SAINT-DENIS (Louis-Étienne). Autograph manuscripts.... Lot 49

SAINT-DENIS (Louis-Étienne). Autograph manuscripts. (About 420 ff.). 1826-ca. 1855. Pieces in-4, in-8 or in-12, in sheets, in folders placed in three modern cloth folders. THE MEMOIRS OF THE MAMELOUK ALI ON HIS SERVICE TO THE EMPEROR. LOUIS-ETIENNE SAINT-DENIS, KNOWN AS "THE MAMELOUK ALI". "From a family of servants attached to the Palace of Versailles where he was born on September 22, 1788, he received a good education, was first a notary's clerk in Paris and then, thanks to his father, a riding master who knew the great squire Caulaincourt, entered the Household crews in Spain, Germany, and Holland until the day of December 11, 1811, when he passed to the domestic service as second mameluck. It was then that he received the nickname of Ali, which had been borne before him by Roustam's companion, who had also been brought back from Egypt by Bonaparte, who had quickly separated from him. It is in this capacity that he made the campaigns of Russia and 1813, taking care of the campaign glasses, of the table service and sleeping, like Roustam, across the door of the room. In 1814, at Fontainebleau, he was lucky that Roustam had escaped. He reached Elba by himself after being held prisoner in Mainz and became the first mameluck. From the Hundred Days to St. Helena, he never left Napoleon for a day. As a young man, he showed himself to be tireless, devoted, discreet and intelligent. Marchand, who became his friend, and he were the two servants who softened the captivity by rendering their master all possible services. Above all, his functions as a copyist (many of the writings of Longwood are in his hand, including part of the Mémorial de Las Cases) and as a librarian - and we know that the library was of capital importance for the exiles - gave him an indispensable role with Napoleon in these years of the creation of the legend. Back in France, enjoying a small financial comfort thanks to his past wages and a legacy from the Emperor, he settled in Sens in 1827 and devoted himself body and soul to the cult of remembrance. He met with the elders of the epic, exchanged with them an abundant correspondence, refreshed the memory of Las Cases and Montholon and of many other elders of Saint Helena who questioned him. Charged, by Napoleon's will, to give 400 books of the library to the duke of Reichstadt, he could only have them given to Madame Mère. After his participation in the expedition of the return of the Ashes in 1840, he continued more than ever to frequent Bonapartist circles. On a visit to Sens in 1851, the prince-president had a private meeting with him and, on February 23, 1854, when he became Napoleon III, he fulfilled his dearest wish by naming him Knight of the Legion of Honor. A member of the city council, he was the father of three daughters from his marriage to Mary Hall, the Bertrand children's governess, who had been married on St. Helena, where his eldest daughter had been born. FIRST-RATE RECOLLECTIONS ON THE EMPEROR TO SAINT HELENA. Étienne Saint-Denis" left at his death, which occurred in Sens on May 3, 1856, a considerable written work which had occupied him for many years. His Memoirs, published in 1826 (albeit partially and very imperfectly), provide information about life at Longwood that is not found in any other memoirist. But the unpublished material [was] important, more diverse, and very curious.... Although he took no notes from 1812 to 1821, his extraordinary visual memory, his neutral position as an intimate servant and a rare scrupulousness (which leads him, for example, to return often to the same point to clarify some detail) make his papers an original source on the private life of the emperor during the last years of the reign and those of the exile, as well as on the development of the Napoleonic legend from 1821 until the Second Empire" (Jacques Jourquin). An important part of these papers passed through the hands of the same Jacques Jourquin who acquired them in three stages, during a sale organized by the Étude Blache in Versailles on June 12, 1975, from the merchant Eugène Rossignol in Paris, and from Madame Loubaton, great-great-granddaughter of Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis. The historian classified the first two sets and assigned them scores. A MEMORIAL MAQUIS OF GREAT RICHNESS, occupying here about 210 ff. under the ratings VB 1 to 13, RA I-1 to I-5. Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis started writing his memoirs after his retirement in Sens in 1841. To do this, he used his memory in a discontinuous method, by period or by subject. If he spontaneously mobilized certain memories, he also revived the past on the occasion of his critical readings of the works that were published on the emperor by historians like Vaulabelle, or by witnesses like Méneval or the 'exiles of Saint-Helena, Las Cases, Montholon, O'Meara. This project