(_Nîmes, May 13, 1840; Paris, December 16, 1897_)
Alphonse Daudet was born in the ancient Provençal city of Nîmes, near the
Rhône, May 13, 1840. In this same year Émile Zola, destined like Daudet to
pass his youth in Provence, was born at Paris.
As a result of the commercial upheaval which attended the revolution of
1848, Daudet's father, a wealthy silk manufacturer, was ruined. After a
hard struggle he was forced to give up his business at Nîmes and moved to
Lyons (1849). He was not successful here, and finally, in 1856, the family
was broken up. The sons now had to shift for themselves.
These first sixteen years of Alphonse Daudet's life were far from unhappy.
He had found delight in exploring the abandoned factory at Nîmes. His
school days at Lyons were equally agreeable to the young vagabond. His
studies occupied him little; he loved to wander through the streets of the
great city, finding everywhere food for fanciful speculation. He would
follow a person he did not know, scrutinizing his every movement, and
striving to lose his own identity in that of the other, to live the
other's life. His frequent days of truancy he spent in these idle rambles,
or in drifting down the river. Literary ambition had already seized him;
he had written a novel (of which no trace remains) and numerous verses.
Notwithstanding his lack of application to study, he had succeeded in
completing the course of the _lycée_.
In 1856 when it became certain that the father could no longer care for
the family, the mother and daughter took refuge in the home of relatives;
Ernest, the older of the two surviving sons, sought his fortune in the
literary circles of Paris; and Alphonse accepted a position as "master of
the study hall" (_maître d'études, pion_) at the college of Alais in the
Cévennes. The boy was too young, too delicate, and too sensitive to be
able to endure the mental suffering and humiliation to which he was
subjected at the hands of the bullies of this school.[1] After a year of
martyrdom he set out on his terrible journey to Paris. Here he was
welcomed by his brother Ernest.
[Footnote 1: See "Le Petit Chose," "Little What's-His-Name."]
The two brothers had always felt and always continued to feel the closest
sympathy for each other. Ernest believed in Alphonse's genius more than in
his own, and bestowed on his younger brother the motherly devotion which
Alphonse so gratefully and tenderly acknowledges in "Le Petit Chose," his
romantic autobiography, where Ernest appears as "ma mère Jacques."
The first years in Paris were the darkest in the brothers' lives. They
could earn scarcely enough to satisfy their most pressing needs, but both
were happy, since they were in Paris. Before Alphonse's arrival Ernest had
secured regular employment on a newspaper. Alphonse was longing for
recognition as a poet, but to earn his living he was forced to turn to
prose. His contributions to _Le Figaro_ and other newspapers soon made him
known. He wrote little and carefully, nor did he forget his literary
ideals even when poverty might have excused hurried productions in the
style best calculated to sell. His literary conscience was as strong under
the trying circumstances of his debut as later when success brought
independence.[2]
[Footnote 2: See E. Daudet, "_Mon Frère et moi_," pp. 151-152. Daudet
frequently says of himself that he was by nature an improviser, that the
labor of meticulous composition to which he forced himself was a torture,
yet he remained always true to his ideal.]
During this period he lived among the Bohemians of the Parisian world of
letters; but, though he shared their joys and sorrows, he seems to have
emerged unscathed from the dangers of such an existence. Zola met Daudet
at this time and has left us an attractive picture of him: "He was in the
employ of a successful newspaper, he used to bring in his article, receive
his remuneration, and disappear with the nonchalance of a young god, sunk
in poetry, far from the petty cares of this world. He was living, I think,
outside of the city, in a remote corner with other poets, a band of joyous
Bohemians. He was beautiful, with the delicate, nervous beauty of an
Arabian horse, an ample mane, a silky divided beard, large eyes, a thin
nose, a passionate mouth, and, to crown all that, a certain flash of
light, a breath of tender voluptuousness, which bathed his whole face in a
smile that was both roguish and sensual. There was in him something of the
Parisian Street gamin and something of the Oriental woman."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Les Romanciers naturalistes," pp. 256-257.]
