DESBORDES-VALMORE (Marceline). Pauvres fleurs. Paris, Dumont - Lot 432

DESBORDES-VALMORE (Marceline). Pauvres fleurs. Paris, Dumont, 1839. In-8, [2] f., 333 p., [1] f. errata, contemporary red half-basin, smooth spine, gilt title and fleurons, rich cold cathedral decoration, cold foliate frieze to boards, marbled edges (binding rubbed). The work was used as a herbarium by its owner: some of the flowers are preserved, others are missing. On a loose leaf (laid paper): Copy of verses by Hyacinthe Valmore, known as Ondine (1821-1853), daughter of poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, titled "A mon père", aged 11, to Lamartine, whose prose she admired (and vice versa): "To my father / O Lamartine! O you whom heaven has closed from all that was pure and sweet! Se peut-il! Can it be! Your gentle, serious soul is sad for life and for having loved! Is it sad to love? When your divine lyre cradled the joyful child by your adored heart, death looked on: with its prickly thorn, it sought the heart of the wept shrub. / Father console yourself: your beloved daughter has ascended where death only enters disarmed, it's god who wanted her, it's god who will love her thus, weep no more, he will give her back to you! " She thus evokes Lamartine's loss of his daughter Julia, who died in Beirut in 1832.