FLAUBERT, Achille Cléophas (1784-1846)

FLAUBERT, Achille Cléophas (1784-1846)

Autograph letter signed « Flaubert » to Charles Vacquerie
Rouen le 12 X^bre [December] 1838, 1 p. 1/2 in-4° in black ink
Autograph address on fourth page
Some tears on margins

Unpublished letter from Gustave Flaubert’s father, of whom it was unknown until today that Charles Vacquerie was a patient

« Monsieur,

Je ne vous ai pas défendu le sirop de digitale d’une manière absolue je vous ai dit de ne point en abuser, de le quitter de temps à autre puis de le reprendre si M. Huet le jugeait convenable. Je pense dans ce moment qu’une saignée de bras vous est utile. Suivez votre régime présent et si vous passez l’hyver au hâvre, rapportez vous en à M. Huet, homme d’expérience.
Agréez, je vous prie, les salutations affectueuses / de votre très dévoué serviteur
Flaubert
[…] »

Trained at the Paris School of Medicine at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Achille Cléophas Flaubert studied brilliantly there, with Alexander von Humboldt as a classmate. He decided to settle in Rouen in 1810 before being appointed chief surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu in December 1815. His career continued there when he became director of the medical school until his resignation in 1840. He had six children, half of whom died before the age of three. Gustave was born in 1821.

Charles Vacquerie (1817-1843) met Victor Hugo through his brother Auguste. In the summer of 1838, he met the writer’s eldest daughter, Léopoldine (1824-1843), during a trip by the Hugos to Villequier, where the Vacqueries owned a family home. Léopoldine and Charles married in 1843, the latter becoming Victor Hugo’s son-in-law. It was also in 1843 in Villequier, during a canoe trip on the Seine, that the two young couple tragically died after their boat capsized following a violent gale.