Blanche de TRIQUETI, Mme Benjamin DELESSERT, then Mme Edward LEE CHILDE (1837-1886) Autograph manuscript signed "Blanche", 1862-1867; small notebook in-4 (22.5 x 15.5 cm) with 29 pages plus 2 pages and a half (plus 19 blank ff), originally bound in supple long-grain black leather, edges gilt. Book of quotations that also served as a diary. [At the time, Blanche de Triqueti had been married to Benjamin Delessert since 1858]. The notebook is enriched by 3 original drawings pasted on the pages: a watercolor gouache of Italian peasant women carrying baskets of fruit; and 2 pen-and-ink drawings: a mother with her child playing with a cat, and two children. On the 1st page, bearing her signature and the date: "Blanche / Juillet 1862 / Passy", Blanche noted this motto: "Waiting - Hoping! Blanche successively copied an extract from Le Comte Kostia by Victor Cherbuliez (July 15, 1862), thoughts and a letter by Joseph Joubert (November 22), extracts from La Fiancée du ministre by Mrs Beecher Stowe (November 30), quotations from Delphine de Girardin and Plato, further extracts from Mrs Beecher Stowe (December 7), Marguerite by Delphine de Girardin (December 10), Rachel's words from Ahasvérus by Quinet (August 10, 1863). A Spanish leaflet (by another hand) has been pasted in. This is followed by a short Napoleonic chronology (from 1796 to 1815), an extract from an article by Eugène Rambert on glaciers (November 1867), and finally Philippe le Bon's motto: "Aultre n'auray". Two loose sheets, dated January 26, 1860, record a confidence ("singular thing") from Ed. [her future second husband, Edward Lee Childe?] recounting the passion inspired in his friend M. by a young Creole Jul., then after M. had spurned her, briefly to Ed., "having lasted only eight days, to be born & die". 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).