Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757 - 1810)

kwaw

One definition of mystificateur is of a hoaxer or trickster, or of a man without profession who makes an art of dining out at others expense, by value of his ability to entertain. While card and magic tricks may have been a specialization of his, as a producer of cartomancy decks one can easily suspects that card-reading may have been amongst his repertoire of parlour amusements, if the biographer's description is indeed accurate.

Le Petit Escamoteur, published as being available from the author, at Saint-Sauver's address -- is testament also to the biographer's description of JdS-S as a practioner d'escamotage. The fact that it was also combined with Deroy's Le maniere de tireur des carts, ou le cartomancien in the Pigoreau edition also that card and magic tricks were viewed as belonging together with cartomancy as 'parlour amusements' (oracles for the ladies perhaps, tricks for the men?).
 

Huck

Le Petit Escamoteur, published as being available from the author, at Saint-Sauver's address -- is testament also to the biographer's description of JdS-S as a practioner d'escamotage. The fact that it was also combined with Deroy's Le maniere de tireur des carts, ou le cartomancien in the Pigoreau edition also that card and magic tricks were viewed as belonging together with cartomancy as 'parlour amusements' (oracles for the ladies perhaps, tricks for the men?).

Men probably aimed at gambling, less on card tricks for boys. But gambling (casino) and theatre went together, at least in Vienna Maria Theresia and her husband) and also Tuscany (and likely also Paris). The income of the casino helped to finance the expensive cultural mission of the theatre.

Franco Pratesi has made long researches on casinos in Tuscany recently, 18th/19th century. The casinos had a social-communicative function. Sauveur was willing to satisfy the market.
 

kwaw

The dating seems odd -- surely he was a man of letters and an engraver publishing or having published many books prior to 1801...

From another source, different dates:
Durant les dernières années de sa carrière, Jacques Grasset continue de rééditer certains anciens titres ( Voyages pittoresques), ou collabore à de nouveaux ouvrages. On retrouve, publié chez Barba en 1801, la veine du recueil moral ou philosophique : L'Esprit des « ana », ou De tout un peu, recueil contenant l'élite des bons mots... le tout entremêlé de pensées ingénieuses et philosophiques [...].
Après quelques mésaventures financières, Grasset s'exhibe dans les salons comme prestidigitateur, puis il choisit de fuir ses créanciers en gagnant «les colonies».
Le spécialiste de l'estampe et de la gravure devient alors un personnage ambigu aux pratiques douteuses : n'avait-il pas déjà « estampé » son premier éditeur, Pavard? Voilà qu'il tente à présent d'estamper ses débiteurs. Durant une absence de durée indéterminée (1802-1804 ?), l'aventurier voyage à la tête d'une troupe de comédiens.

During the last years of his career, Jacques Grasset continues to repeat
some older titles (scenic tours), or collaborate in new works. We find, published by Barba in 1801, the vein of a moral or philosophical book: The Spirit of "ana" or A bit of everything, a collection containing the elite of the right words ... all interspersed with ingenious and philosophical thoughts [...].

After some financial mishaps, Grasset is performing in shows as a magician, but then he chooses to flee his creditors, escaping to "the colonies".

The specialist printmaker and engraver becomes an ambiguous character of questionable practices: had he not already stamped on his first editor, Pavard? Now he is trying now to stamp on his debtors. In his absence of an indefinite duration (1802-1804?), the adventurer travels as the head of a company of actors.

Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810), aventurier du livre et de l'estampe : première partie: La lettre de 1785 au comte de Vergennes
by Bernard Andrès, Les Cahiers des dix, n° 56, 2002, p. 193-215.

In a note to the above:

Cette période de sa carrière nous est connue par Alphonse Rabbe dont nous étudierons le témoignage dans une autre livraison de ces cahiers (ALPHONSE RABBE, Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, Paris, Y. de Boisjolin, 1830).

This period of his career is known to us through Alphonse Rabbe, the testimony of which we will study in another delivery of these notebooks (Alphonse Rabbe, universal and portable Biography contemporary, Paris, Y. Boisjolin, 1830).

I haven't seen the following notebooks - but the note suggests the Bernard Andres questions the testimony of Rabbe.
 

Huck

Nice, you have found something.

