Junigen Gluckwunsch

HARTE'S AFFECTIONATE GREETING TO TWO YOUNG FEMALE COUSINS IN GERMANY ONE A TRAVELING COMPANION TO ENGLAND, SWITZERLAND & THE RHINE EX-DOHENY COLLECTION

HARTE, Brett. Beautiful chromolithographed German "Junigen Glückwunsch" card. 16mo (4 5/8 x 3 ½"), an elaborate cut-out, pop-up card, which shows two young girls dancing on the front, which when opened, up-pops a crowned princess within a garden pavilion surrounded by plants, flowers and a fountain, within a Moorish arch and surmounted by a blue and gilt dome and garlanded veranda, double-gilt raised borders. N. p., n.d. [i.e. Düsseldorf? 1879?].

Inscribed by Bret Harte on verso: "To Cousin Jessie from Bettit" (one of Harte's childhood nicknames). Harte has labeled in ink the two young girls dancing on the front with his cousin's names, "Jessie" and "Calli." Bret Harte arrived in Crefeld, Germany, the chief European town for the manufacture of silks and velvet, July 18, 1878, as United States Consul. One of the many things about his two years in Germany that he didn't like was the town of Crefeld, and he subsequently moved to Düsseldorf and commuted to Crefeld. Both Jesse and Callie Cooper, daughters of his cousin on his mother's side, Georgiana Cooper (née Thacher), arrived separately in Düsseldorf to study painting, and evidently stayed with Harte in his flat. Harte had stayed at the Georgetown home of Georgiana and her husband David Mack Cooper, a bank note engraver in the Treasury Department, during his abortive tenure with the newspaper Capital in 1877. Harte traveled extensively with Callie, travels which included a long trip to London, a month in Switzerland, and then the Rhine Valley, then back to Crefeld before Callie returned to the United States in October, 1879. Callie was described by a friend as "A mature, yet youthful woman, of health, beauty and goodness." Whether Jessie accompanied them on these excursions we do not know. Enclosed in a cloth chemise and half red morocco gilt slipcase, by the James Macdonald Co. Provenance: Gift of the well-known autograph dealer Thomas Madigan, 1932. See, Axel Nissen, Bret Harte (2000), p. 168, and Gary Scharnhorst, Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West (2000), p. 150. Ex libris Estelle Doheny, with her morocco gilt label. Doheny Sale Catalogue (1988), vol. III, #714. Fine. ABAA-VBF