Lengthy ALS in French, signed “de Balzac,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 8.25 x 10.75, January 3, 1849. Untranslated handwritten letter from Honore de Balzac, addressed to his publisher, Hippolyte Souverain, from Berdychiv, a city in Ukraine, where, toward the end of his life, the novelist resided with his love, Ewelina Hanska, whom he married in 1850. In very good to fine condition, with edge toning, minor loss to the upper right corner, and repaired loss to the lower right corner.
After publishing his final two masterworks, La Cousine Bette and Le Cousin Pons, Balzac traveled to Ukraine to join Ewelina Hańska, a Polish noblewoman with whom he loved dearly and had shared an intimate correspondence since 1832. After years of delayed marriage plans, Russian authorities finally acquiesced to Balzac’s earlier petition of December 1847 and granted the couple permission to marry on July 2, 1849.
They were wed on March 14, 1850, by which time Balzac’s health was already in steep decline. When the newlyweds departed for Paris in late April, Hańska confided to her daughter that her husband was ‘in a state of extreme weakness’ and ‘sweating profusely.’ Only five months after the wedding, on August 18, 1850, Balzac died of gangrene brought on by congestive heart failure. His friend Victor Hugo visited him that day and later served both as pallbearer and eulogist at Balzac’s funeral.
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