Albert d'Alby (1802)

[Huck]

DDD mentions Albert d'Alby at p. 146, with a footnote "8" at page 282 as the author of "L'Oracle Parfait".

It seems, as if DDD hadn't access of the text, as they use the description of Collin.

I found one text online ...

L'Oracle parfait, ou nouvelle manière de tirer les cartes, au moyen de laquelle chacun peut tirer son horoscope
Albert D'Alby, Mélampus
1802
https://books.google.de/books?id=nmVQAAAAcAAJ&dq="albert+d'alby"&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Worldcat offers two texts with this name for the year 1802 ...
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti:oracle+parfait&fq=yr:1800..1805+>&qt=advanced&dblist=638
... possibly the same edition.

Footnote "8" in DDD is of special interest:

see also:
https://books.google.de/books?id=RE...DoAQgjMAE#v=onepage&q="albert d'alby"&f=false
see also: page 6 in the text

I've no idea about divination with 3 Piquet decks, but the description with 32 + 4 additional cards (2, 3, 4 of hearts, and 4 of diamonds) related to the consultant reminds me on the
use of Eteila cards in the deck called Nouvel Eteila or Petit Necromancien, which was recently discussed with some intensity.

Here are the four 'Eteila' cards from the Finet:

Card 2 for the male consultant
Card 25 for the female consultant
Card 3 for the (? pour la rend ?), something opposite to success? or the reader's significator? or that renders to (serves?) the consultant
Card 12 for the success of the consulatant

http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=122602&page=39

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Inside the discussions to this deck appeared the note of Fleischer in the same year 1802 (as the d'Alby text):

No. 62 ...

... reports a production of "Le Petit Necromancien", and, as far we know, it's the first sure appearance of this title.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1244979g/f11.item.r=Finet Eteila
... claims late 18th century for it, but is itself from a text in 1898 (so insecure).

However, the text to No. 62 doesn't refer specifically to divination cards, only to the method. Possibly this production hadn't cards, but was just a description, how to interpret a cartomancy reading.
The address refers to the not noted author, who lives in Bordeaux near the theatre ... and it's a rather remarkable theatre:

from Huck (2012)

The author address was "A Bordeaux, chez l'Auteur, sous le péristile de la grande comédie". A "peristyle" in French is a great room with columns ... likely the address means, that you get the decks inside the theater, or, cause it is said "sous le péristile" possible downstairs, either inside (below) or outside in front of the theater, "chez L'Auteur"

The following postcard confirms, that the "Place de la comédie" was an old address in Bordeaux near a famous theater.

[largeimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Bordeauxtramway1900.jpg/800px-Bordeauxtramway1900.jpg[/largeimg]

The production is also offered by "Chez Barba" in Paris and Barba is known to have offered in 1795 mainly the texts of theatre plays.
https://books.google.de/books?id=s_...DNUQ6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q="chez barba"&f=false

From theatres in Vienna and also in Florence and Tuscany I have clear research, that they often were connected to Casinos and to card-gambling, which accompanied the theater plays (it was a way to finance the expensive theaters during 18th century). I don't know, if a similar connection existed in France and Bordeaux.

I suspect, that the Bordeaux address belongs to Jacques Grasset St-Saveur, author or producer of the Petit Oracle des Dames or a person connected to him (possibly Labrousse, who engraved a lot for Sauveur). The same addresses "chez Barba" and "Bordeaux" are used for No. 64 (see below).

No. 63 ...

... is the Petit Oracle des Dames (earlier authored by Jacques Grasset St-Sauveur), now distributed by Gueffier jeune. It seems to contain on its 42 cards with 72 motifs also 52 small cards of a normal playing card deck (which possibly was a novelty in 1802).

No. 64 ...

A "Petit Horoscope des Dames" doesn't reappear elsewhere in announcements. It are the same addresses used as for No. 62 (Barba + Bordeaux). Possibly the difference to the offered PODD is simply the condition, that it didn't include the 52 small playing card pictures on the 42 cards. Possibly these were older PODD cards, produced before 1802.

No. 65

This object, somehow parted from the other productions by a line, is offered by "Chez Labrousse".
Now "Labrousse" had been the name of an engraver, who accompanied a lot of the Grasset St-Sauveur book productions. The "Chez Labrousse" doesn't appear in the announcements of the time elsewhere (as far I know), this seems to be a single product, which didn't sell very well and wasn't repeated.