Daudet's first volume was a collection of verse, "Les Amoureuses" (1858,
published by Tardieu, a Provençal). These simple poems are charming in
their freshness and naïveté, and established Daudet's reputation as a
writer of light verse. The whole volume, and especially "Les Prunes,"
attracted the attention of the Empress Eugénie. At her solicitation Daudet
was made one of the secretaries of the powerful Duke of Morny, president
of the _corps législatif_ (1860). His duties were purely nominal. He now
had money enough to keep the wolf from his door and was free to devote
himself to literature.
It was at this time that the stage began to attract him. His first play,
"La Dernière Idole," was produced at the Odéon in 1862. Almost every other
year between 1862 and 1892 a new play, on untried themes, or adapted from
one of his novels and usually written in collaboration, appeared at a
Parisian theater. Of all these only one, "L'Arlésienne" (1872), is worthy
of its author.
Already in 1859, as a result of the suffering of the preceding years and
lack of precautions, his health had begun to fail. He spent the winters of
1861-1864 in Algeria, Corsica, and Provence. These voyages were of vital
importance in his development. He learned something of the world and
became better fitted to study conditions in his own narrow sphere; at the
same time he acquired the power of vigorous description and collected
material for some of his finest short stories and for the Tartarin series.
A portion of the summer of 1861 he dreamed away in an abandoned mill[1]
near Fontvieille, between Tarascon and Arles. From here he sent to the
Parisian newspapers _L'Evènement_ and _Le Figaro_ those delightful stories
and sketches which were gathered and published in 1869 under the title
"Lettres de mon moulin." Of all the many volumes of Daudet's collected
works this is the most satisfying: it is here that the distinctive
products of his genius are to be sought; and it is on these stories, with
a few from later collections, and on "Tartarin de Tarascon," that his
claim to immortality will finally rest. It is here that we find several of
his most excellent stories: "Le Secret de maître Cornille", "La Chèvre de
M. Seguin", "La Mule du pape", "Le Curé de Cucugnan", "L'Élixir du
révérend père Gaucher" and others.
[Footnote 1: Daudet did not live in the mill which he has made famous, but
he spent there "de longues journées"; he never owned it, but the deed
which serves so picturesquely as preface to his book is not entirely
apocryphal. See "Trente Ans de Paris," p. 164.]
In 1865, at the death of Morny, he gave up his secretaryship and applied
himself exclusively to literature.
In 1866 he met Julie Allard, and early the next year they were married. To
his wife, a lady of exquisite taste, Daudet owed unfailing encouragement
and competent, sympathetic criticism.
"Le Petit Chose," his first long work, had been begun in 1866 during his
stay in Provence; it was published in 1868. The first part, which is of
great interest, is largely autobiographical and covers the childhood and
youth of the writer up to his first years in Paris; the second part is a
colorless romance of no particular merit. Daudet himself confessed that
the work had been written too soon and with too little reflection. "I wish
I had waited," he said; "something good might have been written on my
youth".[1]
[Footnote 1: See "Trente Ans de Paris," pp. 75, 85, and Sherard, "Alphonse
Daudet," p. 301.]
"Tartarin de Tarascon" was written in 1869.
Success and happiness had crowned Daudet's efforts. He was spending his
time in all tranquility, now at Paris, now at Champrosay, where he
occupied the house of the painter Delacroix. Suddenly in July, 1870, the
war cloud burst. Daudet lay stretched out on his bed fretfully nursing a
broken leg. On his recovery he shouldered his gun and joined in the
hopeless defense of Paris.
It was the war that killed the old Daudet and brought into existence the
new. Before the war, Daudet himself confesses it, he had lived free from
care, singing and trifling, heedless of the vexing problems of society and
the world, his heart aglow with the fire of the sun of his native
Provence. The war awakened in our sensitive poet a seriousness of purpose
which harmonized but little with his native genius. Among his friends he
never lost his old-time buoyant gaiety; but his works from now on show
only a trace of it. The charming "Belle-Nivernaise" (1886), a few
"tarasconades," a gleam here and there in all his works, remind us of our
old friend and plead for our sympathy with the new.
During the next few years he added to his reputation as a writer of short
stories; to this period belong several collections of tales and sketches:
"Lettres à un absent" (1871), "Contes du lundi" (1873), "Les Femmes
d'artistes" (1874), "Robert Helmont" (1874). A few of the stories are
still more or less in the manner of the "Lettres de mon moulin" ("Le Pape
est mort," "Un Réveillon dans le marais," "Les Émotions d'un perdreau
rouge"), but all these volumes, except "Les Femmes d'artistes," are
inspired by the war. The playfulness of the youthful Daudet is still
apparent here and there in the war stories ("La Pendule de Bougival," "Les
Petits Pâtés"), but a sterner tone is prevalent.
