Alfred de Musset - Lettre Autographe Signée Inédite - 1841

Aldred de MUSSET, Rare Autograph Letter Signed Unpublished to his best friend Alfred Tattet. 1 page with sending seal. August 7, 1841.

“My dear Alfred,
I cannot come to see you because I was too embarrassed to tell you that I do not yet have my affair, which is going as badly as possible, but of which I will swallow the most proper disgust I can manage. When it is over, I will come to see you and talk with you about my sister Scheherazade’s death.”

In the biography of Musset, though substantial, by Franck Lestringant, there is nothing that could directly explain what Musset means by his “affair.” No doubt it concerns health problems: according to Pléiade, in 1840 Musset was gravely ill; followed by a “long period of very low literary production.”

We do know, however, in what frame of mind he was in that October 1841 month:
“In his letter of June 28, Alfred was still writing to Mme Jaubert about resuming Hernani, which he hadn’t seen, about his passion for chess, which consumed his days and weeks: ‘You should learn some game, I assure you, whist or honchets - it’s very calming and very healthy in summer.’

Thus flowed that useless summer. On July 23, Tattet wrote to Guttinguer: ‘I haven’t seen Alfred for a very long time. His big task is to decide whether, stretched out in his wide chair, he will decide to put on the mantelpiece his left leg rather than his right leg. That is, you’ll admit, very important. Every day, to whet his appetite, Alfred would lounge in Chinese baths, “these poor baths always Chinese” whom he said, in one of his notes to Tattet: “Only they can give me the courage to tell you that I am in it.” After lunch, in order to be “in it” and not to come out, he would drink his absinthe while pushing the pawn toward six or seven o’clock. Then he would have his supper in gallant company, and likewise go to bed.” (Alfred de Musset, Franck Lestrignant, Flammarion, p. 445)

If a few letters from Musset to Tattet have already been published, this one remains unpublished and helps illuminate a relationship of importance, Musset’s correspondence often being reduced to that with Georges Sand.
Or, “Alfred Tattet (1809-1856) was one of the dearest and most faithful friends of Alfred de Musset, the dearest and most faithful of them all no doubt. It was his admiration for Musset’s poetry that was the origin of their friendship” (Pléiade, Complete Poems, p. 650).
To prove it, Musset dedicated four poems to his friend Tattet, reproduced in the Pléiade:
“A mon Ami Alfred T,” p. 129 of the Complete Poems. May 1832.
“A ALF. T,” p. 382. August 10, 1838.
“A ALF. T,” p. 436 May 17, 1843.
“To Alfred Tattet,” p. 494. November 1842.

The relationship between the two friends today attracts renewed interest. After purchasing at auction a letter from Musset to Tattet, Dominique Enon has just restored Tattet’s grave. A tribute was paid to him a few weeks ago by members of the Academy of Arts Sciences and Letters.”