GUINOT, Eugène - Lot 82

GUINOT, Eugène Eugène Guinot Autograph manuscript signed "Eugène Guinot", from an album amicorum. Baden, August 1850. 1 large oblong quarto page. Charming and elegant text for a friendship album, in which Eugène Guinot offers a literary and worldly reflection on the function of autograph albums in 19th-century society. The writer opens his text with a graceful definition: "The Album is the book in which a woman has her memories written by a host of different secretaries." He then emphasizes the emotional and memorial value of these collections: "Every name, every date, every line will remind her of an era or circumstance in her life..." The piece delicately evokes the elegant sociability of Parisian salons and Baden resorts: "The brilliant winter in the salons of Paris, the laughing summer under the shades of Baden will all be there." Guinot insists on the difficulty of composing a true album, which requires taste, wit and select relationships: "The difficult thing is to fill these pages, to enliven this book, to call forth thought and poetry." The text closes with a particularly felicitous formula: "You'll see that we'll write on the last page: - The first page was right." A very fine autograph page, at once worldly, literary and poetic, typical of the albums amicorum culture of the July Monarchy and the nascent Second Empire. An attractive testimony to French literary sociability in 19th-century European spas. Beautifully preserved; slight marginal wear and minor imperfections.