The great novels which now follow are the fruit of meditation, the
ripening process which the war precipitated, and which was fed from the
flame of Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and others. Neglecting almost entirely
those elements of his genius which came to him as his birthright, he
devotes himself henceforth to a study of the problems of life. Our
Provençal cicada has a purpose now: nothing else than the reformation of
all social abuses. He does not single out one and attack it time after
time, but he springs restlessly from one to another, directing high and
low his relentless inquiry.
"Fromont jeune et Risler aîné" (1874) is the first of Daudet's great
novels and one of his strongest studies. Sidonie, the daughter of humble
bourgeois parents, is filled with a longing for luxury and social
prominence. She succeeds in becoming the wife of Fromont, a simple, honest
workman whose talent and industry have brought him wealth. Sidonie's
unscrupulousness in the pursuit of her object spreads ruin. Risler, the
partner of Fromont, withdraws large sums from the common treasury to
satisfy the extravagant desires of Sidonie whom he loves. Fromont's eyes
are at last opened; he finds the firm, which had always been his pride, on
the verge of bankruptcy; he discovers the perfidy of Sidonie and attempts
to force her to beg on her knees the forgiveness of Risler's
long-suffering wife. Sidonie flees and becomes a concert-hall singer. Her
revenge is complete when by means of a letter she proves to Fromont that
she has corrupted his much-loved younger brother. Fromont hangs himself.
Outside the main current of the plot Daudet sketches one of the little
dramas of humble life of which he was so fond: the story of Delobelle, an
impoverished actor who lives for his art while his devoted wife and
daughter Désirée patiently ply the needle to earn bread.
Daudet up to this time had been recognized as the greatest of French
short-story writers. The success of "Fromont jeune et Risler aîné" was
immediate, and in his succeeding novels he confirmed more and more surely
his right to a place in the front rank of French novelists.
From this story of the life of the _petite bourgeoisie_ he turns to a
wider field. The Bohemia of Paris, a glimpse of the country, and
especially the life of the artisan, fill "Jack" (1876). Daudet had known
the real Jack at Champrosay in 1868. In the novel Jack is the illegitimate
son of Ida de Barency, a shallow demi-mondaine who is passionately devoted
to the boy but brings to him nothing but misfortune. Jack begins his
suffering in a wretched school where his mother has placed him after the
Jesuits had refused to receive him. This school is supported by the
tuition fees of boys from tropical countries, _petits pays chauds_, as
Moronval, the villainous director, calls them. The teachers belong to that
class of _ratés_, artistic and literary failures, whom Daudet learned to
know well during his first years in Paris. One of these _ratés_ captivates
Ida de Barency, and Jack's life of misery continues. Despite his physical
unfitness, he is sent to labor in the shipbuilding yards at Indret,
suffers tortures in the stoking room of an ocean steamer, is wrecked, and
returns to France in a piteous condition. His love for Cécile,
granddaughter of a gentle country doctor, is rapidly making a man of him,
when his mother enters again into his life and the poor boy dies miserably
in a hospital, killed by despair rather than by disease.
This is perhaps the most powerful of Daudet's novels; it is certainly the
most harrowing. The tragedy of the whole is only slightly relieved by the
interweaving of the romance of good Bélisaire, the hawker, one of Jack's
few friends.
"Le Nabab" (1878) is concerned with politics, the richer bourgeoisie, and
the aristocracy. Jansoulet, the "nabob," returns from Tunis with a large
fortune and immediately becomes the prey of parasites. He is made the
enemy of the banker Hemerlingue through the social rivalry of their wives.
He is elected _député_ from Corsica. The legality of the election is
questioned. Jansoulet is supported by the prime minister, the duc de Mora,
but the latter dies suddenly, Jansoulet's election is declared invalid,
and he dies from a stroke of apoplexy.
Despite the protest of the author, contemporaries found originals for a
number of the characters of this novel. The duc de Mora is Morny, and
several others have been identified with greater or less certainty.
Félicia Ruys is perhaps Sarah Bernhardt.
