Paul Léautaud
Paul Léautaud (18 January 1872 – 22 February 1956) was a French writer and theater critic for "Mercure de France", signing his often caustic reviews with the pseudonym Maurice Boissard. Life. He was born in Paris. Abandoned by his mother, an opera singer, soon after birth, his father Firmin, brought him up. The two lived in no 13 and later no 21 of Rue des Martyrs, in Courbevoie. “"At that time, my father used to go down to the cafe every morning, before lunch. He had thirteen dogs. He was walking down the rue des Martyrs with his dogs  and holding a whip in his hand which he did not use for dogs."" Léautaud became interested in the Comédie-Française and wondered around the corridors and backstage of the theater. His father remarried and had another son, Maurice. Léautaud studied at the Courbevoie municipal school where he met Adolphe van Bever. In 1887, at the age of 15, he moved to Paris to work doing small jobs. ""For eight years I ate lunch and dinner on a four-penny cheese, a piece of bread, a glass of water, a little coffee. Poverty, I never thought about it, I never  suffered from it."" In 1894, Léautaud became a clerk in an attorney's office, the "Barberon firm" (at 17 quai Voltaire). From 1902 to 1907 he dealt with the liquidation of estates with a judicial administrator, Mr. Lemarquis, rue Louis-le-Grand. He was attracted to letters which he read until the late night: Barrès, Renan, Taine, Diderot, Voltaire and Stendhal. ""I learned on my own, by myself, without anyone, without rules, without arbitrary direction, what I liked, what seduced me, what corresponded to the nature of my mind."" In 1895, he brought to the Mercure de France a poem , "Elégie", in the Symbolist taste of the time. Director Alfred Vallette agreed to publish it in the September issue. His collaborations evolved into his writing around 1900. As others viewed him. He was portrayed by painter Simon-Auguste in 1956. "Paul Léautaud (1872-1956), écrivain, dans sa maison de Fontenay-aux-Roses" is in the Musée Carnavalet, in Paris. According to Nancy Mitford in "The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh" (p. 251), Leautaud was an eccentric literary critic and diarist who said he loved cats and dogs more than people, lived on nothing but potatoes and cheese for  eight years, and never travelled further than Calais. Mavis Gallant described him in her "Paris Notebooks" (Toronto: Stoddart, 1988):