Guillaume Vandive - Its Successors

Its Successors

Its successor Nicolas Simart who had married his widow and had become also “printer and ordinary bookseller of Monseigneur the Dolphin”, still a long time continued to print various books of his funds. Thus in 1731, always installed street Saint-Jacob with the “Crowned Dolphin”, it publishes a “new re-examined and corrected edition” of the Voyage of Sieur Paul Lucas with Raising which contrary to the promises of the title page reproduces the original one very exactly.

In spite of the fact that it continued to draw throughout its life its subsistence from the printing works founded thanks to the investments from Guillaume Vandive, Nicolas Simart started a sordid lawsuit in 1727 to claim in Philippe Vandive and Balthazar Philippe Vandive the expenses which during twenty years the maintenance and the education of his/her daughter-in-law Charlotte Eléonore Vandive had caused him. He did not hesitate besides to give a noisy publicity to his lawsuit by publishing and spreading on the public place the aggressive indictment of the prosecutor Baron against the arguments of the Vandive family. This indictment preserved at the National library of Paris and written in a style worthy of the Litigants of Root, but in sourer, transmitted the echo of this conflict of interests to us.

No doubt, Nicolas Simart was already in bad financial position and this malicious lawsuit was not to him it great utility, because in 1748 Nicolas Simart was imprisoned for debts with the Caretaker's lodge, where he was still at the first January 1749 according to the Historique of the booksellers of the inspector of Hémery.