[MANUSCRIT] - [BERTEAUX, Angèle (épouse Guiard)] "Souvenirs - Lot 49

[MANUSCRIT] - [BERTEAUX, Angèle (épouse Guiard)] "Souvenirs de femme de 1900 à 1920" (Memories of a woman from 1900 to 1920). Chatou - Paris - Basque Country, 1900-1920. In French, handwritten in ink on paper. Small in-4 (175 x 225 mm), contemporary binding, green half-percaline with corners (bound by Marrim Pouey in Pau). Covered boards with speckled paper, smooth spine, tinted edges. Booklet of 92 handwritten leaves. Binding worn but solid, small loss to lower headpiece. Good condition inside. Manuscript written in one hand in black or blue ink, in a regular and neat handwriting. Numerous autograph corrections and erasures, interlinear additions attesting to careful editing. Autobiographical manuscript written in the first person by [Angèle] Berteaux (1878-1937), daughter of Maurice Berteaux (1852-1911), politician of the Third Republic, several times deputy for Yvelines and Minister of War. This is probably a preparatory manuscript for a personal memoir, with no known record of publication. The development is structured chronologically into several major autobiographical sequences. The first years of the century - Travels and bourgeois youth. At the turn of 1900, Angèle Berteaux, a young woman of 22 from a large Republican family, discovers the world in the elegance and freedom still permitted to the haute bourgeoisie of the Belle Époque. Just married to Maxime Guiard (1874-1950), a stockbroker, she traveled to Italy and Switzerland. In Bellagio, she describes the shores of Lake Como as a paradise of light: flower-filled terraces, palm trees, silver reflections on the water, strolls through gardens and hotels. She marveled at the crossing of the Gotthard Pass. In Interlaken, she discovers the majesty of the Alps, the gentleness of the valleys and the serenity of resort life. These pages, written with a vibrant pen, blend wonder and introspection: the beauty of the landscape is already awakening Angèle's deep sense of the fragility of happiness and the passage of time. Domestic life and the first cracks. Back in Chatou, then in Paris, she entered the life of the Republican upper middle class. Her father, Maurice Berteaux, MP for Yvelines, played an important role in the political and military life of the Third Republic. Around her gravitated cultivated, republican and patriotic circles. But her married life was slowly deteriorating. The marriage she believed to be founded on trust and esteem became weighed down by silences, disagreements and estrangements. Around 1913, the couple decided to break up. Angèle initiated separation proceedings, soon followed by divorce - an act still frowned upon in the society of the time. She describes the court proceedings, the role of the presiding judge, the child custody negotiations, the humiliations mixed with relief. These pages, imbued with painful lucidity, paint a rare portrait of the destiny of bourgeois women under the Third Republic. 1911 - The tragic death of Maurice Berteaux One of the most memorable moments in Maurice Berteaux's life is the death of his father on May 21, 1911, at the Issy-les-Moulineaux airshow. The aviator Emile Train lost control of his aircraft and crashed into the VIPs in attendance. Maurice Berteaux, then Minister of War, was killed instantly. In a sober, vibrant style, Angèle recalls the shock of the announcement, the scene at the first-aid post, the silent dignity before the coffin on display at the Ministry, and then the state funeral, shrouded in intense public emotion. This bereavement marked a decisive break in her life. She saw in it the end of an era - that of republican confidence before the storm of 1914. After a hiatus in her writing between 1913 and 1920, Angèle resumed her notebook in September 1920 with a more assertive style and a more mature view of her last years. She was now 40 years old. This is a retrospective account written after the war. 1914 - War and exodus When war broke out on August 2, 1914, Angèle was in Paris. Mobilization transformed the city into a tumult of anguish and fervor. Faced with the enemy advance, she joins her family in the South-West: Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pau, Béarn. The exodus, the crowded train stations, the convoys of soldiers, the fear of news from the front - all this fills her pages with poignant tension. Her husband, mobilized, remains distant; leave is rare, letters colder than ever. Angèle's emotional isolation increases as the war drags on. She describes life in the rear: the alerts, the bombardments of Paris, the food shortages, the women's work to replace the absent men, and above all this waiting, this suspension.