Abstract

Of the Grasset de Saint-Sauveur family, we know above all André (1758-1792), a martyr of the French Revolution who was beatified in 1926. A college exists to this day which bears his name. This article however is about his older brother, a character at the opposite extreme: Jacques Grasser de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810). Successively diplomat, polygraph, illustrator and engraver, he was also an adventurer and somewhat of a practical joker. Born in Montreal, Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur knew some literary glory during the Revolution and First Empire. He published a considerable number of travel and costume encyclopaedias, compilations and licentious stories in addition to moral works of philosophical or republican inspiration. He is of interest here from three points of view: the political and diplomatic history of Canada and France, literary history and art history. In order to zero in on this individual's personality, we shall analyse a letter he wrote in March 1785 to de Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, France's Minister of Foreign Affairs. This correspondence contains a self-portrait of the adventurer looking for a patron along with all the signs of an already clearcut youthful character: initiative, audacity verging on presumptuousness, determination, a political sense and a strange mix of realism and extravagance in his world view. In this letter that Jacques de Grasset de Saint-Sauveur wrote at the age of 27 are the seeds of the whole career of he who, under the Directory, found it more prudent to leave aside the nobiliary particle and to sign "citizen Saint-Sauveur" before teaming up with the most ardent republicans of his day. Compared to André, his father, former Secretary of New France who become consul under Louis XVI, compared to his younger brother, the non-juring priest struck down by the Terror, Jacques Grasset stuck out like a sore thumb. It is this aspect that we examine here using a simple letter before coming back, in our next, to the bibliography of the black sheep of the Grasset de Saint-Sauveur family.
http://www.erudit.org/revue/cdd/2002/v/n56/1008094ar.html?vue=resume

Vengennes had been foe to Guignard (or at least, he didn't like him).
 

MikeH

Kwaw wrote,
Le Petit Escamoteur, published as being available from the author, at Saint-Sauver's address -- is testament also to the biographer's description of JdS-S as a practioner d'escamotage. The fact that it was also combined with Deroy's Le maniere de tireur des carts, ou le cartomancien in the Pigoreau edition also that card and magic tricks were viewed as belonging together with cartomancy as 'parlour amusements' (oracles for the ladies perhaps, tricks for the men?).
For the Deroy, are you talking about Le Tireur de cartes, ou le petit cartomancien of, ‘an V’ (1796-1797), published by Deroy, whose author is not suggested (DDD p. 98), but which was republished the following year ("an VI") in combination with Le Petit Escamoteur and provided with Saint-Sauveur's address on the title page and also the address of the publisher Pigoreau? (DDD p. 274, note 65). I am not trying to catch you up, but just making sure there isn't some book I don't know about.

Also, there is a kind of odd possible inference, from DDD's comments. There is the suggestion, true or false, that the editor (DDD's word) of the "an V" work knew Etteilla personally, because he is republishing, from 1771, "a short work of some folios that fell into his hands" in 1772, such that he "visited Etteilla to 'ask his permission to inform the public'"(still quoting DDD p. 98).

Then in footnote 65 it is said that Pigoreau republished this work the next year (an VI) along with Petit Escamoteur, and the title page shows Saint-Sauveur's address.

It is thus fairly clear that Saint-Sauveur is meant to be the author/editor of the previously unattributable Le Tireur de cartes, ou le petit cartomancien (or is it just the Petit Escamoteur?). The way in which that book, unlike others, is a "compilation of different methods of card-reading" reads rather like the style of Saint-Sauveur's reports on the peoples of various lands.

If so, it would seem that someone, Saint-Saveur or an editor he (probably) is re-editing, is (anonymously) claiming to have met Etteilla personally. It seems to DDD (still p. 98) from the program of works that is then supplied--most of them with titles allusively derogating what is likely the horrible censors--that this account (of projected works) was originally written in around 1782-1783 (after first reading Etteilla in 1772, when Saint-Sauveur would have been around 14 and I imagine still in Canada). Could this writer be the anonymous Saint-Saveur (a follower of Etteilla since age 14, at last meeting the great man age 25). or is the writer the anonymous editor whose work St.-Sauveur (probably) is republishing/re-editing/borrowing from? I suspect the latter, but it would be especially interesting if it were the former.
 

Huck

... (after first reading Etteilla in 1772, when Saint-Sauveur would have been around 14 and I imagine still in Canada) ...

Jacques Grasset Sauveur was in France since very early youth. The family went with a ship from 1764-11-01 till 9th of December in Calais and Christmas in Paris. The father was accused for actions in Canada (a larger scandal of international dimensions) and had to spend some time in prison, finally released, cause the accusations couldn't be proven.

Stephen wrote:
During the last years of his career, Jacques Grasset continues to repeat
some older titles (scenic tours), or collaborate in new works. We find, published by Barba in 1801, the vein of a moral or philosophical book: The Spirit of "ana" or A bit of everything, a collection containing the elite of the right words ... all interspersed with ingenious and philosophical thoughts [...].

After some financial mishaps, Grasset is performing in shows as a magician, but then he chooses to flee his creditors, escaping to "the colonies".

The specialist printmaker and engraver becomes an ambiguous character of questionable practices: had he not already stamped on his first editor, Pavard? Now he is trying now to stamp on his debtors. In his absence of an indefinite duration (1802-1804?), the adventurer travels as the head of a company of actors.

