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TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis de (1805-1859). Fifty-eight autograph letters signed (one incomplete, lacking conclusion) to Nassau William Senior, mostly Paris and London, 24 March 1834 - 15 March 1859 (most incompletely dated), in French, altogether approximately 184 pages, 8vo and 4to, address panels, traces of seals (annotations, chiefly of dates, in two later hands, presumably Senior's daughter, Mrs Simpson, and his grandson); SENIOR, Nassau William (1790-1864). Two autograph letters signed to Alexis de Tocqueville, London, 15 February 1838 and 20 December 1842, 6 ½ pages, 8vo and 3 pages, 4to; and a letter by Marie de Tocqueville to Mrs Senior, n.d., and two related letters; all the letters mounted on the leaves of a late 19th-century album, 4to.
Provenance. Mary Charlotte Simpson ('Minnie', daughter of Nassau William Senior); ownership inscription of 'Walter Nassau Senior [grandson] arranged May 1894'; by descent to the present owner.
The recently re-discovered originals of the letters from Tocqueville to one of his close friends and most important correspondents, including twelve which are unpublished.
Tocqueville, a great Anglophile, met Senior in London in 1833, after he had returned from his examination of the American penitentiaries, and corresponded with him until his death. The present letters thus span almost the entire period of their friendship apart from several intervals for which no letters appear to exist. Sharing liberal views and a common interest in parliamentary democracy, the subjects of their letters include all the most topical issues of the time.
'Il me semble que chez vous la Révolution (en prenant ce mot dans un sens progressif et tranquille) marche toujours; ou plutôt la Révolution me parait avoir été faite le jour ou vous avez introduit la classe la plus Démocratique de la nation dans le corps électoral. Chez nous pour le moment au moins, tout semble rentrer dans l'ordre habituel des choses, excepté l'agriculture qui souffre un peu, tout le reste prospère d'une manière surprenante ... L'activité presque fébrile qui nous caractérise en tout temps quitte la politique pour se porter vers le bien matériel' (27 January 1836)
'Nous sommes en présence d'une assemblée vieillie, dépuissante, aux travaux de laquelle on n'a aucun intérêt à prendre part, et l'arrivée prochaine d'une nouvelle assemblée dont le véritable esprit est encore un mystère et dont l'approche tient toute la machine politique en suspens ... La France présente en ce moment le spectacle le plus singulier, et le plus inattendu pour le plus grand nombre qui se pourrait concevoir ... Savez vous quelle est la conséquence actuelle de cette Révolution ultra-Démocratique qui a étendu le droit de suffrage au del de toutes les limites connues même en Amérique? Vous auriez assurément peine à le deviner. La conséquence actuelle de cette Révolution a été donnée aux classes riches et même aux anciennes classes nobles une influence politique qu'elles avaient perdus depuis soixante ans' (8 March 1849)
'Nous assistons sur tout le Continent à une réaction si génerale et si irrésistible contre la démocratie et la liberté que je ne puis croire que l'influence de cet état universel des esprits s'arrête absolument à la Manche et que vous ne soyez pas destinés à voir se produire quelque chose d'analogue chez vous, autant du moins que heureusement pour vous, il est possible de faire' (25 March 1852).
A number of Tocqueville's letters comment on publications ('votre important rapport sur la loi des pauvres'), parliamentary papers and examples of practice relevant to commissions in France; a letter of 1838 refers to the labour of completing his great work on America: 'Le sujet est si vaste et beaucoup plus difficile et infiniment plus étendu que je ne supposais lorsque j'ai entrepris de le traiter'; an interesting exchange in December 1842 discusses the responsibility of the head of government (following the refusal of the French Assembly to ratify the treaty for the abolition of slavery which France had signed the year before), Senior's reply opens 'I fear some of what I must say may appear unfriendly or presumptuous ... I do not believe that a parallel case to M. Guizot's has ever occurred in England or ever could occur'. The letters also include introductions, references to eminent friends including Lord Lansdowne, and family news.
After Tocqueville's death in 1859 Senior intended to offer his widow the originals of his letters with copies of his own journals referring to him, but the two volumes published under the editorship of Gustave de Beaumont in 1861 did not include them. Senior then entrusted his daughter 'Minnie' with the English translation of the letters, and the records of their discussions. She published them after his death (Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, 1834-1859, ed. M.C. Simpson (1872), omitting a few passages mostly of personal matters. The originals of Senior's journals and 46 of his letters to Tocqueville are now in the National Library of Wales.
