Lot Details
Lot 107
GRIMOD DE LA REYNIERE, ALEXANDRE-BALTHAZAR-LAURENT Autograph Diary. Paris and Montmelian: 1 July 1794 to 1 April 1795. Self...
. Paris and Montmelian: 1 July 1794 to 1 April 1795. Self wrappers, labelled on the front wrapper 1794. 18 ff. (including covers), center stitched, the first 28 1/2 pp. written in de la Reyniere's very characteristic hand in dark brown ink, each page with entries for between four and seven days. Light wear and soiling, a small circular stain at the head of most leaves (but the affected text generally fully legible.
Grimod de la Reyniere, an author of illustrious birth who produced a number of major works on gastronomy, was born in 1758 and died in 1837. He suffered from a deformity to his hands, hence his very characteristic and idiosyncratic handwriting; he wore prosthetic hands made by the Swiss clockmaker Henri-Louis Jacquet-Droz. For all that, his script is quite legible. He was a founder of French gastronomic writing, and greatly influenced (for example) Brillat-Savarin. He is regarded as the first restaurant critic, writing during the first great flowering of French cuisine after the Revolution. His eight volumes in the series L'Almanach des gourmands, which he edited and published from 1803 to 1812, rank as the first guides to restaurants, a genre that has been perennially popular ever since. He wrote a classic guide for hosts (the Manuel des Amphitryons, 1808, which expounds greatly on the art of carving). An extraordinary character, on inheriting his mother's fortune in 1812, he married his mistress, and as a jeu d'esprit gave his own funeral to see who would show up, before retiring to the family chateau at Villiers-sur-Orge, close to Paris.
The present diary dates from a critical period in his life: his return to Paris in 1794, after a period of travel, just as the Reign of Terror was subsiding. Grimod used a misleading birth certificate (his parents, disturbed by his deformity, had declared him a bastard), as well as a passport that showed him as a traveling salesman, to escape the guillotine (it did not hurt that he was friendly with Robespierre) and was able to live at the family's great Parisian residence, the Hotel Grimod de la Reyniere in comparative comfort during a time of great privation. Documents and letters by this extraordinary figure are of the utmost rarity. "Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards ... therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate." -- Grimod de La Reyniere.
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