This gives at least a plausible background for the activities of Sauveur. Maybe that the death of Deroy (1801) was a big part of the crisis.
Well, one has to study this Bernard Andrès a little bit, a "Professeur, université du Québec à Montréal"

I found this till now, not having the time to read it carefully in the moment.

http://cdlm.revues.org/3933
https://www.erudit.org/revue/cdd/2002/v/n56/1008094ar.pdf
https://politique.uqam.ca/corps-professoral/professeurs-emerites/886-bernard-andre.html
 

kwaw

Kwaw wrote,

For the Deroy, are you talking about Le Tireur de cartes, ou le petit cartomancien of, ‘an V’ (1796-1797), published by Deroy, whose author is not suggested (DDD p. 98), but which was republished the following year ("an VI") in combination with Le Petit Escamoteur and provided with Saint-Sauveur's address on the title page and also the address of the publisher Pigoreau? (DDD p. 274, note 65). I am not trying to catch you up, but just making sure there isn't some book I don't know about...

The Tireur de Cartes is published by Deroy, no mention of an author as far as I recall... I thought it was meant the editor/publisher Deroy had met with Etteilla and had permission, but not sure.

(In retrospect I find some DDD material somewhat confusing - the POdD for example.)

The address of JGS-S is given on the PE (but without name, I think).

Some issues of the Pigoreau, with Pigoreau's address, combined the two - I do not know if it retained the addresses of Deroy and/or S-S.

Do you have Decker's Esoteric Tarot? - I get a google 'snippet' view with reference to Pigoreau's Le Bohemien, 1797 but no further details or context.
 

MikeH

Another thing (added later: I wrote most of this before Kwaw's last post, but got called away). Kwaw at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4547267&postcount=377 suggested:
Re: the c.1797 Saint-Sauveur copy/re-issue of the Petit Etteilla, possibly this is the 'jeu d'Etteilla' that was advertised with the 1796 L'Art de Tirer des Cartes published by Deroy?
This is https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...DXqARYMEcsYcn1QDuhw&ci=95,186,685,1068&edge=0

A book of that title and date is not mentioned by DDD; instead there is a"L'Art de Tirer les Cartes..." etc., same title, of "c. 1800" (p. 275 n. 65). DDD may have gotten the date wrong. But it is the content that is of interest, and the possibility that Saint-Saveur wrote it. It is the reprint of the 1791 booklet, the one that talks about the 3 women in 1750, the specific prisons they were sent to, the specific error about the 9 of diamonds, and so on. It reads as though by someone who had met Etteilla, at least in 1791. He might just be rehashing the material he edited in "Tireur", but it doesn't read like that.
 

MikeH

Kwaw wrote
Do you have Decker's Esoteric Tarot? - I get a google 'snippet' view with reference to Pigoreau's Le Bohemien, 1797 but no further details or context.
Decker discusses the book Le Bohemien on p. 206. He says it contains the tables that Etteilla developed for card-reading with a piquet deck when he was 14 or 15:
The actual tables seem not to have survived, but they are preserved in an anonymous anthology, Le Bohemien )The Gypsy, Paris, 1797), now very rare. Most of Etteilla's Spades have alternative meanings. ... [Decker explains what "reversals" looked like.]

Another scheme from the same anthology gives different meanings. They probably represent something of the popular interpretations that Etteilla felt obliged to correct. They are especially interesting for the inclusion of meanings for all the cards when "reversed".

Following this tabulation, the text (quite superfluously) defines cards in a few combinations. For instance, "Ace of Cups, preceded by the Ten of Clubs, would say abundant money; if the Eight of Clubs immediately accompanies a King or Queen, that would say declaration of love." These groups of cards are minimal sequences. They are not yet the intricate constellations of Etteilla's spreads.
It sounds very similar to the Tireur de cartes book, as DDD explain it, which was a compilation of different methods of reading cards, and the editor had gone to Etteilla personally to ask permission to publish his early "folios". Well, now we have another book, or at least book title, that contains Etteilla's earliest writing, put out by the second Saint-Sauveur publisher. Decker says nothing about Pigoreau, other than in the bibliography as publisher of Le Bohemien.

Added later: WorldCat shows an edition of 1802, "Chez Lemarchand". The notes say it discusses "Le Petit Etteilla" on pp. 50-67. In all 172 pages, [1] leaf of plates : illustrations ; 14 cm. Its full title is Le Bohémien : contenant l'art de tirer les cartes, suivi de l'art d'escamoter, et de l'application des rêves aux numéros de la loterie.. So maybe it's just the combination of Le Tireur de Cartes and L'escamoteur the DDD were talking about, under another name and perhaps yet another publisher.