Armand Dutacq (1810-1856), publisher, press owner & Paul - Lot 189

Armand Dutacq (1810-1856), publisher, press owner & Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881), writer, literary critic. L.A.S. from Dutacq with note A.S. from Saint-Victor, August 4, 1852, 1p in-8. To publisher Alexandre Houssiaux. "I beg M. Houssiaux to give M. Paul de Saint-Victor a complete copy of La Comédie humaine. For Mme de Balzac Dutacq Received from M. Houssiaux a copy of La Comédie humaine by M. de Balzac. Paul de St Victor". Relations between Dutacq and Balzac began in July 1834, with a letter of protest sent by the latter to the manager of the newspaper Le Siècle. It wasn't long before the two men became close friends, and frequented each other's company. After Balzac's death in 1850, Dutacq became a highly efficient and devoted literary agent for Mme Ève de Balzac. Houssiaux, a former clerk at the publisher Furne, had, in 1846, bought the latter's rights to publish La Comédie humaine. As for Paul de Saint-Victor, theater critic for the newspaper Le Pays, he had written several glowing articles on Balzac's theatrical works. Mme de Balzac had written to Armand Dutacq: "Dear Monsieur Dutacq. My daughter and I wept this morning when we read the moving feuilleton in Le Pays. How sweet & beneficent it was for us to feel our dear departed, our immortal absent, understood & appreciated by a man of heart & such remarkable talent. You undoubtedly know Mr de Saint-Victor, and I beg you to shake his hand, which so nobly writes such beautiful things, & tell him that as soon as I am a little calmer I wish to thank him myself & at home for the sweet tears he has made me shed, for in such cases a look, a gesture, an inflection of the voice are more eloquent than anything that can be said with the pen or the verb". A fine document.