Jules DUMONT D'URVILLE (1790-1842) sailor... - Lot 314 - Ader

Lot 314
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Estimation :
500 - 700 EUR
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Result : 665EUR
Jules DUMONT D'URVILLE (1790-1842) sailor... - Lot 314 - Ader
Jules DUMONT D'URVILLE (1790-1842) sailor and explorer. L.A.S. "Jules D'Urville aspt de marine", Le Havre June 23, 1809, to his cousin and childhood sweetheart Louise de Croisilles in Thury-Harcourt (Calvados); 3 pages in-4, address (small tear due to broken seal affecting some line ends). Nice letter that lets us perceive the personality and the character of the young midshipman. He expresses all his joy and his emotion to have received a letter from her, and resigns himself to accept to maintain only a friendly relationship; however his thoughts are constantly turned towards her. He talks to her about her writing and her style, then responds to her advice. "Louise, you advise me to go into society and see people; I don't care at all for various reasons that I can explain to you. First of all, I don't like it, and secondly, I am young and only an aspirant; I must still think only of acquiring new knowledge, which frequenting the world would not allow me to do. Besides, my present salary would not be sufficient to cover the expenses [...]. Once I am an ensign and even a rear-admiral, I will be able to make this expenditure; in the meantime I would do without it very well. You want to know if dancing amuses me; on the contrary, it bores me very much, and that is natural enough, I have no taste for it, only reason makes me learn it, only propriety will make me practice it. He then evokes Louise's trip to Bayeux and the "so cheerful, so amiable and so good-hearted character" of his uncle the abbot [who took charge of Dumont d'Urville's education after his father's death]. Finally, in a postscript, he gives, not without a touch of jealousy and bitterness, news of Louise's friend, Benerais, who had embarked with him. "For his part, he does not wait for you to choose your procurator for him, because for a month or two, he has been assiduously courting a Beauty, who seems to occupy his affections entirely. At least such is the public noise, because for me, I hardly meddle with his love affairs, hardly do I know his Dulcinea"...
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