Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1897-12-22

ALPHONsE DAUDET.
out warning, and is a surprise and shock
to everyone.
The entire family, consisting of Nine
Daudet, the two sons, Leon and Lucien
Mile. Edmee Daudet and Nine Allard
Nine. Daudets mother, were present at
| dinner and Daudet himself seemingly had
never been in better spirits. Suddenly
he gave cry and fell back in his chair.
He was carried to his bed and in q few
moments doctor arrived. All restora-
tlves known to science, including cleo
| triclty, were tried without avail. The
doctor gave syncope as the immediate
cause of death. With the doctors had
come the cure of Sainte Clotilde, who
performed the offices for the dead.
Exponent of Parisianism.
In the death of AIphonse Daadet.
French literature loses one of it's most
glorious sons, and Partisan life loses one
of its truest interpreters, says an
American critic. Though born in the
provinces, Daudet stood for all that
spirit of Paris. He knew the every de-
tail of its life, and he had studied the
traits and characteristics of it's people as
Dickens studied the people of London.
Indeed, Daudet has often been called the
French Dickens.
poverty to the forefront of the ranks of
literary genius. In his early life he had
written poetry. He never reckoned that
to his credit. Then he was journalist.
and in the facile, graceful work of the
Partisan feuilleton he was excelled by
rev. lie wrote plays which were sue
cessful. He wrote novels that were
| translated into many languages and sold
in enormous editions all over the world.
FROM poor lad, starving on a crust in
the Latin quarter, his skillful pen had
brought him to be the possessor of one
of the greatest fortunes owned by literary
men, and had helped him to the enjoy
ment OF all the material pleasures of eX-
| istence.
| AlDhonse Daudet was one of the most
| fortunate of authors. for it was Lis lot
both to please the populace and to be
reached to the reading public of every
| land Yet he was not man whom the
critics of finer appreciation cast into the
| sly Of positive offensiveness or into the
| fiat wallows of Indifference He was not
repulslve to critical standards of taste or
of morals. He did not base his success
| on an appeal to those passions and senti-
ments which. while common to men of
every class. are yet the crudest fragments
of their existence. With dainty touch and
! exquisite dictiOn he handled the life
| around him as a true artist-not. it may
be, as an artist of the highest type, out
still as an artist. In his novels he built
structures out of life which showed Meth
er the disiointed crudeness of so-calIed
realism nor the faraWay yagueness of
what is often called idealism. He created
works that were real. His crea tons were
exquisite. These are among the reasons
which brought him the appreciation of
| the critics.
Yet it was often said of Daudet that
his characters were, after all, but the
outer phases of the lives of men-the
phases that Daudet saw as he lived
among them in their daily comings and
goings, not the phases that a genius of
higher type would have OWNED deep down
under the flashing colors of the surface.
! And the very fact that all his characters
are so manifestly drawn from the heroes
and actors in the life of the time is
brought forward in support of this view.
Daudet has been called the ideal repor-
| ter of his time, the Observation-Disclosures"
He knew scores of men who had placed
their marks on the history of the day and
who had made their names common prop
| erty throughout the civilized world. He
never forgot one of them. He rarely let
| one of them pass without enshrining him
IN the works of his pen. In just the way
| in which he understood men he put them
| into his novels He used their words,
their passions and their deeds, and used
thes things SO we'll that even the more
poorly informed could tell the source from
which he had derived them. This very
quality was one that contributed much to
the wide popularity he attained.
Hope His Sole Capital.
Alphonse Daudet was born at Mines, in
the South of France, May 10, 1910. He
was educated in the lyceum at Lyons,
and then for time was tutor in a small
school. At the age of II, destitute of
everything but hope, he threw himself
into the Partisan whirlpool. He could
secure no employment, and for a time
struggled day by day with starvation.
With no other employment, he wrote
poetry. His little volume, ''Les Amor
euses," brought him attention. and his
work came into demand with the papers
He was patronized by the Due de Morny,
to whom he attached himself until 1865.
At this time he wrote several dramatic
pieces, and later assisted in the dramatiza-
ton of his novels.
The first of his greater works was "Le
Petit Chose" in 1868, which was crowned
by the French academy and gained the
author the ribbon of the Legion of Hon
or. In 1872 came the ''Tartarin, which
many admirers hold to exhibit Daudet at
his best. More widely known, however,
than this and the two later volumes in
the s"Tartarn'' trilogy are the series of
novels of Partisan life, including "Fro-
mont Jeune ct Risler Aine," Jack" ''Le
Nabab," Lies Rois en- Exil," "Numa
Roumestan," 'Evangeliste.'' "Sappho"
and ''L'Immortel.'
The last of these works was a satire on
the French academy. Full of personal
sketches of the academicians and bristling
with satire and wit, it robbed the author
of any chance he would otherwise have
! had of being chosen to a place in that
| body of worthless.
Daudet was married in early life, and
the love of his youth never faded from his
life. He had two sons, of whom one has
himself written q number of stories. The
elder son is married to q grand~daugh-
ter of Victor Hugo.