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[Autographs] Camille DOUCET (1812-1895), poet and playwright - Lot 28

Lot 28
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[Autographs] Camille DOUCET (1812-1895), poet and playwright - Lot 28
[Autographs] Camille DOUCET (1812-1895), poet and playwright, perpetual secretary of the Académie française. Set of 7 signed autograph letters, 3 autograph cards (2 signed) and a handwritten piece. The majority of the autographs are addressed to his friend Abraham Dreyfus, and run from 1886 to 1892, forming 9 pages in-8 and 4 pages in-4, on the letterhead of the Institut de France. The letters refer to autographs by Camille Doucet that he sends or wishes to have destroyed - an article by Abraham Dreyfus in Gil Blas - visits by two magazine illustrators, including J.-B. Guth, for his portrait - thanks to Dreyfus for his "notice, so charming and which could not be reproduced too often for my glory" - one from January 1891 evokes his disagreement with the members of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs dramatiques, of which he is President "having done my duty as President, I did not want to return to an exhausted discussion, still less complain of having preached in the desert (...) my feelings were not shared by the Commission, I bow out". The handwritten piece is a long diatribe, signed and dated May 1886, about a custom he was criticized for at the Société des Auteurs' annual dinners, that of ending with a more or less solemn toast: "Your long speeches don't amuse us / and their banalities sadden the meal / of friends who are leaving, of those who are replacing them / you sing the virtues to tunes that chill us / says a third! Finally, everyone having asked / for silence from now on, I gave in to your wishes / but, in inaugurating the reign of silence / you failed to foresee the consequences / (...) And the day when [Victorien] Sardou, for whom I was dismissed / would have spoken, to your great joy! / thanks to the new system devised by you / Sardou remains mute! and catches us all!". And finishes: "And now, gentlemen, that I've started again / renouncing forced silence like you / let's drink, without an excess of modesty holding us back / to dear healths: yours! mine!". It is accompanied by a handwritten draft letter from Abraham Dreyfus.
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