The purely romantic element of the work is found in the story of Paul de
Géry and the Joyeuse family, a secondary plot having no vital connection
with the main story.
In "Les Rois en exil" (1880) Daudet explores a new vein in contemporary
society. He explains that the idea of the work occured to him one October
evening when, standing in the Place du Carrousel, he was contemplating the
ruins of the Tuileries. The wreck of the Empire brought to his mind a
vision of the dethroned monarchs whom he had seen spending their exile in
Paris: the Duke of Brunswick, the blind King of Hanover and the devoted
Princess Frederica, Queen Isabella of Spain, and others. "This is the work
which cost me most effort," Daudet says, and the reason is not far to
seek. He had always painted "from life," and the difficulties incident to
gaining an entrance into the intimacy of even dethroned monarchs were
almost insurmountable. The novelist's acquaintances were appealed to, from
house-furnishers to diplomats. The story of the composition of "Les Rois
en exil" is an interesting study of Daudet's methods, his inexorable
insistence on truth, even to the most minute details.
As usual, the characters are sharply contrasted. Christian, the exiled
king of Illyria, is detestably weak; Frédérique, his wife devoting herself
completely to the interests of her son, Zara, struggles with the aid of
the faithful preceptor, Méraut, to prepare the prince for a throne which
he is never to ascend. Of all the characters that appear in Daudet's
novels it is perhaps Frédérique whose appeal to the reader is strongest,
and Frédérique is almost entirely the product of the author's imagination.
We cannot but regret the many visions such as Frédérique which were
refused admittance to Daudet's essentially romantic mind by the
uncompromising laws of a realism which he had mistakenly accepted as his
guide.
The composition of "Les Rois en exil" is defective, but its charm is
great. In "Numa Roumestan" (1881) the technique is better. Daudet's first
intention was to entitle this work "Nord et midi," his idea being to
contrast the north with the south, a theme for which he always had a
predilection. Numa is a refined Tartarin; Daudet sends him to Paris, and
studies the result. Numa carries all before him by his robust vigor and
geniality. The "mirage" effects of the southern sun pursue him to Paris;
quick to promise out of the fullness of his hearty enthusiasm, he
encourages and disappoints those who trust themselves to him. He deceives
his wife, begs her forgiveness with abundant tears, and in a disgusting
manner deceives her a second time. The book ends with the picture of
Rosalie Roumestan bending over her new-born son. "Will you be a liar too?"
She asks. "Will you be a Roumestan, tell me?"
"L'Évangéliste" (1883), a psychological study rather than a novel, is a
heartbreaking picture of the inhumanity of religious fanaticism. "Sapho"
(1884) is so essentially French in spirit that it can hardly be understood
by American readers. Daudet dedicates it "To my sons when they are
twenty." It is intended as a lesson, and if naturalistic works ever can
carry a lesson this one certainly does. It is a striking picture of the
evils of _faux ménages_. On the whole "Sapho" is disagreeable, yet of the
novels it seems to be Daudet's masterpiece, perhaps because it is the most
romantic. The truth may be photographed in its most minute realistic
details, as in Zola, or it may be colored by poetic fancy; this has
happened in "Numa Roumestan" and especially in "Sapho," the two novels of
Daudet which appear most likely to live. In "Sapho" there is a tender note
which is lacking in "Jack" and in "Fromont jeune et Risler aîné"; Daudet's
nature fitted him to inspire pity rather than indignation. And we must
remember that while writing "Sapho" he had in mind the future of his own
sons. He looks forward, and in hope of a fortunate issue tells frankly, in
a kindly manner, a true story which he hopes may be fruitful of good
results. If, instead of assuming the role of inquisitorial censor,
naturalists would show sympathy for erring mankind, if they would look
forward with hope instead of fixing their horrified eyes on the present or
the past, their judgments would not tend to make us give up in despair,
but might encourage and instruct. "Sapho" is the last of the great novels.
"L'Immortel" (1888) is a weak and unjust satire directed against the
French Academy. "Rose et Ninette" (1892) is a study of the evils of
divorce; "La Petite Paroisse" (1895), the only one of the novels with a
happy outcome, is a study of jealousy. In "Soutien de famille" (1898,
posthumous) two brothers are contrasted; the older, as a matter of course
recognized as the head of the family, is weak, and the younger is the real
"prop of the family."
