COURTELINE Georges (1858-1929). Lot n° 41

MANUSCRIT autograph signed "G. Courteline", M.M. les Ronds-de-Cuir, [1893]; 250 pages in-4 (22 x 17,5 cm, mounted on laid paper leaves; the whole bound in a volume in-4 full havana jansenist morocco lined with green morocco surrounded by a gilt fillet, brown moire endpapers, spine with 5 nerves underlined by cold filets with gilt title, gilt edges (Huser). Complete working manuscript of Courteline's satirical novel about civil servants. Under his pseudonym of Georges Courteline, Georges Moinaux first published in L'Écho de Paris, from August 24, 1891 to March 7, 1892, under the general title of Messieurs les Ronds-de-cuir a series of "humorous studies of office life", which he knew well, being himself an expeditionary at the Direction des Cultes, completed by other scenes from July to November 1892. He then transformed these scenes, after an important work of rewriting, into a real novel, divided into six tables of three chapters each, whose manuscript was completed on April 21, 1893... and lost in a carriage, then fortunately found again (as the author told in a foreword for the Bernouard edition in 1927). The novel, dedicated to Catulle Mendès, was published in 1893 by Flammarion, with a preface by Marcel Schwob ("Essai de paradoxe sur le rire"), and illustrations by Louis Bombled. Its success led to a theatrical adaptation in 1911 by Robert Dieudonné and Raoul Aubry, and two films by Yves Mirande (1936) and Henri Diamant-Berger (1959). In the offices of the General Directorate of Gifts and Legacies, where he gets the curator of the Vanne-en-Bresse museum lost in his desire to liquidate the Quibolle legacy, Courteline stages all the ranks of the paperwork and incompetent bureaucracy, from the director to the expeditionary. The office manager is murdered by one of his subordinates who has gone mad. After the funeral, the novel ends with a crazy evening in a cabaret, where one recognizes the Mirliton of Aristide Bruant. The manuscript, written in black ink on the front of lined or squared sheets from a notebook, presents numerous erasures and corrections, especially in its first third, where one counts about ten corrections per page, of which a third are interlinear additions or in the margins. The corrections become rarer from the third table on. For example, at the beginning, when the employee Lahrier is delayed in his arrival at the office by a military parade, the author adds in the margin: "reconciling his taste for strolling with the indignant cry of his conscience"... Further, evoking the mystery by which Gabrielle, the mistress of Lahrier, was called Tata, he adds: "and eternal need of calinerie of the lovers remained very children" .... This is the final text, used for printing, and paginated by Courteline from 1 to 249, and complete with the six tables: First table (p. 1-36), Second table (p. 37-74), Third table (p. 75-105), Fourth table (p. 107-146), Fifth table (p. 147-199), Sixth table (p. 200-249). A L.A.S. to Stéphen Pichon, director of the Petit Journal, dated 17.X.1917 (2 p. oblong in-12), about his author's rights, is bound at the top: "Do you think that the "propaganda" constitutes a sufficient remuneration for the work of writers who are not always rich, alas!... and to whom the times do not let to show themselves terribly hard?"... Provenance : Charles Hayoit (ex-libris, sale III, 29-30 November 2001, n° 378).