The originals of the letters in the present album were believed by the recent editors of Tocqueville's correspondence with Senior to have been lost (Oeuvres Completes, vol. VI, part 2, Correspondance Anglaise Gallimard, 1991). The edition is based almost entirely on copies made by Gustave de Beaumont in the Archives Tocqueville or on his published text, and on 'Minnie' Simpson's English translations, rendered back into French.
The discovery of the original letters therefore offers for the first time the possibility of examining the complete texts in autograph including the passages altered or omitted by Tocqueville's 19th century editors.
Provenance. Mary Charlotte Simpson ('Minnie', daughter of Nassau William Senior); ownership inscription of 'Walter Nassau Senior [grandson] arranged May 1894'; by descent to the present owner.
The recently re-discovered originals of the letters from Tocqueville to one of his close friends and most important correspondents, including twelve which are unpublished.
Tocqueville, a great Anglophile, met Senior in London in 1833, after he had returned from his examination of the American penitentiaries, and corresponded with him until his death. The present letters thus span almost the entire period of their friendship apart from several intervals for which no letters appear to exist. Sharing liberal views and a common interest in parliamentary democracy, the subjects of their letters include all the most topical issues of the time.
'Il me semble que chez vous la Révolution (en prenant ce mot dans un sens progressif et tranquille) marche toujours; ou plutôt la Révolution me parait avoir été faite le jour ou vous avez introduit la classe la plus Démocratique de la nation dans le corps électoral. Chez nous pour le moment au moins, tout semble rentrer dans l'ordre habituel des choses, excepté l'agriculture qui souffre un peu, tout le reste prospère d'une manière surprenante ... L'activité presque fébrile qui nous caractérise en tout temps quitte la politique pour se porter vers le bien matériel' (27 January 1836)
'Nous sommes en présence d'une assemblée vieillie, dépuissante, aux travaux de laquelle on n'a aucun intérêt à prendre part, et l'arrivée prochaine d'une nouvelle assemblée dont le véritable esprit est encore un mystère et dont l'approche tient toute la machine politique en suspens ... La France présente en ce moment le spectacle le plus singulier, et le plus inattendu pour le plus grand nombre qui se pourrait concevoir ... Savez vous quelle est la conséquence actuelle de cette Révolution ultra-Démocratique qui a étendu le droit de suffrage au del de toutes les limites connues même en Amérique? Vous auriez assurément peine à le deviner. La conséquence actuelle de cette Révolution a été donnée aux classes riches et même aux anciennes classes nobles une influence politique qu'elles avaient perdus depuis soixante ans' (8 March 1849)
'Nous assistons sur tout le Continent à une réaction si génerale et si irrésistible contre la démocratie et la liberté que je ne puis croire que l'influence de cet état universel des esprits s'arrête absolument à la Manche et que vous ne soyez pas destinés à voir se produire quelque chose d'analogue chez vous, autant du moins que heureusement pour vous, il est possible de faire' (25 March 1852).
A number of Tocqueville's letters comment on publications ('votre important rapport sur la loi des pauvres'), parliamentary papers and examples of practice relevant to commissions in France; a letter of 1838 refers to the labour of completing his great work on America: 'Le sujet est si vaste et beaucoup plus difficile et infiniment plus étendu que je ne supposais lorsque j'ai entrepris de le traiter'; an interesting exchange in December 1842 discusses the responsibility of the head of government (following the refusal of the French Assembly to ratify the treaty for the abolition of slavery which France had signed the year before), Senior's reply opens 'I fear some of what I must say may appear unfriendly or presumptuous ... I do not believe that a parallel case to M. Guizot's has ever occurred in England or ever could occur'. The letters also include introductions, references to eminent friends including Lord Lansdowne, and family news.
After Tocqueville's death in 1859 Senior intended to offer his widow the originals of his letters with copies of his own journals referring to him, but the two volumes published under the editorship of Gustave de Beaumont in 1861 did not include them. Senior then entrusted his daughter 'Minnie' with the English translation of the letters, and the records of their discussions. She published them after his death (Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, 1834-1859, ed. M.C. Simpson (1872), omitting a few passages mostly of personal matters. The originals of Senior's journals and 46 of his letters to Tocqueville are now in the National Library of Wales.
The originals of the letters in the present album were believed by the recent editors of Tocqueville's correspondence with Senior to have been lost (Oeuvres Completes, vol. VI, part 2, Correspondance Anglaise Gallimard, 1991). The edition is based almost entirely on copies made by Gustave de Beaumont in the Archives Tocqueville or on his published text, and on 'Minnie' Simpson's English translations, rendered back into French.
The discovery of the original letters therefore offers for the first time the possibility of examining the complete texts in autograph including the passages altered or omitted by Tocqueville's 19th century editors.
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