Valentine DELESSERT née LABORDE (1806-1894) Blanche Lee Childe née Triqueti Watercolor. 12 x 9 cm Wood frame carved with foliage and birds. Two spandrels missing. Valentine de Laborde, through her marriage to Madame Gabriel Delessert, was Blanche's great-aunt by marriage, Blanche having married Benjamin Delessert (1817-1868) in her first marriage. A woman of the world, very close to Prosper Mérimée and Maxime du Camp, Valentine de Laborde remained close to Blanche even after Benjamin's death in 1868. Exhibition: Centenary of the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1929. Catalog number 581. Provenance: Château du Perthuis. Note: Blanche's family and friends were related to Valentine de Laborde, and she was close to the literary circles around Mérimée in the second half of the 19th century. She herself published several texts, notably in the Revue des Deux Mondes, including Impressions de Voyage, 1882, Le général Robert E. Lee (1873) and Un Hiver au Caire, Journal de voyage en Egypte, 1883, published by Calmann Lévy. It was her novelistic correspondence with Pierre Loti that made her a part of literary history. Edited by Hervé Duchêne in 2022 (Blanche Lee Childe, Pierre Loti, Ah! cher Loti, croyez-moi, le Masque avait du bon. Correspondance (Le Passeur)), this epistolary exchange between a mysterious oriental masked stranger ("Oirda, la Rose") and a young sailor-writer leads to a frank friendship. Blanche even provided the proofreading for Mon frère Yves and, after her tragic death, was the subject of a tribute to the memory of Madame Lee Childe as an introduction to Propos d'exil in 1887 (lot 75).