A Pair of Princesses Visit Grand Papa
[BILLARDON DE SAUVIGNY, Edme-Louis.]
Voyage de Madame et de Madame Victoire. Lunéville, Messuy, [1761].
[bound with:]
[FILLION DE CHARIGNEU.] Journal de ce qui s’est passé à l’arrivée, et pendant le séjour de Mesdames de France, Adélaïde et Victoire, à Lunéville, au château de la Malgrange et à Nancy. Nancy, la veuve et Claude Leseure, [1761].
[and:]
[FILLION DE CHARIGNEU.] Rélation du second voyage de Mesdames de France en Lorraine en 1762. Nancy, chez Haener, [1762].
[and:]
[LA BLACHERE.] Rélation du second voyage de Mesdames Adélaïde et Victoire, depuis leur départ de Plombiéres pour venir à Lunéville et Nancy, jusqu’à leur retour à Plombiéres. Dédiée à Monseigneur le Duc de Choiseuil ... Lunéville, C. F. Messuy, [1762].
Four works in one vol., 8vo; I: pp. [4], 25 (i.e. 28), without engraved plate, title-page dusty, uncut, some margins short (not touching text), ink note and calculations to last page; II: pp. 84; III: pp. 119, [1, blank], dedication in civilité type, erased ex libris to title, a few marginal annotations (trimmed); IV: pp. [10], 89, [1], light stain to p. 4; good copies in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments with black morocco lettering-piece, marbled edges and endpapers, green silk place marker; tailband wanting, corners worn, some rubbing to joints and boards; upper cover lettered in gilt, within gilt frame, ‘Nicolas Fr. baron de Metz chevalier de Saint-Louis procureur general près la cour royale de Nancy’, eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of ‘Mr Mengin lieutenant général du bailliage de Nancy’ and modern collector’s book label to front pastedown.
Four rare works describing visits by the princesses Adélaïde and Victoire, daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska, to Lunéville and Nancy, in northeastern France, in 1761 and 1762, to see their grandfather Stanisław I Leszczyński, former King of Poland and then Duke of Lorraine.
The first piece, written by the poet and playwright Edme-Louis Billardon de Sauvigny (1738–1812) while serving in Stanisław’s bodyguard, is a fanciful melange of verse and prose, opening with the offended Seine complaining of the princesses’ departure from its great banks to visit some insignificant, faraway rivulet.
The second and third works, journals of the princesses’ visits by Fillion de Charigneu, a lieutenant in Stanisław’s troop of guards, provide vivid descriptions of the crowds in fancy dress, the music, the fireworks, the triumphal arches, the dinners, the balls, and the succession of audiences and entertainments to which Adélaïde and Victoire were treated. The final piece is notable for recording the numerous addresses, prosaic and poetic, to which the patient princesses were subjected during their second visit (and which perhaps deterred them from making a third).
Provenance: Nicolas François de Metz (1721–1769) served as an avocat at the royal court in Nancy. Jean-Baptiste Mengin was another notable Nancéien; his bookplate is by Dominique Collin, who engraved the mausolea of both Stanisław I and Louis XV.
I. No copies traced in the UK and only two in North America (Harvard, Thomas Fisher Library). II. No copies found in the UK or US. III. No copies traced in the UK and only one in the US (Michigan State). IV. No copies found in the UK or US.