Thomas Jefferson's Copy

[Thomas Jefferson] [Jean] Henri Masers de Latude

Mémoires de Henri Masers de Latude, Ancien Ingénieur, Prisonnier pendant trent-cinq années à la Bastille et à Vincennes, sous le nom de Daury; a Charneton sous celui de Danger; et à Bicêtre, sous celui de Jedor. [Signed by Latude] [Thomas Jefferson’s Copy]

Paris: Chez Latude / Desenne et Denne / Veuve Lejay, 1793. Very Good. Item #47091

Paris: Chez Latude, rue de Grenelle, à l'abbaye de Panthemont, Desenne et Denne, Libraires au Palais de l'Egalité, et chez les Marchands de Nouveautés. De l’imprimerie de la veuve Lejay, 1793. Nouvelle Edition, revue, corrigée et augmentée, par le citoyen Thiery.

Octavo (20cm); two volumes bound in one; full contemporary tree calf recently rebacked to style retaining original red gilt spine label, new endpapers; xvi,265,[1]; 187pp.; engraved portrait frontispieces of Latude and Mme. Legros at head of each volume respectively (collated complete). Boards a bit worn at corners, else a clean and sound example expertly restored. Signed by Latude on pp. [ii] beneath a note stating that all copies will be signed by the author to deter the dissemination of pirated copies.

Provenance: The copy of Thomas Jefferson with his cursive “T” in front of the “I” signature on p. 129 of Vol. I. With the slightly later (ca. 1830) ownership signature of John Redman Coxe, M.D. (1773-1864).

The popular and highly entertaining memoirs of Jean Henri Latude (1725-1805), who famously spent thirty-five years languishing in prison, escaping, getting caught, and being thrown back in. Latude got into his first and most famous scrape as a young man, in 1749. In a misguided attempt to solicit the favors of the Marquise de Pompadour, the young engineer sent her a box of poison, followed by a letter from Latude warning the Marquise of the plot against her life. For his troubles the Marquise threw him into the Bastille. “He was later transferred to Vincennes, whence he escaped in 1750. Retaken and imprisoned in the Bastille, he made a second brief escape in 1756. He was transferred to Vincennes in 1764, and the next year made a third escape and was a third time recaptured. He was put in the madhouse at Malesherbes in 1775, and discharged in 1777 on condition that he should retire to his native town. He remained in Paris and was again imprisoned.” Eventually, a Madame Legros, whose portrait graces the head of Vol. II of this edition, having read Latude’s early memoirs, took up the cause and secured his indefinite release in 1784. “He was extolled and pensioned during the Revolution, and in 1793 the convention compelled the heirs of Mme de Pompadour to pay him 60,000 francs damages” (the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition). This money probably allowed Latude to self-publish this updated edition of his Memoires, which was printed by the Widow Lejay.

Thomas Jefferson first became aware of this intriguing figure in 1786 when he was serving as the United States’ Minister to France, a post he held from 1784 to 1789. The earliest reference Jefferson makes to his friendship with Latude can be found in a 1786 letter addressed to Maria Cosway: "De Latude comes sometimes to take family soupe with me, and entertains me with anecdotes of his five and thirty years imprisonment. How fertile is the mind of man which can make the Bastille and Dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes. You know this was for making four verses on Mme. de Pompadour. But I think you told me you did not know the verses. They were these. ‘Sans esprit, sans sentiment, Sans etre belle, ni neuve, En France on peut avoir le premier amant: Pompadour en est l’epreuve.’ I have read the memoir of his three escapes.” Evidently Latude failed to mention to Jefferson about the box of poison. As the Encyclopedia Britannica cattily estimates, “[Latude’s Memoires] is full of lies and misrepresentations, but had great vogue at the time of the French Revolution.”

It is not quite clear when exactly Latude gave this copy of his Memoires to Jefferson. In an 1805 letter that appeared at auction in 2013 Jefferson describes receiving the Memoires shortly before Latude’s death that same year: “Poor old Latude, who passed more than a third of the last century in dungeons and in irons, whom I believe you knew, died about a month ago. Not long before his death he left with me two of his books, containing the memoirs of his captivity and two prints of his picture, requesting that I should forward the whole to you. I think that you should present one of them to Congress. I thereby comply with one of the last and most earnest desires of this singular old man. It may be of some importance to humanity, under our mildest and best of governments, to know that there has existed a government in the old world equal to confining a man 35 years, without being regularly judged and condemned and at the same time to behold the resemblance of the man, who was capable of undergoing such a punishment without any decay of either health or spirits.”

There also exists, however, a letter from Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, a leading medical doctor and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence. The letter provides evidence that Latude actually gave this volume to Jefferson as early as 1802 when Jefferson loaned the volume to Rush to use for his research on the diseases of the mind. (Rush’s text was not completed until 1812.) In 1815 Jefferson famously sold his library to found the Library of Congress, though this volume was absent from the sale, presumably because of the personal nature of its presence in his library. The census of Jefferson’s retirement library lists this on p. 10, item 84. After Jefferson’s death his library was auctioned off to appease his creditors and Latude’s Memoires appears in the auction catalog as item 80. The volume was then purchased by medical doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania John Redman Coxe (1773-1864), who had studied under the aforementioned Benjamin Rush. An avid bibliophile in his own right, Coxe built one of the largest private libraries in the country boasting 15,000 volumes. When he died in the inopportune year of 1864, his library was auctioned off and this copy of Latude’s Memoires, with such an esteemed association, got lost in the mayhem of the Civil War. The Dictionary of American Biography notes that many of the volumes from Coxe’s library were purchased by another esteemed medical doctor and bibliophile, Samuel D. Gross, who then left his library to the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, now part of Drexel University. However, we find no evidence that this copy ever made its way there. There are no further auction records of this copy to trace provenance after Coxe’s death. It has only now just resurfaced out of a private Maryland collection, the Jefferson provenance unknown to the former owners until we collated it.

Price: $50,000.00