- Lucien Daudet
Lucien Daudet (
June 11 ,1883 – 1946) was a French writer, the son ofAlphonse Daudet . Although a prolific novelist and painter, he was never really able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his ties to fellow novelistMarcel Proust ("Remembrance of Things Past "). Daudet was also friends withJean Cocteau .The Daudet family was composed of the father, Alphonse, the mother Julia (née Allard), Léon, the older brother, Edmée, and Lucien. Every member of the family wrote books: father, mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law (
Marthe Allard under the pseudonym of “Pampille”) and uncle (Ernest Daudet ). They published about fifteen works collectively.Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to
Jean-Yves Tadié , Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. They shared at least a friendship (if not a sexual relationship), which was revealed byJean Lorrain in his chronicle in the "Journal". It is for this indiscretion that Proust and Lorrain fought a duel in 1897.Lucien Daudet was also a painter. After having taken lessons at the
Académie Julian , he was a pupil ofWhistler and had an exposition together withBernheim-Jeune in 1906. His tableaux are not known anymore except by literary allusions to them (correspondence of Proust; catalogue byAnna de Noailles ).All his life, Daudet was overshadowed by his father in literature ("I am the son of a man whose celebrity and talent count for several generations, I remain under his shade"), and by Whistler in painting ("He gave me a certain taste in painting, but also very great contempt for that which is not of first rank... and I apply this contempt to what I make.")
Towards the end of his life, in 1943, he married Marie-Thérèse, the younger sister of
Pierre Benoit .Works
* "Le Chemin mort", 1908
* "La Fourmilière", 1909
* "Le Prince des cravates", 1910
* "L’Impératrice Eugénie", Fayard, 1911
* "L’Inconnue", Flammarion, 1923
* "Autour de 60 lettres de Marcel Proust", 1928
* "Dans l’ombre de l’impératrice Eugénie", Gallimard, 1935
* "Vie d’Alphonse Daudet", 1941External links
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/white-proust.html Excerpt from the first chapter of "Proust" by Edmund White]
* [http://www.yorktaylors.free-online.co.uk/cravates.htm 1910 review of "Le Prince des cravates"]
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