Sismondi, J.C.L.de. Autograph Letter Signed. Chenes[-Bourgerie], Switzerland, December 3, 1834. 1 pg. + stampless address leaf. To his distant cousin by marriage, Mademoiselle [Fanny] Randall, Hotel de Bedford, Rue St. Honore, Paris. On the inside leaves is Randall’s unsigned Autograph Letter of reply in English. Paris, Jan. 30, 1835.
Sismondi (1773-1842) is remembered today as an economist who wrote an early “humanitarian protest" against unchecked capitalist competition at the expense of destitute workers, declaring the need for government “to regulate the progress of wealth”. His thinking influencing Malthus, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, and, later, even Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. His autograph letters are rarely seen in America; the handful auctioned in the 1980s and 1990s were all sold in Germany.
In this letter, Sismondi invited Randall to visit him in Switzerland, despite the “distance and bad roads.” By the time she responded, two months later, Sismondi was visiting Paris, where Randall hoped to meet him while “taking a nocturnal promenade before your hotel”. Both Sismondi and Randall had been among the elite Swiss “salon” of the famous Madame de Stael, the wealthy and brilliant French exile who gathered some of the most brilliant European politicians, thinkers and writers of the day at her chateau on Lake Geneva, not far from Sismondi’s home. After de Stael died in 1817 – in the arms of Randall, her private secretary and intimate friend – Randall faded into obscurity, while Sismondi went on to literary fame.