Alphonse de LAMARTINE / Signed autograph letter / Combat / Horace / Romanticism

  

Autograph letter signed “Lamartine” (draft) to Victor de Laprade
St-Point, November 3.

In a letter full of romantic fervor and quoting Horace, Lamartine plans the final details of a national subscription in his favor. “My dear friend, I miss you less because I am leaving in four days for Paris.

If the Lyon committee thinks it can do something, urge it to do it immediately (whatever it may be). By December 18, I must have everything Lyon has been able to do; that is the day of judgment. If the Paris committee does not publicize the matter, it might as well cease to exist.

There is no result without publicity. Do not believe in effects without causes. A newspaper article is a cause that lasts only 24 hours. What is needed are circulars to millions of addresses, left lying on tables. If you go to Paris, press the matter and draft one or two brief but decisive phrases for the committee, in the form of a circular to one hundred thousand addresses; otherwise I am done for.

But non omnis moriar [‘I shall not die wholly’ Horace, Odes, III, 30], and if no one fights for me, I shall fight for myself. Se ipsum deserere turpissimum est [‘Nothing is so base as to abandon oneself’]. I have thrown off my coat, and I will not let myself be smothered without a fight.

Farewell, and eternal friendship, on the level of eternal esteem. You have a delicate subject for a speech [the eulogy of Musset; Laprade had succeeded him at the Académie]. It is from difficulties that beauties spring; courage! You will make a very fine speech.

”

The note of pride he is keen to convey in his letter actually reveals a Lamartine who is financially at the end of his tether. Plagued by numerous money troubles caused by his generosity and his taste for large estates, Lamartine was mocked for his repeated fund-raising appeals and his occasional pieces, earning him the nickname “tire-lyre” (“moneybox-shaker”).

Forgotten by the political world after his crushing defeat in the 1848 presidential election, the poet was forced to write for a living. The quality of his work suffered as a result.

Works suited to his true stature, such as La Vigne et la Maison (1857), would be rare. By the end of the 1860s, almost ruined, he sold his property in Milly and accepted the help of a regime he disapproved of but which lodged him free of charge in Paris. He died there in 1869, two years after a stroke left him paralyzed.

This draft letter was preserved in the archives of the Lamartine family. Lettres des années sombres, ed.

Henri Guillemin, Librairie de l’Université, p. Christian Croisille, Honoré Champion, no.