D A U D E T —D A U P H I N E his now famous “ Moonlight ” being badly hung in the Old Royal Academy. But the personal encouragement of his admirers in England made up for the disappointment, and the sale of his picture to a Royal Academician greatly pleased him. In 1870-71 he again visited London, and subsequently Holland, where he painted a number of river scenes with windmills. In 1874, having returned to Paris, he fell ill, and from that time until he died (on 19 th February 1878) his work won less distinction than before. Daubigny’s finest pictures were painted between 1864 and 1874, and these for the most part consist of carefully completed landscapes with trees, river, and a few ducks. It has curiously been said, yet with some appearance of truth, that when Daubigny liked his pictures himself he added another duck or two, so that the number of ducks often indicates greater or less artistic quality in his pictures. One of his sayings was, “ The best pictures do not sell,” as he frequently found his finest achievements little understood. Yet although during the latter part of his life he was considered a highly successful painter, the money value of his pictures since his death has increased nearly tenfold. Daubigny is chiefly preferred in his riverside pictures, of which he painted a great number, but although there are two large landscapes by Daubigny in the Louvre, neither is a river view. They are for that reason not so typical as many of his smaller Oise and Seine pictures. None of his paintings can be seen in public galleries in Great Britain, although they frequently appear in loan exhibitions both in London and in Scotland. The works of Daubigny are, like Corot’s, to be found in many modern collections. His most ambitious canvases are: “Spring-time” (1857), in the Louvre; “Borde de la Cure, Morvan” (1864); “Villerville sur Mer” (1864); “Moonlight” (1865); “Andresy sur Oise” (1868); and “Return of the Flock—Moonlight” (1878). His followers and pupils were his son Karl (who sometimes painted so well that his works are occasionally mistaken for those of his father, though in few cases do they equal his father’s mastery), Oudinot, Delpy, and Damoye. ■ Fred Henriet. C. Dauligny et son (Euvre. Paris, 1878.— D. Croal Thomson. The Barbizon School of Painters. London, 1890.—J. W. Mollett. Daubigny. London, 1890.—J. Claretie. Peintres and Sculpteurs Contemporains: Daubigny. Paris, 1882.— Albert Wolff. La Capitale de VArt: Ch. Francois Daubigny. Paris, 1881. ^2^ q T ) Daudet, Alphonse (1840-1897), French novelist, was born at Nimes on the 13th May 1840. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer— a man dogged through life by misfortune and failure. The lad, amid much truancy, had but a depressing boyhood. In 1856 he left Lyons, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began life as an usher at Alais, in the south. The position proved to be intolerable. As Dickens declared that all through his prosperous career he was haunted in dreams by the miseries of his apprenticeship to the blacking business, so Daudet says that for months after leaving Alais he would wake with horror thinking he was still among his unruly pupils. On the 1st November 1857 he abandoned teaching, and took refuge with his brother Ernest, only some three years his senior, who was trying, “ and thereto soberly,” to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse betook himself to his pen likewise,— wrote poems, shortly collected into a small volume Les Amoureuses (1858), which met with a fair reception,—obtained employment on the Figaro, then under Villemessent’s energetic editorship, wrote two or three plays, and began to be recognized, among those interested in literature,
387 as possessing individuality and promise. Morny, the emperor’s all-powerful minister, appointed him to be one of his secretaries,—a post which he held till Moray’s death in 1865,—and showed him no small kindness. He had put his foot on the road to fortune. The first of his longer books, Le Petit Chose (1868), did not, however, produce any very popular sensation. It is, in its main feature, the story of his own earlier years told with much grace and pathos. But the next book, Froment jeune et Risler aine (1874), at once took the world by storm. It struck a note, not new certainly in English literature, but comparatively new in French. Here was a writer who possessed the gift of laughter and tears, a writer not only sensible to pathos and sorrow, but also to moral beauty. He could create too. His characters were real and also typical; the rates, the men who in life’s battle had flashed in the pan, were touched with a master hand. The book was alive. It gave the illusion of a real world. Jack, the story of an illegitimate child, a martyr to his mother’s selfishness, which followed in 1876, served only to deepen the same impression. Henceforward his career was that of a very successful man of letters,—publishing novel on novel, Le Nabob (1877), Les Hois en Exit (1879), Numa Roumestan (1880), Sapho, LLmmortel,—and writing for the stage at frequent intervals,—giving to the world his reminiscences in Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs dlun homme de lettres. These, with the three Tartarins,—Tartarin the mighty hunter, Tartarin the mountaineer, Tartarin the colonist,—and the admirable short stories, written for the most part before he had acquired fame and fortune, constitute his life work. Though Daudet defended himself from the charge of imitating Dickens, it is difficult altogether to believe that so many similarities of spirit and manner were quite unsought. What, however, was purely his own was his style. It is a style that may rightly be called “ impressionist,” full of light and colour, not descriptive after the old fashion, but by a masterly juxtaposition of words that are like pigments flashing its intended effect. Nor does it convey, like the style of the Goncourts, for example, a constant feeling of effort. It is full of felicity and charm,— un charmeur M. Zola has called him. An intimate friend of Edmond de Goncourt (who died in his house), of Flaubert, of M. Zola, Daudet belonged essentially to the naturalist school of fiction. His own experiences, his surroundings, the men with whom he had been brought into contact, various persons who had played a part, more or less public, in Paris life—all passed into his art. But he vivified the material supplied by his memory. His world has the great gift of life. LPmmortel is a bitter attack on the French Academy, to which august body Daudet never belonged. His married life—he married in 1867—seems to have been singularly happy. There was perfect intellectual harmony, and Madame Daudet possesses much of his literary gift. In his later years came insomnia, failure of health, and chloral. He died in Paris on the 17th December 1897. The story of Daudet’s earlier years is told in his brother Ernest Daudet’s Mon frere et moi. There is a good deal of autobiographical detail in Daudet’s Trente ans de Paris and Souvenirs d’un homme de lettres, and also scattered in his other books. The references to him in the Journal des Goncourts are numerous. (f. t. m.)
Dauphin^, one of the old provinces (the name is still in current use in the country) of pre-Revolutionary France, in the south-east portion of France, between Provence and Savoy. After the death of the last king of Burgundy, Rudolf HI., in 1032, Dauphine (as part of his realm) reverted to the far-distant emperor. Much confusion fol-
