The Hesselin copy
in optics, extolled Hesselin’s cabinet in an earlier residence as being ‘the quintessence of all Parisian cabinets’, and noted not only the excellent mirrors and an extraordinary mirror cabinet, but also the paintings, sculpture, and scientific books. In fact, very little is known about Hesselin’s library except
2N3, 2R1), E4 slightly shaved at lower edge near gutter and G4 outer edge torn at lower corner. Overall a very handsome copy in a strictly contemporary binding, one of the nicest we have handled. ¶ Dibner 81; Grolier/Horblit 24; Guibert 1 (“très rare et très recherchée des bibliophiles”); Norman 621; Printing and the Mind of Man 129. On Hesselin’s arms: Guigard, Nouvel armorial du bibliophile , pp. 259–60; Eugène Olivier, Georges Hermal, & R. de Roton, Manuel de l’amateur de reliures armoriées françaises , XVII, no. 1687. On Hesselin: Edmond Bonnaffé, Dictionnaire des amateurs français au XVIIe siècle , 1884, pp. 139–41; R. de Crèvecour, “Louis Hesselin: Amateur Parisien, Intendant des Plaisirs du Roi”, Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris , 1895, pp. 225–48; J. H. Leopold & Clare Vincent, “A Watch for Monsieur Hesselin”, Metropolitan Museum Journal , vol. 28, 1993, pp. 103–19. Subsequent owners of this copy are recorded as follows: “achepté a Paris de la bibliotheque de Mr Hesselin [?] 1668”, front pastedown; “Ex libris Jacobi Borde Presbyt[eri]. Aurel[ianensis]. Canon[ici]. Magdun[ensis]. 1673”, front pastedown, with corresponding “Ex Libris J Borde” on rear pastedown (possibly a relation of Hesselin’s aforementioned cousin Henry Godet des Bordes); “Ex Libris Petri Aniani Douberion[?]”, title page, with corresponding annotation in same hand on front pastedown, cancelled in ink and largely illegible; “Ex libris Joannis Bapt[istae]. Amici Deméré presb[yter] i in Collegio Aureliani Rhetor[?] [?eris] – An. 1792” (Jean-Baptiste Amy-Demeré appointed professor of rhetoric in 1785), front pastedown; leather book label of Eugène Paillet (1829–1901), one of the leading Parisian book collectors of the mid-19th century, his 1902 catalogue I, no. 60; manuscript note on blank facing title, extolling the work but remarking on its difficulty.
13 DESCARTES, René. Discours de la méthode pour bien
conduire sa raison. Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637 £250,000
[ 160996 ]
Small quarto (205 × 155 mm). Contemporary armorial binding of polished tortoiseshell calf, spine lettered and elaborately tooled in gilt, compartments with double-rule borders and alternating griffin and fleur-de-lys cross motifs (both heraldic ornaments of the Hesselin family), geometric circle-and- lozenge roll at ends, raised bands, boards with double-rule border in gilt and arms of Louis Hesselin stamped in gilt to centres, red sprinkled edges, red silk bookmarker. Housed in a custom black morocco book-form box. Woodcut printer’s device on title page, numerous woodcuts in text (including one full-page cut repeated seven times), initials. A series of early ownership annotations and signatures on front pastedown, title page and facing blank, and rear pastedown; gilt morocco book label on front pastedown; a few neat ink corrections, annotations in French (varying hands), and pencilled marginal markers; see note for provenance details. Spine ends and corners rubbed, raised bands a touch worn at sides, front joint partly split at ends but remaining firm and inner hinges fully intact, gilt bright and boards unmarked; remnants of red seal wax on second initial blank recto, some faint damp stain in upper and outer margins through to La Dioptrique and to a couple of leaves thereafter, heaviest in gathering c, else contents notably crisp with occasional spotting and foxing, expert paper restoration in outer margin of D4 where closed tear stabilized and infilled, a handful of marginal perforations, nicks, and closed tears, the majority due to paper flaws and none affecting text (c2, d2, O1, 2B1, 2C1,
First edition of Descartes’s magnum opus; an attractive and superbly provenanced copy, from the library of distinguished 17th-century French bibliophile Louis Hesselin. Books from Hesselin’s collection, which was celebrated by contemporaries for its particular focus on science, are extremely scarce in their distinctive armorial binding, and even more so on a text of this importance. One of the first European works of philosophy not to be written in Latin, this work also introduced modern exponential notation, an advanced theory of equations, and made further contributions to many other scientific fields including meteorology and optics. Louis Treslon-Cauchon (1602–1662), born into a noble family from Champagne, changed his name to Hesselin in 1626 to become the heir of his wealthy great uncle. To Louis XIII he was conseiller du roi and maître de la chambre aux deniers and, from 1655, surintendant des plaisirs du roi. He made a name for himself as an influential art patron and amateur collector; Bonnaffé describes him as “a man of excellent taste, a person of fashion, the obligatory organiser of all parties”. “Both rich and extravagant, the young Hesselin began to amass a collection that became famous in his own time . . . As early as 1638 Jean-François Niceron, the French mathematician who had a special interest
that he had his coat of arms stamped on the bindings of his books” (Leopold & Vincent, pp. 109–10). Bonnaffé adds that Hesselin’s books “are rarely met with; they are usually bound in tortoiseshell calfskin with his coat of arms”. Crèvecour describes the same style of binding, stamped with the quartered arms of Cauchon and Hesselin, and notes a possible contemporary attribution of this tooling to Labelle. Books from Hesselin’s library rarely surface on the market. Auction records trace eight examples from the last 100 years bound in the characteristic armorial tortoiseshell calf. Hesselin’s townhouse on the Île Saint-Louis, built by Le Vau and decorated by the best artists of the time, was a “veritable museum” of rarities (Bonnaffé). After Hesselin’s untimely death the house passed through a number of hands, first to his cousin Henry Godet des Bordes, the sole legatee who died shortly after Hesselin, thence to the brother Antoine Godet, viscount of Soudé, and in 1669 to François Molé, Abbé de Sainte-Croix de Bordeaux, master of requests. It is not known at what point his library was dispersed, though a note on the front pastedown of this copy states that it was bought from the “bibliotheque de Mr Hesselin” in 1668.
SIXTY FINE ITEMS
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