Читать книгу Le Petit Chose (Histoire d'un Enfant) - Alphonse Daudet - Страница 6

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Alphonse Daudet was born at Nîmes on May 13, 1840. The Daudets were of lowly origin. Alphonse’s grandfather, a simple peasant, had in 1789 settled at Nîmes as a weaver. His business prospered so much that he died leaving a small fortune; Vincent Daudet, his fourth son, and a young man of great ambition, was determined to rise out of the class in which he was born and acquire for himself and family a high social status. In 1830 he married, greatly against the wishes of her parents, Adeline Reynaud, whose father owned the largest silk manufactory in the town.

His affairs were fairly flourishing when he was suddenly ruined by the Revolution of 1848. Unable to meet his liabilities, he sold his business and removed to Lyons with his wife and children. He was, however, anxious that his sons, of whom Alphonse was the third, should have the best education his scanty means would allow, and Alphonse and his elder brother Ernest—the “mère Jacques” of Le Petit Chose and his lifelong companion—were first sent to the monastic school of St. Pierre, and then to the Lyons Lycée.

Young Alphonse, who from his birth had been rather delicate, was not a model boy. He loved to play truant, and it was only through his brother Ernest, who, to get him out of many a scrape, wrote notes to his teacher signed in his father’s name, that he escaped punishment. But he showed signs of great promise. He learned his lessons in half the time that his school-fellows did, was always at the top of his class, and was gifted with a marvellous power of observation. He composed several poems—amongst others La Vierge à la Crèche and Les Petits Enfants—also a novel, all of which were declared by his master to have been amazing productions for a boy of his age.

But Fortune did not smile on the Daudet family at Lyons any more than at Nîmes. After ten years of hard and bitter struggles, the home was broken up. M. Daudet became traveller for a firm of wine-merchants in the North, his wife and daughter remained in the South. Ernest—who had on leaving school acted as bookkeeper to his father, then as a receiver of pledges in a pawnbroker’s shop, and lastly as a clerk in a forwarding office—went to Paris to try his fortune in the world of letters, whilst Alphonse was sent as an usher to a college at Alais, for his father was unable to pay the fees for his final school examination.

The year that he spent at Alais was the unhappiest in his life. His small stature, his youth—he was now only fifteen years old—his “gauche” appearance, were not calculated to inspire the boys with any respect for him. They played him all sorts of tricks, and the masters refused to uphold his authority. Often, in order to escape his tormentors, he would rush up to his bed-room and there give vent to his despair by shedding floods of tears, lying awake at night and biting the bedclothes to choke his sobs. Yet, brave philosopher that he was, Le Petit Chose never lost heart. The dream of his life was to retrieve the family fortunes, a dream which one day was to be fully realized. At last, however, at the end of his tether, he wrote to Ernest telling him all his troubles, and great was his joy when he received a letter back, asking him to come at once to Paris.

On a cold, grey, foggy November morning Alphonse Daudet arrived in Paris, with only two francs in his pocket. His railway fare had been lent him by one of the masters at Alais, and he had had nothing to eat or drink on the journey, which had taken forty-eight hours, except a little brandy and water kindly offered by some sailors who travelled with him. He had not dared to spend the little he had left after buying his ticket, for he thought it better to go without food than reach Paris penniless. His brother met him and took him to his lodgings in the “Quartier Latin.”

Ernest, who had come to Paris with introductions, had obtained a post on the staff of an Orleanist newspaper, Le Spectateur, at a salary of £2 a week. In his Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs d’un homme de lettres, Le Petit Chose graphically tells us how, when his brother was at work, he wandered through the second-hand bookshops, where he was allowed to look through the new books on condition that he did not cut the leaves, and how one day, after fruitless interviews with publishers, when loitering along the banks of the Seine, he made the acquaintance of an editor, who became interested in him and agreed to publish his first little volume of charming poems, Les Amoureuses (1858). Thus at the age of eighteen did Daudet make his debut in the literary world. The first rung was reached in the ladder of fame, and success was not long in coming. He became a regular contributor to the Figaro. One of his poems, Les Frunes, was recited at the Tuileries before the Empress Eugénie. She liked it so much that she was led to inquire who the author was. On being told he was a poor man starving in a garret, she at once requested the Duc de Moray, President of the Corps Législatif, to offer him a post as secretary in his department, a sinecure, with a handsome salary attached. This gave him plenty of time to devote to literature, but hard work soon told on so delicate a frame. In 1861 he broke down owing to overwork, and went to Algeria and Corsica to recruit, collecting materials for future novels. In 1866, seized with a keen desire to visit once more his native town, he went South, where he wrote part of his autobiography, Le Petit Chose. In the following year (1867) he married Mlle. Julia Allard, whom he met at his parents’ home. It was a case of love at first sight. The marriage was an ideally happy one, and Daudet owed much of his future success to his wife, who corrected his proofs, criticized his characters, and encouraged him in every way she could.

For thirty years Daudet, now famous, continued to work, though only intermittently. He published, with increasing success, Le Petit Chose (1868), Tartarin de Tarascon (1872), Fromont jeune et Risler aîné (1874), Jack (1876), Le Nabab (1877), Les Rois en exil (1879), Numa Roumestan (1881), L’Évangéliste (1883), Sapho (1884), Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885), La Belle Nivernaise (1886), L’Immortel (1888), Port-Tarascon (1890), Rose et Ninette (1892), La Petite Paroisse (1895), and Le Trésor d’Arlatan (1897). His last novel, Soutien de famille, appeared after his death. The best known works of his earlier years, besides Les Amoureuses, are his Lettres de mon moulin (1869) and Les Contes du lundi (1873).

Daudet remained all his life the delicate, fragile Petit Chose. Ten years before his death—which was tragic in its suddenness when it did come—a severe illness overtook him, and slowly but surely his iron will broke down under the physical and mental strain which its ravages had brought on him. One evening, sitting at supper with his family, he had scarcely begun to eat when he fell from his chair. His wife and son ran to his assistance, but saw at once that the end had come. He died in Paris on December 18, 1897.

Daudet was a thorough Méridional. Born a Provençal, he never lost his early affection for the South. Impulsive, fiery in temper, and rather given to exaggeration, he possessed beneath a cheerful and handsome exterior a kind, sympathetic heart, and was generous to a fault. Having known what it was to suffer extreme poverty and feel the pangs of hunger, he was full of pity for those who had to face the stern realities of life. He was a close and accurate observer of humanity. He describes not only what he felt but what he saw. When a youth he always carried a notebook in which he would write down any little object of interest that came across his path. His characters, however, are not mere photographs, but pictures of real men and women painted with the infinite care of a skilled artist. His personality permeates all he wrote, and in this lies his charm.

In presenting this delightful story of a writer who is probably the most widely read in France to-day, the Editor has felt reluctantly compelled to abridge the original text by about fifty pages, so as to bring it within easy scope of the class-room; but in spite of these omissions he confidently hopes that the book will not fail to charm all the students who read it.