Loterie cards have an article in wikipedia ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotería

... and for the mentioned source name "Fortunato Indovino" ... I found the following picture and note at https://in.pinterest.com/pin/96827460709656965/

Lottery Dream Book, Fortunato Indovino....(the Surest Means to Win the Lottery Drawing, or a New General List Containing Entries for All the Everyday Things Found Inside Visions and Drams, With Their Numbers). Venice: Sylvester Gnoato, 1809. Frontespiece and 19 plates of woodcuts, with an additional full-page woodcut date 7 February 1754. (Fortunato Indovino or Lucky Guesser was the pseudonym for an 18th c. Italian astrologer).

One might suspect, that the engraveur Labrousse made something more professional than that, if he really participated in the production.

This blog ...
https://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2012/09/indovino_fortunato.html
.. gives some further info.

************

Labrousse isn't easy to research:

Well, he had his origin in Bordeaux. It's not impossible, that he lived in 1802 in Bordeaux and that he was the man behind the adresse near to the Bordeaux theatre.

There's a series of pictures of people from Bordeaux, signed by Jacques Grasset St-Sauveur at the left bottom and by Labrousse at the right.
http://collections-musees.bordeaux...._field&v=Grasset+de+Saint-Sauveur,+Jacques&e=

The family of Sauveur wasn't from Bordeaux, but from Montpellier, and Sauveur was born in Canada ... and it seems not plausible, that he spend much time there. It's plausible, that Labrousse initiated this picture series.

**********
**********

Back to d'Alby:

Etteilla had as divination scheme clearly 32+1 in 1791, but likely earlier (already in 1771 ?).

Albert d'Alby (I don't have any other info to the person) had 32+4 in 1788 according his editor, but wasn't allowed to publish. The text was published in 1802, the same year of the appearance of a text called Le Petit Necromancien, which later clearly had a 32+4 scheme (and used then pictures of th PODD clearly related to St.Sauvert or Labrousse). The announcement of 1802 (Necromancien) also looks, as if it was related to Larousse or Sauvert).

What shall one assume about it?

 

[kwaw]

Thanks Huck

DDD mentions Albert d'Alby at p. 146, with a footnote "8" at page 282 as the author of "L'Oracle Parfait".

It seems, as if DDD hadn't access of the text, as they use the description of Collin.

I found one text online ...

L'Oracle parfait, ou nouvelle manière de tirer les cartes, au moyen de laquelle chacun peut tirer son horoscope
Albert D'Alby, Mélampus
1802
https://books.google.de/books?id=nmVQAAAAcAAJ&dq="albert+d'alby"&source=gbs_navlinks_s

I downloaded it last week, with the intention of reading it as I have time, to try and grasp the method and what the author means by 'horoscope' in relation to his method. Haven't had time yet, and probably won't be able to for a week or so as I am in the process of moving.

Examples he gives for the four extra cards are 1 for the person, one for the mother, one for the father and one for the lover. These would possibly correspond in a horoscope to the four main angles,the ascendant / descendant axis (first house for the person, sometimes also called the horoscope - the 7th house for the partner (l'amour?)*), and the nadir/midheaven axis, 4th and 10th houses, for the parents. I wonder if the Horoscope des Dames is another name for the Petit Oracle des Dames, some of the cards have planet signs, and could be interpreted according to some astrological type method, which is another reason I am interested in determining how d'Alby uses the term, as the author of the HdD may have meant to apply it in a similar sense. I too can find little on Albert d'Alby, except George Sexton also used the name Mélampus as a pseuonym.

I've been searching on the Petit Necromancien to see if any other notices or adverts supplied any further information, such as number or a description of the cards, to see if they could be related to the Finet, but so far with no luck. I would hesitate to identify them as the same based only on partial title similarities. The earliest we have for the Finet is 1820 Robert* and 1824 Finet, though it is generally thought to be earlier because of its late 18th century style. The 1898 printsellers catalogue entry is clearly for the Finet, which it dates to the late 18th century. It is a leap I think to identify it with the 1802 Petit Necromancien without some additional confirmation that it and the Finet are one and the same. They could be, or somehow be otherwise related - but at the moment it remains only speculation.

I came across some info re: Barba last week about his main fortune coming from pornography and the piracy of other's works, but I didn't note down the link and now can't find it.

