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The Nabob By: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) |
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by Alphonse Daudet
Translated By W. Blaydes
INTRODUCTION Daudet once remarked that England was the last of foreign countries to
welcome his novels, and that he was surprised at the fact, since for
him, as for the typical Englishman, the intimacy of home life had great
significance. However long he may have taken to win Anglo Saxon hearts,
there is no question that he finally won them more completely than any
other contemporary French novelist was able to do, and that when but
a few years since the news came that death had released him from his
sufferings, thousands of men and women, both in England and in America,
felt that they had lost a real friend. Just at the present moment one
does not hear or read a great deal about him, but a similar lull in
criticism follows the deaths of most celebrities of whatever kind, and
it can scarcely be doubted that Daudet is every day making new friends,
while it is as sure as anything of the sort can be that it is death, not
estrangement, that has lessened the number of his former admirers. "Admirers"? The word is much too cold. "Lovers" would serve better, but
is perhaps too expansive to be used of a self contained race. "Friends"
is more appropriate because heartier, for hearty the relations between
Daudet and his Anglo Saxon readers certainly were. Whether it was that
some of us saw in him that hitherto unguessed at phenomenon, a French
Dickens not an imitator, indeed, but a kindred spirit or that others
found in him a refined, a volatilized "Mark Twain," with a flavour of
Cervantes, or that still others welcomed him as a writer of naturalistic
fiction that did not revolt, or finally that most of us enjoyed him
because whatever he wrote was as steeped in the radiance of his own
exquisitely charming personality as a picture of Corot's is in the light
of the sun itself whatever may have been the reason, Alphonse Daudet
could count before he died thousands of genuine friends in England and
America who were loyal to him in spite of the declining power shown in
his latest books, in spite even of the strain which Sapho laid upon
their Puritan consciences. It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two great
Tartarin books and by the chief novels, Fromont , Jack , The Nabob ,
Kings in Exile , and Numa , aided by the artistic sketches and short
stories contained in Letters from my Mill and Monday Tales (Contes
du Lundi) . The strong but overwrought Evangelist , Sapho which of
course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from
the insular point of view and the books of Daudet's decadence, The
Immortal , and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gained
him many. His delightful essays in autobiography, whether in fiction,
Le Petit Chose (Little What's his Name) , or in Thirty Years of Paris
and Souvenirs of a Man of Letters , doubtless sealed more friendships
than they made; but they can be almost as safely recommended as the more
notable novels to readers who have yet to make Daudet's acquaintance. For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style,
and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny
Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year
of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable
journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the
beginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo Saxons
have little that is comparable outside the career of Oliver Goldsmith.
But poor Goldsmith had his pride wounded by the editorial tyranny of a
Mrs. Griffiths. Daudet, by a merely pretty poem about a youth and
maiden making love under a plum tree, won the protection of the Empress
Eugenie, and through her of the Duke de Morny, the prop of the Second
Empire. His life now reads like a fairy tale inserted by some jocular
elf into that book of dolors entitled The Lives of Men of Genius .
A protege of a potentate not usually lavish of his favours, and a
valetudinarian, he is allowed to flit to Algiers and Corsica, to enjoy
his beloved Provence in company with Mistral, to write for the theatres,
and to continue to play the Bohemian... Continue reading book >>
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