Alphonse Daudet is not a quick worker; he often allows several years to elapse between his novels, and refuses to bind himself down to any especial date. Tartarin de Tarascon was, however, an exception to this rule, for the author wrote it for Messrs. Guillaume, the well-known art publishers, who, wishing to popularise an improved style of illustration, offered M. Daudet 150,000 francs (£6,000) to write them a serio-comic story. Tartarin, which obtained an instant popularity, proved the author’s versatility, but won him the hatred of the good people of Provence, who have never forgiven him for having made fun of their foibles. On one occasion a bagman, passing through Tarascon, put, by way of a jest, the name “Alphonse Daudet” in his hotel register. The news quickly spread, and had it not been for the prompt help of the innkeeper, who managed to smuggle him out of the town, he might easily have had cause to regret his foolish joke.
Judging by sales, Sapho has been the most popular of Daudet’s novels, for over a quarter of a million copies have been sold. Like most of his stories, its appearance provoked a great deal of discussion, as did the author’s dedication “To my two sons at the age of twenty.” But, in answer to his critics, Daudet always replies, “I wrote the book with a purpose, and I have succeeded in painting the picture as I wished it to appear. Each of the types mentioned by me really existed; each incident was copied from life....”
The year following its publication M. Daudet dramatised Sapho, and the play was acted with considerable success at the Gymnase, Jane Hading being in the title-rôle. Last year the play was again acted in Paris, with Madame Rejane as the heroine.
daudet’s younger son.
M. Daudet, like most novelists, takes a special interest in all that concerns dramatic art and the theatre. When his health permits it he is a persistent first-nighter, and most of his novels lend themselves in a rare degree to stage adaptation.
I once asked him what he thought of the attempts now so frequently made to introduce unconventionality and naked realism on the stage.
“I have every sympathy,” he replied, “with the attempts made by Antoine and his Thêatre Libre to discover strong and unconventional work. But I do not believe in the new terms which a certain school have invented for everything; after all, the play’s the thing, whether it is produced by a group who dub themselves romantics, realists, old or new style. Realism is not necessarily real life; a photograph only gives a rigid, neutral side of the object placed in front of the camera. A dissection of what we call affection does not give so vivid an impression of the master-passion as a true love-sonnet written by a poet. Life is a thing of infinite gradations; a dramatist wishes to show existence as it really is, not as it may be under exceptionally revolting circumstances.”
His own favourite dramatist and writer is Shakespeare, whom, however, he only knows by translation, and Hamlet and Desdemona are his favourite hero and heroine in the fiction of the world, although he considered Balzac his literary master.
M. Daudet will seldom be beguiled into talking on politics. Like all Frenchmen, the late Panama scandals have profoundly shocked and disgusted him, as revealing a state of things discreditable to the Government of his country. But the creator of Désirée Dolobelle has a profound belief in human nature, and believes that, come what may, the novelist will never lack beautiful and touching models in the world round and about him.