The subjects of autograph collecting and autograph dealing in France, as well as the wealth of French literature dealing with the whole subject, and the abundance of collections of facsimiles, have already been incidentally alluded to. The business now carried on by M. Noël Charavay was founded in 1843 by his father, M. Jacques Charavay, who died in 1867. He was succeeded by his son, Stephen Charavay, who lived till 1899. At his funeral an eloquent address was delivered by M. Anatole France. Five years before the autograph business had been made over by M. Stephen Charavay to his brother, Noël Charavay, who now carries it on. In 1865 M. Gabriel Charavay, the brother of Jacques Charavay, acquired the goodwill and connection of M. Laverdet, one of the earliest dealers in autographs. His son and successor, Eugène, died young in 1892, and the head of the house is now the widow of Gabriel Charavay. Monthly catalogues are issued by both firms under the respective titles of Bulletin d'Autographes and Revue des Autographes. The first publication is now (1910) in its 63rd, the other in its 45th year. Autograph collectors would do well to study both, as English letters are frequently offered for sale in them, and the price of Napoleonic MSS. and similar rariora is, as a rule, much less in England than in France. I strongly recommend beginners in autograph collecting to carefully read the introduction to the fine Bovet catalogue, afterwards published as a pamphlet by M. Stephen Charavay. The four volumes, entitled "L'Isographie des Hommes Célèbres," are of inestimable use in acquiring familiarity with the handwriting of celebrated French men and women. M. Jacques Charavay and his sons are responsible as "experts" (and in France autograph "experts" have an official character) for the compilation of nearly the whole of the elaborate catalogues of autograph sales which have taken place in Paris since 1843. The solitary exception to this assertion is the sale of the MSS. of Madame Récamier. It was Jacques Charavay and his two successors who presided over the dispersals of the autograph collections formed in succession by Brunet, Yémeniz, Fillon, Bovet, Piot, Champfleury, Pichon, and Dablin.[63] A list of these catalogues down to 1902 was prepared by M. Edmund Brébion and published. It is already out of print.
Of Napoleon I. as a scribe my friend Dr. J. Holland Rose writes me as follows:—
Napoleon was the greatest letter-writer of all time. The number of letters written or dictated by him up to the end of the Waterloo Campaign is 22,061; many more belong to the subsequent period, and some 2,000 or 3,000 letters have been found since the publication of the "Correspondance de Napoléon," published by order of Napoleon III.
On very many occasions he wrote or dictated thirty or forty letters and dispatches in one day. A well-known example of his epistolary activity is that recorded by a Saxon Colonel, von Odleben, who describes him while staying at Düben shortly before the Battle of Leipsic, October, 1813. In those anxious days Napoleon kept his secretaries on the watch day and night, and is known to have sent off six important letters in the small hours of October 12th, shortly before he set out for Leipsic. In later days he wrote comparatively few of his letters himself, simply because his writing was almost illegible.
His early letters to Josephine were of course in his own handwriting; they are remarkable, among the love-letters of great men, for their passionate ardour: which, however, soon cooled under the frivolities and neglect of his Consort.
Some of his letters never have been deciphered. The present writer has in his possession an excellent photograph of a long Napoleon letter which is a rough draft of a proclamation to his army after the great victory at Rivoli in January, 1797. It has been much erased and altered. The skill of experts at Paris and London has failed to decipher the contents of three-fourths of this scrawl, yet the original was sold recently for a very large sum of money.
I have already mentioned[64] the seven Napoleon letters sold in London in 1904 for £350. In the following year I was much interested in three letters which M. Noël Charavay offered for sale at the modest price of £100, throwing light on certain negotiations between Bonaparte and the Bourbons, which supplement a curt letter of the former in the Morrison Collection declining to entertain certain proposals. The three letters sold in 1905 are in the easily recognisable handwriting of Louis XVIII. (known in 1801, when they were written, as the Comte de Lille), and in them he puts before the Abbé de Montesquieu, who was acting as a go-between in the matter, the reasons which should induce the First Consul to facilitate the return of the descendant of St. Louis to the throne of his forefathers. In the first of the series (dated Warsaw, March 22, 1801) Louis congratulates himself on the idea which has prompted him to take the initiative in the matter. He writes as follows: "Buonaparte is to-day the greatest of our country's soldiers. He will be her saviour. As the Father of the French it is for me to make the first advance.... I charge you to communicate to him the following arguments: the restoration of the Monarchy is necessary; the existence of the Republic has only proved its impossibility; the only Republicans in France are abstract reasoners, faddists, &c." In a last and final memorandum he says: "When I appeal to Buonaparte, do I do so merely to march over the bodies of the dead? If glory has chosen him to restore the Monarchy, let glory be the witness of my engagements." At the same time he energetically denies the allegation that he has ever encouraged or approved any project for the assassination of the First Consul.
In February of the present year I saw in London a superb Napoleonic letter of great historic importance, and authenticated by a declaration made by the Duke of Wellington. This letter once belonged to an English Prime Minister. It was written on May 1, 1803, when the delusive Treaty (or Truce) of Amiens was about to be torn up. A part of the letter has appeared, but I now give it in extenso with a translation[65]:—
St. Cloud 4½.
Je recois votre lettre, qui m'a été remise à la Malmaison, je désire que la conference ne se tourne pas en parlage—mettez vous y froid, altier et même un peu fier.