Just after "Sapho" (1884) Daudet's health had begun to decline. Long years
of suffering follow, but, although in almost constant pain, the
indefatigable worker remains at his desk.
In "Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres" (1888) and "Trente Ans de Paris"
(1888) Daudet tells the story of his life and literary activity. It is
through these works that we become intimately acquainted with our author,
and we are not disillusioned. "Entre les frises et la rampe" (1893)
contains studies of the stage and its people.
* * * * *
Daudet claimed to be an independent,[1] and was indignant when an attempt
was made to class him with any school. He was certainly independent in his
youth, but in his second period, after the war, he became a realist with
Flaubert and Zola and an impressionist with Goncourt.
[Footnote 1: He consistently refused to have his name placed in candidacy
before the Academy. In a foreword prefixed to "L'Immortel" he declares:
"Je ne me présente pas, je ne me suis jamais présenté, je ne me
présenterai jamais à l'Académie."]
It is, however, the southerner in Daudet that remains most pleasing. It is
in those works which are directly inspired by his native land of dreams
that he is most completely himself, and therefore most charming. It is
here that he discloses his kinship with Musset. With all the delicacy of
Musset and at the same time a saneness which Musset did not always
possess, what might he not have accomplished if he had only continued as
he began? Even as it is, the best Daudet is the young Daudet, the brother
of Musset. In his so-called great works, the long novels where questions
of the day are fearlessly treated yet never solved, the works which are
frequently considered his surest claim to immortality, we have an entirely
different Daudet, excellent of course, and strong too if you like, but not
the Daudet that nature had intended to produce.
Surely it would have been better if he had never gone to Paris, but, like
his friend Mistral, had remained in Provence and devoted his essentially
poetic genius to an expression of the spirit of the south. His keenly
sensitive nature was too delicate for intercourse with the virility of a
Zola or the subtlety of a Goncourt. Paris made of him a realist, and the
world lost by the transformation.
Daudet's love for his native land was intense. Its images were ever
present to him; its poetry haunted him throughout his life. He urged young
men ambitious of literary laurels to remain in their native provinces, to
draw their inspiration from the soil, confident that something great and
beautiful would result. Why did he not take for himself the counsel he so
incessantly offered to others? An untiring curiosity which accompanied a
remarkable acuteness of all the senses, and an emotional and intellectual
receptivity which rendered him quickly and profoundly impressionable,
equipped Daudet to express the poetic spirit of the south in its epic as
well as its lyric qualities. He was aware of this himself. "I believe that
I shall carry away with me," he said, "many curious observations on my
race, its virtues, its faults".[1] And in speaking of the "Lettres de mon
moulin," the only volume of his works in which his southern nature is
given free rein, he says many years after its publication, after he had
written his best novels, "That is still my favorite book."
[Footnote 1: Léon Daudet, "Alphonse Daudet," p. 183; read the whole
chapter. "En lisant Eugénie de Guérin, je m'écrie: 'Pourquoi n'avoir pas
tous vécu chez nous, dans nos coins?' Comme nos esprits y auraient gagné
au point de vue de l'originalité au sens étymologique du mot, c'est-à-dire
vertu d'origine."--"Notes sur la vie," p. 141.]
Daudet's remarkable power of observation was innate. From his youth he
exercised this instinct and carried a notebook in which he set down
impressions, studies, and sketches of characters and scenes. These
notebooks proved to be of inestimable value to the realist; and the
natural inclination to seek the naked truth, to which they bear witness,
strengthened the determination of the postbellum Daudet to enter the ranks
of the sociological novelists. So far as possible, he borrowed every
detail of character and environment from real life; almost all his
characters represent real persons whom he studied with a view of using
them in his books. Daudet's is a microscopic, notebook realism quite
different from the universal verity of Balzac, but there are many pages
prompted by an exquisite sympathy or a violent passion in which the
indomitable personality of the author breaks through the impassiveness
imposed by the accepted masters of the craft. Sadness is the prevailing
tone in his work, the sort of sadness that proceeds from pity. Where
sadness does not dominate in Daudet, irony takes its place. These two
qualities, sadness which is inspired by pity for human suffering and irony
which betrays impatience with human folly, these two qualities which are
the heart and soul of Daudet's work are the enemies of that impassiveness
which is the indispensable attitude of the realist, and which Daudet tried
in vain to acquire.
