DELACROIX Eugène (1798-1863).
L.A.S. "Eugène Delacroix", [forêt de Boixe] "à la maison des gardes" 23 October 1818, to Achille PIRON, "employé de l'administration des Postes, Hôtel des Postes", in Paris; 3 pages and a quarter in-4, address (small tear in the seal).
Beautiful and long letter during a stay at his sister Henriette de Verninac's in Charente.
He starts by mocking the "injurious doubts" of his friend about the delay of his letters: "You should have noticed, you who make so many remarks that: "between separate people, those who by their displacement, the movement they give themselves, the country they travel, the observations they are within reach of" &c., are also those who by the new objects they meet, by the little stable distribution they can make of their time in the early stages of an excursion, and by a thousand things very worthy of remark, are quite excusable for an involuntary delay, quite involuntary, towards those who remained peacefully in their molehills, following the thread of their usual work, have nothing better to do than to think of their absent friends, and to mark them by a little note in a letter that they have not forgotten them, even though they are far away from them You must believe that you expected me to write a statistic of the Charente department; but as I have neither the talent nor the will to do it, I spoke to you simply of what interested me most, of you, of my friendships, of our parties in Paris and of mine here... As for his friend's "sulkiness": "It is a feeling that one must pass on to the inhabitants of Paris [...] they are used to being amused, so to speak, in spite of themselves. They go to shows where they are made to laugh when they are sad, and to cry when they want to laugh. They are accustomed to the caprices of their coquettes, who lead them around like willful and sorrowful children who are amused by being pestered. Every step they take only reinforces their chagrined mood: for on their slippery pavement they go backwards instead of forwards. [...] Your system of persecution reaches me even in my innocent recreations. You, who are no doubt an excellent hunter, laugh at my puny prey: I infinitely regret your lessons, which you will at least be able to give me by theory when I am back near you"... He goes to bed to calm his bitterness against his friend, "which no doubt comes from the fact that I have been unhappy in the hunt".
He will soon return to Paris: "Then no more hunting, no more guns. But as a reward I will see again friends among whom you are not the most indifferent. I always think with a feeling of pleasure of our past swimming and music games. [...] Why do I not know how to play the bass or the piano: it is not that I have grown disgusted with my dear guitar: but to accompany the flute it is insufficient: its good qualities are lost and one only gets the bad from it. In time I intend to acquire some more knowledge of music and then what a concert, what a revolution among the cats of the rue de l'Université or the rue Simon-le-Franc"...
After regretting the accident that befell Mr. Buissonneau, he briefly recalls "a beautiful fox hunt that I was on yesterday and the thousand tricks that these impertinent people made us do. Today I have to dissect one of these gentlemen, whose skin one of the guards has already taken to make a cap.
He ends by evoking the accident that happened to "poor Guillemot" [the painter Alexandre-Charles GUILLEMOT (1786-1831)], begging Piron to "circumvent him [...] in a flattering way to obtain from him a small gift", the engraving that he made in Rome of the Descent from the Cross by Daniele da Volterra "and which is very good"...
Lettres intimes (X, p. 54).
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