel and sugar, with a mixture of admiration and disdain. She was:

...a very self-conscious, willful, prickly and perverse young woman, rather conspicuously well-dressed and pretty, with a view of her own about books and style, an aristocratic and conservative tendency in opinion & a corresponding taste for the beautiful & elaborate in literature.


Oddly, Eliot himself has little or anything to say of Paris, at least in his published letters of the period, although he came to know Mirrlees well in later years and indeed wrote portions of The Four Quartets at her home at Shamley Green, Surrey.

Ponge's Museum of Street Cries

Found - an American press cutting from Adams County News April 1914:

Armed with a recording gramophone, M. Ponge, a schoolmaster in Paris, spends his leisure hours lying in wait for street cries in populous quarters. He is preparing a museum of speech, which he will leave behind him for the instruction of future ages. When he hears the Parisian equivalent of 'Milk' or muffin man, he pounces on them and compels them to sing or ring bells into his receiver. He has already collected most of the well-known street cries.

The story appeared in British and American newspapers between 1911 and 1914 in various forms, The Daily Telegraph's Paris correspondent even specifying that he had recorded the Parisian flower men selling mimosas and 'the shrill  tenor who pieces together again "marble alabaster and porcelain."' One commentator noted '…well every man to his humour; but we are not visiting any museums to hear street cries, thank you.'

Spokane Daily Chronicle Nov 4 1911 reports:

The intention is to obtain registers of all forms of speech in France including the various patois of different regions, villages and cities, and also popular songs and street cries. Among other things registered by M.Ponge are songs of children dancing in circles and the cries of sellers of fish and vegetables, together with the talk going on between sellers and buyers. The museum is to have a scientific character, since microphotographs of the impressions made by the voice in its various forms are to be preserved, and a complete  'phonetic chart' of French vocal utterances is aimed at.

Monsieur Ponge's innovative audio museum appears not to have happened - but we salute him as a far-thinking researcher and hope these sounds are still to be found somewhere.

* Some light googling shows this work by him:Le Musée de la Parole / Alfred Ponge (Michon et Gibeau , Paris 1911). His work seems to have been taken up by Ferdinand Brunot
at the University of Paris thanks to support from Pathé.

An early recording session, Germany 1899

English Books in Paris

Found in a mid 1930s American detective thriller, tipped in at the front (for exchange purposes) this flier for  the Gibert Joseph (or Joseph Gibert) bookshop at 26 Boulevard St. Michel in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. It is still there at the same address with many books in languages other than French. The English language section is adequate but there are few rarities as there were in the past.

The curious thing in this ephemera is the notice 'Free Entrance' -- I can think of only one bookshop in the world that charges entry ($5) and that is run by a much arrested, deranged and violent bookseller in New Hampshire U.S.A. Possibly this is a mistranslation. The phone number has been changed by hand which might enable someone in the know to date it quite accurately. It looks like the 1950s. Until the advent of Shakespeare and Co.,  Gibert was the main source of used English books in Paris. Interestingly it also caters for the four other most wanted languages there, mostly because these are the nearest countries, although there has long been a large Russian community in Paris.

Second-hand Bookstalls in Paris (1890s)

From Dickens's Dictionary of Paris. The book is anonymous but a note in an old bookseller's hand informs us that it was written (partly) by the son of Anthony Trollope. This edition  was published about 1896 and there are advertisements for hotels giving their phone numbers.The book is listed at the British Library as being by Charles Dickens jnr.,

The bookstalls by the Seine are still much in evidence and an occasional source of rare finds. The other stalls dotted around Paris have mostly gone but many lingered on into the 1960s and some may still be there.

The only mention of English books is a stall at Rue Daunou. This street was shortly to have other English language associations - as in 1911 (at number 5)  it became the site of Harry's New York Bar where famously James Bond went on his first visit to Paris aged 16. Ian Fleming writes (possibly this happened to him?) "..he followed the instructions in Harry's advertisement in the Continental Daily Mail, and told his taxi driver 'Sank Roo Doe Noo'...that had started one of the memorable evenings of his life, culminating in the loss, almost simultaneous, of his virginity and his notecase".

The genuine book-collector is he who buys his books gradually, one or two volumes at a time,not the rich man who can afford to go to a bookseller and demand to be supplied with so many feet of the standard authors. The man who has not much money to spend, but who likes to ferret out for himself his treasures, having about him something of the book-grubber, is a much more interesting individual. He may waste many small quarters of an hour here and there in turning over semi-worthless volumes, but usually his mind is intellectually bent. He enjoys his occupation, and in the long run derives some profit from it. His time might perhaps be better spent, but before we throw stones at him let us see if there be no glass roof over our own heads. Industrious French authors have written books upon the pleasures of buying second-hand literature, and this would seem to show that the practice in Paris was a common one.

