Gustave Doré – derrickjknight

Droll Tales 30

By returning to the “Beautiful Imperia” whose tale introduces these stories, Honoré de Balzac has travelled full circle in the last, “The Married Life of Fair Imperia”, which tracks our heroine’s transformation from haughty beauty making the most from her charms, certainly not freely given, yet widely distributed among the rich, into a faithful wife in love for the very first time.

From continuous festivities she turns to staunch constancy with her equally devoted, much younger, husband who she does not wish to see her grow old, despite his conviction that, as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony’s friend Enobarbus, “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”.

I will say no more for fear of spoiling the author’s swansong.

Mervyn Peake has produced one drawing for the Folio Society edition;

and Gustave Doré provides his own veritable swansong for The Bibliophilist Society.

Further details of the publications are given in https://derrickjknight.com/2023/01/06/droll-tales-1/except that there are no pictures here by Jean de Bosschère as I do not have any of the third Decade by him.

Droll Tales 29 Complete Text

In response to popular request I am happy to provide the last page of Balzac’s Tale ‘Innocence’.

For ease of reference I am showing all three pages together.

Droll Tales 29

This, the shortest tale in the collection, occupying not much more than two pages of text, has no illustration in The Folio Society edition and just one small one in The Bibliophilist Society’s production.

It is, to my mind, the neatest gem with a play on two kinds of “Innocence”.

Here are the drawings of Gustave Doré for the second society above.

Droll Tales 27

The Folio Society entitle story number 27 in this series “About a Beggar known as Old Parchemins”. The Bibliophilist Society adds a hyphen to their version, in Par-Chemins thus clarifying the origin of the nickname which could be translated as “about the roads”, because that is where this homeless vagrant was always to be found.

I find this a story of two halves, in that, after squandering an inherited fortune this man wandered the roads studying “philosophy in a bird school” where we are treated to the author’s straightforward delightful descriptions of the lanes and their avian residents. We are then shocked, as was his sleeping victim by this aged gent’s sudden rape of a young woman, and the familiar prose of double entendre takes over.

We have learned about Parchemins’s success in gambling with dice; was he to succeed in gambling with his sexual prowess to save him from the gallows?

Here is Mervyn Peake’s illustration for The Folio Society:

and those of Gustave Doré in the other publication.

Droll Tales 26

In this sixth story of the third Decade of Honoré de Balzac’s humorous tales, entitled by The Bibliophilist Society “In which it is demonstrated that Fortune is always Feminine”, the writer seems to have drawn the general from the particular.

False friendship, deception, and trickery are the tools of rivals for Royal pleasure – that of the King and of the Queen. It seems to me that no-one really comes off best anyway, certainly not the fair lady.

The Folio Society did not include any drawings from Mervyn Peake, so, given that I don’t have any from Jean de Bosschère

we have only Gustave Doré’s interpretation, in The Bibliophilist Society’s publication, dated 1874, just 37 years after first publication by Gosselin of Paris, and the first in English. At some point the volume has been skilfully rebound, but the pages are clear and undamaged.

Droll Tales 25

A short tale with the author’s customary salacious double entendres this story describes how the young lady, with the help of the maid, outwits the magistrate attempting to wriggle out of a finding of rape because of the perpetrator’s wealth and standing at Court. The Folio Society entitles the tale “How the Portillon Beauty Scored over the Magistrate”; for The Bibliophilist Society it is “How The Pretty Maid of Portillon convinced her Judge”.

Here is Mervyn Peake’s illustration for the first of these;

and Gustave Doré’s for the second.

Droll Tales 24

“Bertha the Penitent” according to The Bibliophilist Society is the 24th story in Balzac’s set; The Folio Society entitle it “Magdalene Bertha”.

Bertha’s first conception, within marriage to a much older man, was not technically immaculate, but it might as well have been as she had no real idea of how it had happened, and was certainly ignorant of any sexual delights. With less suggestive wordplay than is his wont, the author relates how the very young woman was tricked into learning the joy of sex, and the inevitable consequence. Shocked to learn the truth of her behaviour, she forces herself and her lover into celibacy over the next dozen years. I will not report the eventual outcome.

Here is Mervyn Peake’s drawing for the Folio Society:

and those of Gustave Doré for the Bibliophilists

Droll Tales 23

This third story of the second Decade of Balzac’s tales, entitled by the publishers of the only illustrated version I have “About The Monk Amador, Who Was A Glorious Abbot Of Turpenay”.

We are told of conflicts between church and state arising from that between two rival popes. This was manifested by hatred of the “rough” Lord of Candé for local monasteries. He therefore tormented any priests who encroached upon his land.

Amador, “a pilfered, a loiterer, and a bad soldier of the ecclesiastical militia”, was the only monk who dared to cross his lands. We learn of the strength and trickery with which he outwitted the temporal lord, and saved his Abbey.

The Folio Society edition bears no drawing by Mervyn Peake, and I do not have the third Decade illustrated by Jean de Bosschère.

Gustave Doré more than compensates for this lack in The Bibliophilist Society’s publication, dated 1874, just 37 years after first publication by Gosselin of Paris, and the first in English. At some point the volume has been skilfully rebound, but the pages are clear and undamaged.

Droll Tales 22

Demonstrating that The Folio Society have fully understood the wordplay romp that is the story they have entitled “Of a Justiciary who did not Recall Certain Parts”, they differ from, “Concerning A Provost Who Did Not Recognise Things”, the version of The Bibliophilist Society.

This tale of trickery perpetrated on the victim of cuckoldry is packed with Balzac’s double entendres, puns and other wordplay. The translator has retained “la voir” and “l’avoir” (to see her and to have her) in the original French.

Here is Mervyn Peake’s Folio Society drawing;

and here those of Gustave Doré for the Bibliophilist Society.

Droll Tales 21

For the first story in the third Decade of his series of short works, Honoré de Balzac was to return to the theme of sublimation of love into art in the last of the second Decade, but with a different emphasis. “Desperate Love” had been about a young man who poured his desires into his excellent sculpting because he could not manage with a woman; in “Persistent Love” as entitled by the Folio Society, or the Bibliophilist Society’s “Despair in Love”, the goldsmith absorbed himself with world class intricate jewellery giving him no thought for sexual involvement until his own fourth decade.

He fell for a young woman who, as a serf, was owned by the Abbey, as would become any husband she chose. The two lovers remained steadfastly secular, especially as the Abbot tested them to limit, refusing to make any exception to the rules. A promise was made between him and the jeweller.

Did either keep his side of the bargain? As is my wont I won’t give any more details save to say that “great love triumphs over everything”.

Here is Mervyn Peak’s illustration for The Folio Society;

and Gustave Doré’s set for The Bibliophilist Society.

Further details of the publications are given in https://derrickjknight.com/2023/01/06/droll-tales-1/ except that there are no pictures here by Jean de Bosschère as I do not have any of the third Decade by him.