Description
HUGO (Victor). Photograph with signed autograph dispatch, and signed autograph letter, addressed to Léon Bienvenu. - Dedicated photographic portrait. Guernsey, cliché Arsène Garnier, [1872-1873]. 95 x 57 mm, mounted on bristol board, print a little yellowed, wetness on verso. Autograph letter signed "To M. Léon Bienvenu, his friend Victor Hugo". "JE N'AI PLUS DEVANT MOI QUE GEORGES ET JEANNE", wrote Victor Hugo in his notebooks the day after the death of his last son François-Victor (December 1873). The old poet had already lost his children Léopoldine (1843) and Charles (1871), while Adèle had lost her mind and was in a nursing home. He transferred all his paternal love to Charles and Alice Lehaene's children, Georges and Jeanne, born in 1868 and 1869 respectively. He had welcomed the young fatherless children into his home, where they called him "Papapa", and this intimacy added to the immense love they already shared. It was with them in mind that the poet wrote his famous collection L'Art d'être grand-père (The Art of Being a Grandfather), published in 1877, which contributed to his image as the good patriarch of the Republic. - Autograph letter signed "Victor Hugo" to Léon Bienvenu. S.l., "March 3" [perhaps 1877]. "I read some beautiful verses by Georges Nazim; I would like to know the author. Please tell him for me. It's been a long time since I've had the joy of shaking your hand. If you and Madame Léon Bienvenu would be so kind as to join us for dinner on Saturday March 10 (7.1/2 p.m.), you would be very kind and we would be delighted. I am yours, I hope you will be, and I send my regards to Madame Bienvenu... If M. Georges Nazim would accept my invitation for the same day, would you be so kind as to pass it on to him...". (one p. 1/4 in-16). LEON BIENVENU, KNOWN AS TOUCHATOUT, VICTOR HUGO PARODIST AND COMMITTED COMIC ARTIST. In 1867, he began publication of his Histoire de France tintamarresque, which won him great popularity and, because of its insolence towards monarchs and popes, served the cause of democracy to a certain extent. In 1869, Touchatout penned a parody of Victor Hugo's L'Homme qui rit, in which he also fired a number of arrows at the imperial regime. In 1870, he became director of Le Tintamarre and contributed to most of the satirical journals, each time accentuating his political charge, eventually publishing a merciless pamphlet against Napoleon III. After the fall of the Empire, Touchatout wrote his famous Trombinoscope, in which almost all his contemporaries of notoriety were satirized. Verses by Victor Hugo and others by publicist and poet Georges Mazinghien, known as Georges Nazim (1851-1912), were set to music by composer Hector Salomon and published in 1877 in the collection Vingt mélodies.
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