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This binding appeared on eBay in February of 2018, the same seller was offering the 1749 Henault binding on the same day, this gave me the impression that these two bindings may have been part of a collection, both appeared to be bindings by Louis Douceur, this 1754 example particularly. I have thoroughly documented the 1749 Henault and only now am getting around to this amazing treasure. I want to present this more or less as it was shown on eBay with the sellers photos which are more than sufficient for anyone to realize that this is a Louis Douceur binding, although the seller never mentioned that, and it sold for the ridiculously low price of 52 euros. |
| You will notice a small signature on the title page, one would not think much about this as owner signatures are very common on title pages. However when I searched the internet for this publication, I discovered that the Bibliotheque nationale de France has copy that you can view with Gallica (click here to see it) and it also has this same signature. Searching further I found that Google books also has copies with signatures. It may be that Mouhy signed a lot of his books, as I found his signature on some of his other publications as well. |
| Who is Charles de Fieux de Mouhy? and why would someone pay big money to have one of his books bound by the Kings binder Louis Douceur. This is the question I was asking myself as I searched through 130 trillion pages with Google, actually it's more now, that figure was on the internet in 2016. Still it is not easy to find information on Charles de Fieux in English, however I did find some interesting information about Mouhy in a book By Virginia Scott Women on the Stage in Early Modern France: 1540 - 1750. that you can partially read with Google books here. From this we learn that Mouhy was a hustler, a novelist, and someone always on the look out for a good story, for gossip and anything that he could use in his books, he went to jail more than once being kind of publishing rebel and was notorious for reporting rumors that he heard or invented. However he had some friends in high places like Voltaire who paid him a yearly salery for "news and rumors." He worked for Voltaire for perhaps a few years but wound up being sent to the Bastille (25 April 1741?) for publishing his book les Mille et une faveurs without permission. So he probably had a rather notorious reputation, by the time he published Les Delices du sentiment 1754 |
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Above I show a brief excerpt from Scott's book, I get the feeling that she may have had an axe to grind when she wrote that of Mouhy, granted his writing was never taken very seriously at the time, but now I think people are starting to take an interest in his work, certainly it is now easy to find on the internet. The Bibliotheque nationale de France has taken the time to make some of his writing available online, so I am not so sure that it has so little merit. However I am looking at this from another angle, It is the Voltaire connection that takes me back to Henault and Madame Pompadour. Louis Douceur produced a number of elaborately decorated bindings for Madame Pompadour as well as friends of Henault or Henault himself and or the intellectual circle that surrounded Pompadour. Let us ponder for a moment these Wikipedia 'facts'... "However, there was a need at court for some literary talent. It was at the urging of Madame de Pompadour that the King appointed Voltaire royal historiographer in April 1745, with a salary of two thousand livres per year. Voltaire was given a room at Versailles, and it is likely that much of his time was spent in the archives of the palace doing research for his book about the reign of Louis XIV" La princesse de Navarre (The Princess of Navarre) is a comedie-ballet writen by Voltaire, with music by Jean-Philippe Rameau, first performed on 23 February 1745 at La Grande Ecurie, Versailles. Mouhy knew more about French Theatre and it's history than perhaps almost anyone at the time, he wrote a number of books on the subject, he could have advised Voltaire on how to put on a theatrical performance and or even helped him with the plays that he was working on. Even more surprising was that Voltaire was using Mouhy as a pret-nom "Mandataire qui agit pour le veritable contractant" this translates as an "Agent acting for the true contractor" this suggests a close relationship and one that requires a certain amount of confidentiality. They had things in common, both had been in jail, both were rebels and kind of intellectual outlaws, both were writers, and while Voltaire seems to have been the deadly serious type, Mouhy appears to have never been very serious, he was in all probability a funny guy, but was anyway banned from France, another thing he had in common with Voltaire. Searching around for recent articles (the last century) we see there is a growing interest in Mouhy's writing and some original copies of his work are fetching high prices. |
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Above is an engraved portrait of Mouhy, this is another mystery, the illustration is by Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790) who was a French engraver, designer, writer, and art critic, and one of the most celebrated artists of his time. His illustration was engraved by Simon-Charles Miger (1736-1828). In 1778, Miger was accredited by the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he was admitted as a member in 1781, the same year that he made this engraving. Mouhy would have been 80 years old when this portrait was executed. One might ask who would have paid for such a portrait of someone as "unimportant" as Mouhy? Things are not adding up here, I suspect that Mouhy has been getting a lot of bad press by certain historians. When you make enemies in high places, sometimes their comments about you are what is passed down as your history in Wikipedia. "La Chronique scandaleuse de 1785 le depeint, a la fin de sa vie, comme boiteux et bossu. Charles de Fieux deceda a Paris le 29 fevrier 1784." "The Chronique scandaleuse of 1785 portrays him, at the end of his life, as lame and hunchbacked. Charles de Fieux died in Paris on February 29, 1784". |
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In all this, I have not yet discovered who might have paid big money to have this book by le chevalier de Mouhy, decorated by Louis Douceur, however on the next page we will proceed with an in depth examination of the important Douceur imprints found on this binding. EPILOGUE - I have just finished reading around 60 pages of a very old translation of Memoires de monsieur le marquis de Fieux . Par M. le chevalier D. M. originally published in 1735. The translation is entitled Injur'd innocence: being the instructive and diverting memoirs of the Marquess of Fieux, containing sundry moral reflections, Written in French by the Chevalier de Mouhy. This was a revelation, I must say that I was completely impressed with this... this appears to be one of his first publications. In this book he starts by telling a detailed story that occurred when he was much younger (18?) i.e. 15 years previously. Below I show 2 pages from this 1945 translation, then 2 pages from the original French version found in the online digital reproductions of the BnF Gallica, and below this a copy of what appears to be Mouhy signature in the dedication page of this BnF copy, that is found in a royal binding aux arms de Louis XV. Now if any of you think that it is odd that one of the first books Mouhy ever produced, romantic novel, would be found in binding belonging to Louis XV, please send me your comments. |
| (click here for further biographical details (in French) on Mouhy) |
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click here to return to the HOME page. click here to see the INDEX of the 2017 pages. see below links to previous work |
| Even experts are sometimes wrong, before you spend thousands on a book, please do your own research! Just because I say a certain binding can be attributed to le Maitre isn't any kind of guarantee, don't take my word for it, go a step further and get your own proof. In these pages I have provided you with a way of doing just that. |
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