3. Back to Didier

[To access the article in pdf format, click here here. To read it online, follow the page navigation].

Guizot returned to France in July 1849. With Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's path to the Empire, he realised that a return to active politics was difficult to envisage. From then on, he devoted himself mainly to intellectual work during the last quarter of his life, and began by renewing his acquaintance with Pierre-Paul Didier, who had basically behaved well towards him for ages without always being paid in return. No doubt relations between them were never trusting, Guizot preferring to deal with him through the intermediary of his former chief of staff and since then all-rounder as well as friend of the family, Auguste Génie, whose delicacy was not matched by his devotion. Didier found it painful to have to beg for a personal letter or, much more rarely, an appointment with the author. However, at the age of 63, the indefatigable Guizot was determined to bring the work in progress to a close, and to open up new ones.

This is the meaning of the agreement signed with Didier on 10 July 1850, covering at the same time no less than six works, some already published in part, others still to be written. The first of these is a historical study of Monk, subtitled «Chute de la République et rétablissement de la monarchie en Angleterre, en 1660». This 400-page book, intended in Didier's mind to complement the’History of the Revolution in England which, as we shall see, he was determined to recover, was the expanded and enlarged version of an article published in 1837 in the French magazine. The situation in which France found itself in 1850 gave this work an obvious topicality, which the author, in a preface written as early as October, did not conceal: would Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte remain President of a French Republic, or would he re-establish the Empire?^[1] ? So the publisher paid the considerable sum of 15,000 francs for the literary property of this book, which was reprinted seven times in different formats until 1874. In the same move, but for only 6,000 francs, Didier bought a volume of’Biographical studies on the English Revolution, collection, consisting of revised and expanded entries for the Memoirs relating to the English Revolution published in 1823-1825, and supplemented by others. Another repetition is the modern history course of 1820-1822, published in its time as it was delivered and without correction by the teacher by the Journal of public courses, and bought back by Didier to make two volumes of a The origins of representative government in Europe, revised and completed by Guizot, for 10,000 francs. The two volumes were in fact published at the end of 1851, not without controversy, as the publisher of the Essays on the history of France of the same Guizot, first Jean-Louis Brière in 1823 and then Gervais Charpentier from 1842 onwards in his famous Collection in-18° à 3 francs 50, claimed that the new edition of the 1820-1822 course unduly took up elements of the Essays, to the point of causing confusion between the two works. Guizot vigorously defended himself, arguing that «it would then be necessary to maintain that a writer cannot treat certain parts of the same subject twice, in different works, nor quote himself, in one of his works, some passages from what he has written in another work; this is obviously untenable.^[2]. » A lawsuit ensued between Brière and Didier, which Didier won, but not without loss and expense. Article 5 of the agreement also stipulates that «various pieces already published in certain collections» (this is followed by an enumeration), to the exclusion of any political work, will form the subject of «four in-8° volumes of at least five hundred pages», each of which can be sold separately under a particular title, the whole being remunerated at 14,000 francs, which is considerable for texts already published. We will have finished with this proof contract with the project, estimated at 15,000 francs, for ’an entirely unpublished work entitled What I sought for my country, a fragment of personal memoir, This is a stand-alone 300-page volume that can also be used as an introduction to a Collection of speeches made by M. Guizot to the Houses before 24 February 1848, Didier undertook to publish them in four volumes. This article 2 was cancelled in 1861, and article 5 took effect only in part, with the publication in 1852 of a single volume of Meditations and moral studies.

[Read more]