Paris, the war, his intercourse with Flaubert and Goncourt and Zola, were
the influences, then, that transformed Daudet, most easily susceptible to
impressions from without. The Daudet of the great novels is not the real
Daudet, however; the real Daudet is the author of "Les Amoureuses," of the
"Lettres de mon moulin," and of "Tartarin de Tarascon."
But even in the "Tartarin" series he is not entirely himself. The pure
stream of his native simplicity and naïveté is already tinged with the
worldly-wiseness of the Parisian. In the "Lettres de mon moulin" the
writer is still in sympathy with his native land, while in the earliest of
the "Tartarin" series, "Tartarin de Tarascon," there is already a spirit
of disdainful raillery which Daudet learned in Paris. Tarascon was piqued
when "Tartarin de Tarascon" appeared. Indeed, there is more than a little
in the book that may well offend local pride.
In "Numa Roumestan" the satire is still less sympathetic and less
good-natured. Numa is utterly detestable. He is a visionary; we readily
forgive such a weakness, and we are amused by this characteristic trait of
the south in Bompard and Tartarin. These two are visionaries and liars;
they are cowards too, boastful and conceited. But they have never had the
happiness of others in their hands. If a true child of the south, such as
Tartarin or Bompard, were placed in a position of trust, he would not
prove equal to the occasion and the result would be a Numa Roumestan. That
is Daudet's verdict, and certainly his decision is not flattering to the
south. Is this the decision of the better Daudet? is it not a Parisian
Daudet, whose sympathy for his native land has been warped by the play of
Parisian mockery on his sensitive, easily convinced nature?
It is precisely in "Numa Roumestan," where he is making his most complete
study of the character of the southerner, that Daudet is most pessimistic.
Le Quesnoy, the worthy northerner, deceives his wife as does Numa, the
lying southerner. The spirit of the novel is epitomized in such sentiments
as "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," "Au nord au midi--tous pareils,
traîtres et parjures," "Grand homme pour tout le monde excepté pour sa
femme." A decided pessimism pervades the great novels. Optimistic Daudet
is frequently said to be. He was truly so by nature, he is so in the
"Lettres de mon moulin" and in all his work before the war, but his
pessimism is unquestionable in the great novels.
Surely nature did not intend Daudet to become a pessimist; he loved
mankind, he had many devoted friends and no enemies. He carried happiness
wherever he went. The attic of Auteuil, the rendezvous of the Goncourt
group, is dark and gloomy. A serious, mirthless band surrounds the
armchair of the patriarch. The door opens and Daudet enters. Old Goncourt
rises to greet him: "Eh bien! mon petit, ça va?" "Assez bien, mon
Goncourt" is the reply. The terrible malady has already seized the younger
man, but he still radiates life and cheer: his lightness of heart dispels
the gravity of the company; little by little his animation is communicated
to them all, and the attic resounds with peals of laughter.
It was always so. The sympathy of Daudet, the man, was unfailing; his pity
For the weak, his love for his family and friends, his hatred of villainy,
were boundless. He delighted in little acts of charity the source of which
remained unknown to the world and even to the recipient.
"My father said to me again and again," Léon Daudet tells us, "I should
like, after I have accomplished my task, to set myself up as a merchant of
happiness. My reward would be in my success!" This longing, so entirely
characteristic of the man, is manifest everywhere in his earlier work,
only rarely in the great novels; unfortunately the great novels were his
"task."
If only he had continued as he began, if only he had remained the poet of
the "Lettres de mon moulin"; if only he had not been led astray by his
"task," he might have brought to the world of readers that happiness which
he brought to his few friends in the attic of Auteuil.
* * * * *
We are told the story of the publication of "Tartarin de Tarascon" [1] by
Daudet himself in his "Trente Ans de Paris." It began to appear in the
_Petit Moniteur universel_, but did not appeal to the readers of this
popular newspaper.
