DELACROIX Eugène (1798-1863). Lot n° 71

L.A.S. "EDelacroix", Plombières 28 August [1857], to Joséphine de FORGET; 4 pages in-8. Beautiful love letter during Delacroix's stay in Plombières, and about his forthcoming installation on rue de Furstenberg. [A distant cousin of Delacroix, Baroness Joséphine de FORGET, née Lavalette (1802-1886), intelligent and cultured, had, at the age of thirteen, given a rare proof of valour by participating in the escape from the Conciergerie of her father, the ex-director of the Imperial Post Office, on the eve of his execution. In 1817 she had married Baron de Forget, an auditor at the Conseil d'Etat, but was living apart from him at the time Delacroix entered her life. An affair soon developed between them; lovers and then friends, it lasted until the painter's death. Delacroix was ill at the time and undergoing a cure at Plombières (10-31 August 1857); he moved into his new apartment and studio in the rue de Furstenberg (now the Musée national Eugène Delacroix) on 28 December]. He was slow to reply to his "dear friend [...] the less one is burdened with business the less one wants to do: my laziness is extreme here and the pleasure of giving in to it is much to the good effect I feel from my stay. Will it be the same in Paris, even if I follow the same regime, I mean eating and sleeping, and also the exercise that one can take if one wants to? I am resolved, as much as one can be resolved, to try to lead a lazy life as much as possible, until I have seen some sort of health restored to me: but will business, even friends, allow it? [...] If you had a larynx or perhaps a whimsical mind, as I have the misfortune to have, you would not seek out kind or unkind people any more than I do. I have been much solicited here to mingle with charming parties: they were donkeys loaded with food to go and dine under the leaves in the company of equally charming men and women: in a word, to let oneself live is not the motto of the people of Paris who come here to look after their health. They dance in the evening until midnight in their great ball gowns, after having run all day to avoid boredom. I have not opened a book or a newspaper and I am not bored. It is true that I wanted to put my eyes on a diet like the rest: I have abused them for the last six or eight months that I have been ill and have read far too much. [...] I am very sorry that I cannot go to the country when I return to Paris: but it is absolutely necessary to do away with this house in the Faubourg St Germain. Its greatest fault for me, in spite of what you tell me, is to keep me away from you: for I find great advantages of all kinds there. When it is cleaned up, it will be a house like any other. No one will see me in my garden, since it is full of covered paths which go round it: I am within a stone's throw of all the walks and in a good position. I am leaving at the beginning of next week and will therefore soon have the pleasure of embracing you. We will talk about all this. I hope you will encourage me in my desire to lead a life that will consolidate the good effects of the waters, or the air, or the diet found here. Farewell dear friend, receive all my best regards and devotion... [The letter was published by Achille Piron at the end of his book Eugène Delacroix, sa vie et ses oeuvres (1865, p. 528), except for the last two paragraphs which he crossed out here with a stroke of his pen]. Correspondance générale (vol. III, p. 408).