At a time when the Fifth Republic seems to have exhausted its monarchical charms and must join the ranks of parliamentary democracies subjected to the first assaults of total and, as always, ultimate war launched by the cryptocommunist fascism of Eternal Russia, here we are, Monday December 16 , the Artcurial auction house is dispersing at auction, like its autobiographical ashes, a quantity of manuscripts by General de Gaulle. 360 lots containing letters, tickets, notebooks, drafts, postcards, bound, annotated books, pocket notebooks, punctuated with a few rare objects, badges and medals, watches and cigarette cases, and above all an electric train offered by Nikita Khrushchev to the little ones -children of the General, which shows the Bolshevik baseness of this regime of spies which never loses an opportunity to use vile methods to try to pervert the children.
But, keeping watch, a tin soldier, a cavalry officer in his light blue, worn jacket, his legs in madder breeches matching the absence of his horse. The object was found in an envelope on which Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, Charles’s son, had written in pencil: “Little lead soldier who belonged to my Father (sic) child.” Estimate: 300-400 euros. The General’s son had inherited the collection of pewter figurines from his father and his brothers, a collection which numbered no less than 1,800 pieces, and with which the four brothers indulged epic battles to finally recover Alsace and Lorraine The essential is not there, but in the texts.
History is words and a chronology, which the order of the lots offered for sale rigorously respects. Thus, the first autograph manuscript of the young Charles de Gaulle is lot 5: “German Campaign”. It dates from 1905, de Gaulle was 14 years old, on 53 pages of a small octavo notebook, the teenager imagines that in 1930 “Europe irritated by the ill will and carelessness of the government [déclare] war on France”. He recounts how General de Gaulle, put at the head of 200,000 men and 518 cannons, knew that he was playing “the decisive game, because it was under the eyes of Metz that the Whole Europe attached[ait] his looks”. Unfinished decisive battle, either Charles was called to the table it’s going to be cold, or he had the intuition that it is enough to imagine something for this thing to never happen, and therefore not to upset the future. This jewel is estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000 euros.
“A great misfortune”
I could ultimately fall back on the 1902-1907 school record book, estimated between 1,500 and 2,000 euros, but hey, the litany of prizes of excellence and the dithyrambs of his teachers, that’s okay, we have the same ones in the family, on my grandfather Gosset’s side. What I don’t have is a filial love letter like the one in the following lot, estimated at between 3,000 and 4,000 euros, in which, at 17, Charles confesses “a great misfortune”: he was 12th in math composition! And that for a first degree equation with two unknowns that he knew very well. Calling himself clumsy, he signed his letter “Your respectful and affectionate son Charles de Gaulle”. We don’t have that in the family.
I pass on the following 346 lots, each of which offers material for sensations, to arrive at what is the unexpected curiosity of this sale. A set of sheets annotated in pencil listing the statistics of his successes: a small cross for each attempt made, topped by a circle for successful ones. After a surprising series of 10 consecutive successes, he marked his enthusiasm with five exclamation points. These cabalistic signs certainly constitute the last writings of the General, victim, as we know, of a ruptured aneurysm making it a success. And there, if it does not exceed the announced estimate (600-800 euros), it becomes affordable.
Christophe Donner, writer
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