Kwaw

*Seventh in respect of marriage, if the 'love' is considered of the person's partner. But love affairs and romance as such is generally a fifth house matter. But having four cards to represent the four main angles of a horoscope makes sense astrologically, if using a faux astrological type method.

The Robert, from Bibliographie de la France, March 1820:

 

[Huck]

I came across some info re: Barba last week about his main fortune coming from pornography and the piracy of other's works, but I didn't note down the link and now can't find it.

Kwaw

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...hf&chunk.id=d0e10699&toc.depth=1&brand=eschol

Between 1795 and 1799 Barba registered thirty-eight works at the dépôt . His first deposit was Charles-Pierre Ducancel's Thermidorean drama L'Intérieur des comités révolutionnaires . All of his titles were in theater, ranging from serious tragedies like Marie-Joseph Chénier's Azémire or the theatrical rendering of Voltaire's great anticlerical cause in Jean Calas , to comic operas like Severin's Le Villageois qui cherche son veau .
He was also a notorious literary pirate and dealer in pornography. In 1796, he was accused of pirating Philippe Fabre d'Eglantine's Intrigue épistolaire , and in 1797, Migneret's edition of de LaHarpe's Du fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire .[107] By 1802 Barba was, as the prefect of Paris described him, "very well known for this kind of trade."[108] Barba also orchestrated numerous illegal editions of the marquis de Sade's Justine , until the police finally discovered his secret warehouse in 1802.[109] Known for driving hard bargains, both legal and illegal, Barba was enormously successful.
By 1795 he had moved to the rue Git-le-coeur, in the heart of the old publishing district, and he maintained a second shop in the Palais Royal. Five years later he also had an outlet nearer to the theater at the Palais du Tribunat. Having founded one of the great publishing fortunes of the revolutionary era through popular theater, pornography, and literary pirating, Barba, too, branched out into the novel, beginning with Guillaume-Charles-Antoine Pigault-Lebrun's libertine romances. By the 1820s Barba had become one of the first editors of Honoré de Balzac.[110] Like Maradan and Migneret, Barba was instrumental in turning Paris publishing from classical theater to the romantic novel, from civic to domestic genres.

 

[Huck]

I got the impression, that the graveur Labrousse had a relation to the theatre and searched for "Labrousse" and "theatre". A result was ...
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Labrousse
... a Fabrice Labrousse (* 1806, perhaps ? son, ? grand-son or other relative), who was very active in the 1830s for the development of theatre plays (lots of them at Gallica) as part of a Napoleon nostalgy. I found him also connected to graphic works in connection to his theater work, which definitely looked like "made by the graveurs of Grasset St.Sauver".

The French name distribution tool for "Labrousse 1891-1915" demonstrates, that the name likely spread from the region around Bordeaux.
http://www.genealogie.com/nom-de-famille/labrousse.html

 

[kwaw]

Saint-Sauveur too was well aware, as you have noted before, of the selling power of sex, and produced salacious material. One of them is perhaps of interest, Les amours du fameux comte de Bonneval, pacha à deux (trois) queues, connu sous le nom d’Osman, rédigé d’après quelques mémoires particuliers, Paris, 1796 - in that it also shows an awareness of, and interest in, Ottoman History, which he would have well developed through his position as consul of Hungary and the Levant (the important 'steps' to Turkish ports, and matter of contention between Russia and Turkey).

 

[kwaw]

Another 36 card pseudo-astrological method from 1788 is described in:
Etrennes nouvelles de l'horoscope de l'homme et de la femme" By M. G. D. R., published by G. Quinet, Libraire, dans la Salle du Palaise, using an expanded piquet set of 36 cards.

It is available online here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...KAhXKXRQKHXvaAbIQuwUIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

It is second edition, so possibly available earlier than 1788. It was republished (or elements in it was copied) in L'Oracle Parfait, by Jean Peyre, in 2003.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...zAA#v=onepage&q=Nombre 9. association&f=false

 

[Huck]

Etrennes nouvelles de l'horoscope de l'homme et de la femme" By M. G. D. R., published by G. Quinet, Libraire, dans la Salle du Palaise, using an expanded piquet set of 36 cards.

Interesting finding, but for the moment I don't understand, what this is. In the later part it speaks of a Calendrier des Samaritains ... could it be, that this text of 1788 somehow belonged to the Calendar discussion, which a few years later caused the invention of the New (only short-living) French calendar?