[Footnote 1: The other books of the "Tartarin" series are inferior to
"Tartarin de Tarascon" (1872). "Tartarin sur les Alpes" (1885) relates the
adventures of the hero while climbing the great mountains of Switzerland
in order to prove that he is worthy of remaming P.C.A. (_Président du Club
Alpin de Tarascon._) In "La Défense de Tarascon" (1886, only a dozen pages
long) we have a characteristic picture of the city preparing to resist the
German invasion. "Port-Tarascon" (1890) is the last and poorest of the
series. Tartarin leads his compatriots in a colonizing expedition to the
South Seas, and then brings them home again. Finally, in self-inflicted
exile, "across the bridge" in Beaucaire (cf. note to _13_ 28), the great
man dies.]
Publication was interrupted after some ten installments, and the work was
carried to the _Figaro_, by whose more aristocratic clientele literary
irony was not unappreciated. The hero was first called _Chapatin_, then
_Barbarin_ (cf. note to _56_ 12), and finally _Tartarin_. "Tartarin de
Tarascon" is a _galéjado, une plaisanterie, un éclat de rire_. Continuing
Daudet says: "Only one who was raised in southern France, or knows it
thoroughly, can appreciate how frequently the Tartarin type is to be met
there, and how under the generous sun of Tarascon, which warms and
electrifies, the natural drollery of mind and imagination is led astray
into monstrous exaggerations, in form and dimension as various as bottle
gourds."
Daudet, like our Dickens, succeeded in producing characters invested with
such reality that in the minds of readers they become veritable beings. Of
all his creations Tartarin is the most widely known, and the world's
conception of a French southerner is derived from the portrait of this
hero.
As is usual in the works of Daudet, the character of Tartarin is not
wholly fictitious. The home of the cap-hunters was really not Tarascon,
but a village five or six leagues away on the other side of the Rhône. It
was from this village, and in company with the prototype of Tartarin, that
Daudet set out for Africa in 1861, chiefly to recover his health and
incidentally to hunt lions. The novel is a souvenir of the author's
sojourn in the home of the real Tartarin and of the trip which the two
made together[1], the whole being greatly modified by the play of the
novelist's Provençal imagination.
[Footnote 1: See the following notes of this edition for evidence of the
extent to which Daudet used the notes jotted down in Africa in the
composition of "Tartarin": _70_ 21, _73_ 27, _81_ 5-6. See also "Souvenirs
d'un homme de lettres," p. 44, where he speaks of the notebook from which
he extracted "Tartarin" and other works.]
To appreciate "Tartarin de Tarascon" is not easy for a foreigner; and by
foreigners is meant all those who have not lived in and do not know
Provence. Americans and Parisians (see pages 16-17) look on Tartarin and
his compatriots as mere liars.
They are not liars: they are suffering simply from the effects of a
mirage. To understand what is meant by a mirage, you must go to the south
of France. There you will find a magic sun which transforms everything,
which takes a molehill and makes of it a mountain. Go to Tarascon, seek
out a man who almost went to Shanghai, look steadfastly at him, and if the
southern sun is shining upon him you will soon be convinced that he has
actually gone to Shanghai.
In reading "Tartarin de Tarascon," therefore, remember that Tartarin's
world is small and his imagination large; that he never lies, though he
rarely tells the truth. Do not make the mistake of thinking Tartarin a
lunatic. Just as his immortal predecessor Don Quixote was thoroughly sane
except in that which touched the realm of chivalry, so Tartarin is a
normal Frenchman except when he is under the influence of the southern
mirage.
* * * * *
Daudet says in "Trente Ans de Paris," page 142, that the home of the real
Tartarin was five or six miles from Tarascon on the other side of the
Rhone. In an article which appeared in "Les Annales," July 6, 1913,
Charles Le Goffic tells of a visit to the house in Tarascon known as _la
maison de Tartarin_, and reports a conversation he had with Mistral, the
great Provençal poet, an intimate friend of Daudet. Mistral said that the
real Tartarin lived at Nîmes, eighteen miles from Tarascon, to the west of
the Rhone, and was no other than Raynaud, Daudet's own cousin. "Raynaud,"
Mistral told Le Goffic, "had travelled among the _Teurs_ and talked about
nothing but his lion hunts; he talked about them with his lower lip
extended so as to form a terrible pout (_moue_), which gave a character of
good-natured ferocity to the little gentleman's honest face.
Raynaud recognized himself in Tartarin and became very angry with Daudet;
the reconciliation between the cousins was not effected till toward the
end of the novelist's life."