Nearly all the way on the quay, on the left bank of the river[the southern side], from the Pont St. Michel, near Notre Dame, down to the Pont Royal, maybe seen, on the parapet by the side of the river, boxes well filled with second-hand books. As a rule, these boxes are open from eight or nine o'clock in the morning till dusk.Passers-by may look at the wares thus exposed for sale; they may examine them with such knowledge as they possess ; and buy them or reject them as they choose. The market is fair and open. In nearly all cases the prices are marked in one way or the other; generally all the books in one box are to be sold at a stated price. The usual plan is to divide the volumes, according to their value,into boxes; and each box will contain books varying in price from 25c. to 3 francs. The books that are sold for 3f. and upwards are, as a rule, classed under the heading, "Prix divers," and the sum to be charged is or is not stated at the beginning or at he end of the work. No doubt much trash is here collected, but a little experience will soon enable one to make certain broad divisions between what may be of use and that which may be passed over without thought. Books that are at all expensive are rarely exposed for sale upon the quays. The best of those that are so sold will usually be found on the Quai Voltaire between the Pont Royal and the Pont des Saints Peres. Also on this quay, upon the other side of the road, there are bookstalls affixed to the house facing the river. 

Besides those on the quays, open stalls for the sale of second-hand books may be found in other parts of Paris, viz. Rue Volney, at the comer of the Rue de Daunou (there many English books are exposed for sale);Rue Chateaudun, in front of No.28; Rue Chateaudun, near where the Rue St.Georges comes into that street;Boulevard Haussmann, at the corner of the Rue du Helder; Rue Ste. Cecile, at the comer of the Faubourg Poissoniere;Rue de Rome,at the comer of the Rue St.Lazare; Rue de la Sorbonne;Rue St. Jacques, facing the College de France ; Place de la Sorbonne ; at one side of the Boulevard St. Michel;Rue Victor Cousin;Rue Soufflot;Rue Casimir Delavigne. There are doubtless many others, but among the above mentioned the ardent pilgrim will be able to find a reward for his labours.

Nelson Algren, Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre

Four books by Nelson Algren found at  Shakespeare and Co in Paris and bought reasonably from George Whitman. About 1990. Catalogued thus (and sold). All inscribed to Simone de Beauvoir - a reminder of this great literary triangulation.

65. ALGREN, Nelson: NEVER COME MORNING. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1942. Signed by Nelson Algren. The French translator's copy with copious notes throughout. The translation was begun by Guyonnet and Bost but worked over, completed and improved by de Beauvoir & Satre. This copy contains many notes in their hands. Many are about obscure American criminals and low-life slang. According to Algren's biographer Bettina Drew 'Sartre helped take the inadequate translation and along with Simone turned it into a good French novel'. When Algren met Sartre he expected they would confront one another like jealous adversaries but was struck by his warmth and charm. Fascinating association copy. VG 

66. ALGREN, Nelson: CHICAGO: CITY ON THE MAKE. Doubleday, New York, 1951.
Signed presentation copy to Simone Beavoir. 'For Castor Avec Amour from Nelson in the Forrest Ave. Nest, Oct. 1951'. Castor was a pet name used by friends. Minor wear else VG. 

67. ALGREN, Nelson: SOMEBODY IN BOOTS. Vanguard, New York, 1935.
Author's first book. Simone de Beavoir's copy with a coloured drawing on the rear endpapers of two rabbits and 'Madame La Tigresse' and 'Monsieur Le Tigre' written underneath in Algfren's Hand. Nelson Algren and Simone de Beavoir were friends and lovers from 1947-1960. An interesting association copy. A somewhat worn and rubbed but solid copy. G/VG.

68.  ALGREN, Nelson: THE NEON WILDERNESS. Hill and Wang, New York, 1960.
1st collected edition of 24 short stories. Signed presentation copy to Simone de Beavoir 'For My Own Simone For Keeps Nelson.' Wraps. VG 

Apparently there is reference to the occasion when Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir sold these and many other of Beauvoir's English language books in Mary Duncan's Henry Miller is Under My Bed. See also Bookride which has more on this and mentions that Algren thought Sartre looked like a shoe salesman...