Lucien Daudet


Lucien Daudet was a French writer, the son of Alphonse Daudet and Julia Daudet. Although a prolific novelist and painter, he was never really able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his ties to fellow novelist Marcel Proust. Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.

Biography

The Daudet family was composed of the father, Alphonse, the mother Julia, Léon, the older brother, Edmée, and Lucien. Every member of the family wrote books: father, mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law and uncle. Lucien himself published about fifteen books.
Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. In 1897, Jean Lorrain publicly questioned the nature of Proust's relationship with Lucien Daudet. Proust challenged Lorrain to a duel over the implication that Proust and Daudet were lovers. Both duelists survived.
Lucien Daudet was also a painter. After having taken lessons at the Académie Julian, he was a pupil of Whistler and had an exposition together with Bernheim-Jeune in 1906. His tableaux are not known anymore except by literary allusions to them.
All his life, Daudet was overshadowed by his father in literature, and by Whistler in painting
Towards the end of his life, in 1943, he married Marie-Thérèse, the younger sister of Pierre Benoit.

Works