 

[kwaw]

Another 36 card pseudo-astrological method from 1788 is described in:
Etrennes nouvelles de l'horoscope de l'homme et de la femme" By M. G. D. R., published by G. Quinet, Libraire, dans la Salle du Palaise, using an expanded piquet set of 36 cards.

It is available online here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...KAhXKXRQKHXvaAbIQuwUIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

It is second edition, so possibly available earlier than 1788. It was republished (or elements in it was copied) in L'Oracle Parfait, by Jean Peyre, in 2003.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...zAA#v=onepage&q=Nombre 9. association&f=false

The 9x4 spread, with the names of card placements, is the same as described as 'after Lenormand' in the 'L'Oracle Parfait'.

The 36 positions in the 1788 9x4 spread:

1 projet; 2 satisfaction; 3 reussite; 4 esperance; 5 hazard; 6 desir; 7 injustice; 8 ingratitude; 9 association; 10 perte; 11 peine; 12 etat; 13 joie; 14 amour; 15 prosperite; 16 mariage; 17 affliction; 18 jouissance; 19 heritage; 20 trahison; 21 rival; 22 present; 23 amant; 24 elevation; 25 bienfait merite; 26 enterprise; 27 changement; 28 death; 29 recompense; 30 disgrace; 31 bonheur; 32 fortune; 33 indifference; 34 faveur; 35 ambition; 36 maladie.

The 36 positions in the 9x4 Mlle Lenormand spread:

1, projet; 2, satisfaction; 3, réussite; 4, espérance; 5, hasard; 6, désir; 7, injustice; 8, ingratitude; 9, association; 10, perte; 11, peine; 12, état; 13, joie; 14, amour; 15, prospérité; 16, mariage; 17, affection; 18, jouissance; 19, héritage; 20, trahison; 21, rival; 22, présent; 23, amant; 24, élévation; 25, bienfait; 26, entreprise; 27, changement; 28, fin; 29, récompense; 30, disgrâce; 31, bonheur; 32, fortune; 33, indifférence; 34, faveur; 35, ambition, 36, indisposition.

From 1788 re: reading the kings:

From L'Oracle Parfait, 1875, after 'the method of Lenormand':

1, Roi de coeur; 2, roi de carreau; 3, roi de trèfle. La personne, d'un état malheureux, passera à un qui sera très heureux; elle possédera des biens, des honneurs, des richesses immenses.

 

[Huck]

That's more or less identical., good observation.

"L'Oracle parfait" was also used by d'Alby in 1802 as title. For the d'Alby work existed the opinion, that it was already written in 1788.

Now you set up a relation from another (or even the same ?) work in 1788 called "Etrennes nouvelles ..." to a work called "L'oracle parfait" in context to "Lenormand", possibly this one ...
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k74235k
.... ?

But I thought, that the later decks with "L'oracle parfait" were different to the earlier (d'Alby)?

 

[kwaw]

.... ?

But I thought, that the later decks with "L'oracle parfait" were different to the earlier (d'Alby)?

Yes they are -- I initially observed that there was another 36 card method in 1788 -- but then realized later it is the same method and text as described as being 'after Lenormand' in the 1875 L'Oracle Parfait (which is different to that of d'Alby). I only realized the relation to the Lenormand afterwards -- it was searching for a 36 card method akin to d'Alby, that also used the term 'horoscope' however that led me initially to the 1788 text - which is clearly the source of the 1875 l'oracle Parfait 'apres Lenormand'.

The King of Hearts signifies in the 1875 for example:

Le roi de cœur signifie homme marié ou veuf; il représente aussi un ami de tout cœur dont le dévouement et la bienfaisance sont acquis à la personne dont on tire l'horoscope. Si l'on tire les cartes pour une jeune fille~ femme mariée ou veuve et qu'il se trouve placé aux nombres 14, 22, 23, 24, 32, il signifie amant; si c'est au contraire pour un homme célibataire, marié ou veuf et qu'il se trouve aux Membres 14, 22, 23, 24, 32, il signifie rival.

And in the 1788:

Signifie homme marié ou veuf; il repréfente aussï un ami de tout cœur qui aime & fait du bien à la Personne pour qui l’on tire l’Horoscope, par tout où il se trouve placé, de plus il signifie & représente amant, si on tire pour fille, femme ou veuve, quand il est placé aux nombres 14 22 23 24 32 si on tire pour garçon, homme marié ou veuf, & qu’il se trouve aux nombres 14 22 23 24 32 il signifie rival de fentimens.