[Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, containing 13 - Lot 407

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  3. [Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, containing 13 - Lot 407
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Lot n° 407
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[Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, containing 13 - Lot 407
[Ondine Valmore (1821–1853)]. Album amicorum, containing 13 signed autograph poems, tributes, or reflections, [1838–1840]; oblong in-8 album of 31 paginated pages (the rest blank), contemporary aubergine calfskin binding, decorated ribbed spine, covers adorned with a wide border of embossed motifs enclosing, in the center, a rectangle of gilt lines and motifs, with small green calfskin inlays at the corners, gilt edges, moiré blue endpapers (binding signed Pierret) (in a slipcase and case). A precious album by Ondine Valmore, then aged 17. Hyacinthe, known as Ondine (or Line) Valmore, daughter of the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, born in Lyon in 1821, also wrote poems and stories, but she died of tuberculosis at the age of 31 in 1853. Writers and artists who were friends of her mother inscribed poetic tributes to the young girl in this album. The album opens with a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, titled “To Line,” signed “your mother, Marceline Valmore” and dated “June 1838,” consisting of eight lines: “Thérèse too, a timid and cautious dove In this world that passes, trembles, and falls”… The opera singer Caroline Branchu fills two pages with a poem of seven quatrains, *Invocation*, dated “November 20, 1838,” dedicated “to her dear and beloved Line”: “Divine Word made flesh, my soul adores you”… The actress Mademoiselle Mars writes a charming and affectionate tribute: “Dear little one, I will not enrich your album with a poem of my own making; heaven has denied me the wit required for that; but the sentiment that comes from the heart makes itself understood in every language”… Étienne Coignet (a friend of Marceline’s from Lyon, who became a librarian in Saint-Chamond) sent a poem of eight quatrains, pasted into the album, addressed to Ondine Hyacinthe Valmore: “Are you the moving, transparent, and pure wave”… Sainte-Beuve writes a sonnet, modeled after Uhland: “Two young girls, there, on the hill, in the evening”… This is followed by another poem by Étienne Coignet, consisting of six six-line stanzas, To Hyacinthe Valmore: “In the humble retreat / That fate has granted me”… The Lyon poet Victor de Laprade composed a poem of 10 quintils, To Lake Thun: “If one day I break my chains, / I want to flee to the waters”… Next is the Lyon printer Léon Boitel with a 14-line poem, To Ondine Hyacinthe Valmore: “Yes, my heart is rejoicing as in my finest days”… Alphonse Karr contributes a 7-line quintil poem, untitled: “Around the old bell tower with its pointed spire”… In 1840, it was the turn of Louise Crombach, a woman of letters and Marceline’s protégée, to inscribe a 39-line poem across four pages, To Ondine Valmore, a reply: “Sing again, O my graceful one! / You have done me so much good with your voice from the heart!”… More unexpected is the witty poem that Honoré de Balzac inscribed on December 16, 1840, titled A Young Wife’s Wish: “Even when this hair, whose braids so often Have felt the dreamy caresses of her fingers, Has turned white beneath a heavy shroud; May my memory still be her pride! May I live on in her heart, and always be dear to her; unless………………………………………” Amable Tastu has copied a 14-line fragment from his poem dedicated to Madame Desbordes Valmore: “Alas! When before him you shed your tears”… Finally, a prose text by Émile Souvestre: “Morality in a child is nothing but experience”…, followed by a ten-line stanza with an illegible signature (Alice Ozy?). A pencil drawing and two watercolors are mounted at the end of the album, and a few dried flowers are tucked among the pages.
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