Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de MALESHERBES. Autograph ma - Lot 495

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Lot n° 495
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2000 - 2500 EUR
Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de MALESHERBES. Autograph ma - Lot 495
Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de MALESHERBES. Autograph manuscripts, Works on Botany, 1783–1793 and undated; approximately 130 pages, mostly in-4, bound in a single in-4 volume with modern marbled-paper cardboard binding and a title label. An important collection of notes on botany, some in the hand of André Thouin. [Malesherbes was passionate about botany and had attended Jussieu’s lectures; he corresponded on this subject with numerous botanists. He organized extensive plantings in his park at Malesherbes.] These notes and plant lists, generally in quarto-sized notebooks, are sometimes supplemented by folios in octavo or duodecimo. The plant lists are often accompanied by personal comments. Some notes are in the hand of a secretary; a few in the hand of the botanist André Thouin (1747–1824). The first list, dated 1783, includes buttercups, anemones, hellebores, hydrastis, clematis, nigella, etc.; on an inserted leaf, in a secretary’s hand, are observations by Thouin on *Hydrastis canadensis*, with a note by Malesherbes: “The English call it ‘plate beer’ because they use it to make beer. Mr. Williams, a colonist from New York, knows it very well.” Other lists and notes concern the poppy (Papaver), etc. An octavo notebook is devoted to “questions regarding the catalog of the King’s Garden.” One leaf lists “some botanical notes by Mr. Thouin”; another lists “plants to be requested in the month of March.” Following the account of a “conversation with Mr. Thouin and Mr. Lheritier de Brutelle on December 6, 1789,” there is a handwritten note by Thouin on hemp: “The variety of hemp brought from China to England, which was the subject of the memoir addressed to Mr. Banks, died without producing seeds, because it had been sown too late […] We cultivated in the Jardin du Roy a Russian hemp entirely similar to ours except that it was taller”… Malesherbes compiles long lists of “native” plants, “umbellifers,” “native monadelphas,” roses and willows, as well as “roses that are not native to the country,” “succulents,” etc.; some are accompanied by comments, sometimes quite detailed; for example, regarding roses: “the rose I call sennelle, a species that I do not see botanists having described, yet which is very different. I named it the ‘sennelle’ rose because its round, colored seed—the first time I saw it in winter—I mistook it for a small sennelle. But this characteristic, which one might regard as a variety, is not the only thing that distinguishes this rosebush. I have not examined it as a botanist, but my gardener now knows it and is never mistaken […] I have sown and resown it; it has always produced the same variety, and the fruit is a sennelle.” Written by a secretary, a “Note on plants of the Sedum and Saxifrage families that I would like, if possible” is annotated in the margin by Thouin, who adds in his own hand: “Note on some plants of the Sedum and Saxifrage families that can be provided next spring.” The collection concludes with a “List of seeds sown in the open ground in the garden, in a bed prepared for this purpose, on September 20, 1793,” written in the hand of a secretary [Malesherbes would be arrested in December and guillotined on the following April 22].
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