BERLIOZ (Hector).

Lot 8
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
BERLIOZ (Hector).
Autograph letter signed to his sister Nanci. Paris. October 18 [1833]. 4 p. in-12 (174 x 114 mm). Letter signed "H. Berlioz Minor paper losses due to the acidity of the ink. Remarkable and violent plea, partly unpublished, for Harriet Smithson whom Berlioz had just married. Partly unpublished letter. Berlioz had married Harriet Smithson on 3 October 1833, not unaware of her family's misgivings, nor of the rumours circulating in Paris about the Irish actress. To his sister Nanci, who disapproved of this marriage, he rejects all the slanders and rumors of which she was the object: "if you knew the truth, nothing but the truth and the whole truth, you would judge me differently...] Have I committed a crime which should alienate me from the heart of my family, by marrying a woman whom I had loved so passionately for so long? A woman who had been for me a dream of happiness which my imagination represented to me as chimerical? a woman horribly slandered and misunderstood and whom I saw at last in her true light?... a woman that misfortune seemed to pursue this year with relentlessness, and that I was able to revive and give back to hope by dint of love and devotion for lack of other resources [...] the most ridiculous tales [have sullied] this romantic and improbable story. [But I must tell you and swear to you on my honor that the woman I have chosen as my life's companion is as pure in every respect as you could wish for your brother. He refutes the slander: "All Paris has believed for eight months that I was her lover: all Paris was mistaken. If we were lovers, it was only in the high sense of this word, and not in the other". He too was slandered: "sometimes I was made crazy, sometimes epileptic, sometimes a gambler, sometimes lost in debauchery: these infamies were not without making some impression on a head as easy to upset as hers... but [...] we linked our two stormy destinies and I hope she will not repent of it any more than I do Correspondance générale, ed. by P. Citron, t. Il, letter n° 355 (partial text). A word cut out forming a hole.
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