Letter – Empress Marie-Louise to Comtesse de Luçay 13 July 1812

Description

Autograph letter signed by Empress Marie-Louise to Jeanne-Charlotte, Comtesse de Luçay, written at Würzburg on 13 July 1812. Written in French, the Empress discusses preparations for her imminent return to Paris, giving instructions for the completion of a lace dress and a white percale cashmere-style dress decorated with small palmettes. She comments upon the condition of her gowns after the long journey, her intention to travel some 170 leagues in four days, and her eagerness to be reunited with her son, the King of Rome. Marie-Louise also mentions a painful arm wrapped in black bandages and affectionately reproaches the Comtesse for failing to send news of Monsieur de Luçay. Signed with her characteristic warm closing, “Votre très dévouée, Marie Louise.”

Provenance

Marie-Louise → Comtesse de Luçay, 2 November 1811
Retained with the Luçay correspondence
Dr Lucien Graux, who published the correspondence in facsimile in 1930
Graux sale, Hôtel Drouot, 18 June 1958, Sale VII, lot 127
later Aristophil collection
Drouot Estimations, 19 November 2020, lot 749, as part of the bound group of 25 documents; unsold. The 2020 catalogue explicitly cites the Graux 1958 provenance.

History & Context

Written at Würzburg on 13 July 1812, this letter belongs to the opening weeks of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Marie-Louise had accompanied the Emperor eastwards to Dresden in May, where the French imperial court assembled amid the final diplomatic and military preparations for the campaign, before Napoleon departed to take command of the Grande Armée. While he crossed the Niemen into Russia on 24 June, Marie-Louise remained for a time with her family in Prague before beginning her return journey to France. Her letter, written while travelling westwards, provides an intimate counterpoint to the immense military operation unfolding in the east: she speaks of interrupted communications caused by the war, dresses and travelling clothes, the fatigue of the journey, and above all her eagerness to return to Paris and see her young son, the King of Rome. Within a few months the Russian campaign would end in catastrophe, making this quiet, personal letter a particularly evocative document from the moment when Napoleon’s great invasion was still in its early stages.

English translation:
Würzburg, 12 July 1812

I have just received your letter of the 8th of July, and I hasten to take advantage of what is still the last day on which I shall be at leisure to assure you that I await with impatience the day when I shall be able, in person, to tell you of the affection I bear you. More than once during this time since I first experienced it one winter, it has been interrupted, like all the other joys occasioned by war, because that was the only secure means of communication with Paris.
The dresses of which Mlle Godefroy spoke to you in a letter which has gone astray were the lace dress, of which the bodice had already been begun when I departed, and the cashmere dress in schallie, made of white percale with a border of small palmettes, which I had purchased only a few days before my departure. I would ask you to have both completed upon my return.
I am arriving with dresses which you will find very crushed, but after such a long journey it could hardly be otherwise. Still, you will see that the satin mantles, the fine dresses, and the travelling clothes have been very well preserved. I intend to leave here tomorrow, and I shall be in Paris on the fourth day, unless I become too fatigued from travelling 170 leagues in that time; in that case I shall stop for a day at Mainz and will not arrive until Saturday. Yet the pleasure of seeing my son again, and all the people whom I left in Paris, will not permit me to delay.
I have, however, a great pain in one arm, and I am wrapped in black bandages which fortunately do not look too dreadful on me. If you do not speak to me at all about the health of Monsieur de Lucay, you will permit me to scold you for such negligence, for you see that I am obliged to complain of it.
I beg you to believe in the sincerity of the sentiments with which I remain,

Your very devoted,

Marie Louise

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