‘For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’ This is from the diary of the (apparently insecure) French drama critic Paul Léautaud, born 150 years ago today. Though virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, he only achieved celebrity status in France late in life thanks to a series of radio interviews.
From 1912 onwards, Léautaud lived in the suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. Although he never married, he had many affairs. But, it seems, his first love was animals. Through his life, he owned hundreds of pets, with sometimes more than 50 in the house. It is said that he even went so far as to sell his correspondence with Paul Valéry, a portrait by Matisse and signed first editions of famous authors for money to feed his animals. In the first half of the 1950s, when already nearly 80, he found a modicum of fame thanks to a series of radio interviews with Robert Mallet. He died in 1956. Further information is available online at Wikipedia (the French page is substantially more informative than the English), in a New York Times profile, or in James Harding’s biography, Lost Illusions: Paul Léautaud and His World (can be previewed at Googlebooks).
Léautaud kept diaries for over 50 years. They have been published in French in many volumes (around 20). Mavis Gallant, writing in The New York Times in 1973, said of them: ‘They are the faithful notes of a misogynist who could not do without women; of a bachelor who trusted only the dependent love of animals; of a drama critic who thought that seeing a play and then describing it was all nonsense; of an instinctive writer who lacked imagination (he could not write about anything except his father, his mother and himself); of a pitiless observer who craved “nothing but tenderness” in return for sarcasm; of a narrow Parisian who never traveled and still knew that “one’s country is one's language,” and that “the only country that matters is life itself.” They are also an account of theatrical and literary Paris between 1893 and 1956, wide in scope and full of sharp, biased detail.’
As far as I can tell only one volume and one edition of Léautaud’s diaries exist in English: Journal of a Man of Letters 1898-1907, as translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury (Chatto & Windus, 1960). According to Sainsbury his translation is also an abridgement; it covers most of the first volume of the French edition and about a quarter of the second. The book also includes a preface by Alan Pryce-Jones. This starts as follows: ‘There are few odder figures in literature than Paul Léautaud. He could have existed nowhere but in Paris, unless possibly in the London of Richard Savage. He wrote very little beyond literary journalism and the diary which comprises this book. He was not particularly easy or agreeable. And until advanced old age he had a reputation for no more than eccentricity. At seventy-eight, a series of broadcast conversations with Robert Mallet turned him into a national celebrity overnight [. . .] and for the last five years of his life Léautaud, with a mixture of reluctance and delight, tasted the fruits of an ever increasing fame.’ Here are several extracts from Sainsbury’s translation of the diaries.
10 September 1898
‘This morning’s papers report Mallarmé’s death yesterday in his little house at Valvins. A master - to me, at any rate. When I came to know his poetry it was a revelation, prodigious, dazzling, a penetrating beam of beauty. But while it showed me verse at its greatest power and perfection, it discouraged me from attempting it, for I understood that no poetry could match his and that to follow along the same road (i.e. to imitate) would be neither dignified nor meritorious.
I think it was really due to Mallarmé that I got to know Valéry. I had seen Valéry often enough at the Mercure’s “Tuesdays”, but I had hardly spoken to him. One Tuesday, when I was on my way to the Mercure, I went into the tobacconist’s in the Rue de Seine, between the Rue Saint-Sulpice and the Rue Lobineau. Valéry was just coming out. He waited for me, and we walked together. I don’t know how he got on to Baudelaire, but I answered that there was a poet I put much higher - Mallarmé. Since then we seem to have been bound by a sort of sympathy, and we have had many talks together. This very winter he was going to take me to the Rue de Rome, but I shan’t have that pleasure now. I had been thinking of writing a Hommage au Poète with Mallarmé as the subject. The work’s still to be done.’
2 December 1902
‘I have been thinking again of my shyness and self-consciousness, of the clumsiness it produces on me, and the way it belittles me in the eyes of others. Passing the Mercure, I went in. It was Tuesday, and several people were there. I stood near the mantelpiece. Coming in, I had shaken hands with Régnier, to whom I had written a few days before to thank him for his book La Cité des Eaux. Presently he got up and came over to the mantelpiece. I was at once uneasy at the thought that he was going to talk to me and I should have to answer. Fargue joined us. We spoke of what a book ought to be when it’s rounded off, finished, and published, if one’s not going to be tempted to correct it afterwards or even to rewrite it. I say: we spoke, but I mean they did. For my part, I should have liked to put a word in now and again, but as soon as it was on the tip of my tongue, I said to myself: “There’s nothing very extraordinary about that. That’s not going to interest them.” So I held my tongue. And they must have thought: “That poor Léautaud isn’t often very bright,” or even: “That poor Léautaud! Is he half-witted?” ’
22 July 1906
‘Dinner with Mme Dehaynin and her daughter. We laughed a lot over the excellent meal which, in the last resort, was to cost so little! What an adventuress! She told me she prided herself on being able to spend a couple of months at the best seaside resort without paying a franc and then get away scot free, so clever was she at twisting people round her little finger. “When I’ve worn this place out,” she said, “I’d like to go to the Ritz.” After dinner we sat in the drawing-room. We were alone, and Mme Dehaynin went to the piano and sang us La Femme à Papa, La Mascotte, Madame Angot - a whole epoch of pleasures and follies, providing a few good minutes for me.’
28 November 1906
‘Spent the day copying out some Stendhal letters for the Pages Choisies. Comforting hours. In that respect I haven’t changed. What tone, what style, what spontaneity in those letters, what wit, what finesse! My ideas, my mental vivaciousness, are awakened, my inner self thaws, comes to life.
Went to the Mercure. Talked to Jean de Gourmont about his literary column in which he hands out bouquets so freely. It’s hopeless. On all sides indifference and laziness. It’s astonishing the fear people have nowadays of speaking their minds. Newspapers and reviews, even the most daring, are as mild as the academicians. Some are prompted by self-interest, some by fear, some by friendship. Everyone is drenched in mutual eulogies, and the lowest of the low are hailed as geniuses. Great mediocrity, great poverty of spirit, great stupidity at the bottom of it all.
I have always loved, I only love, those who go too far, the wild men, the souls that have escaped the rut. A Byron, a Stendhal, a Chateaubriand, a Poe, a Baudelaire. Those âmes en marge, with which my own feels so closely bound, help me to rise above the miserable life of every day, the miserable days so like their predecessors, to rise above them, transcend them, forget them.’
22 November 1907
‘Went this morning to fetch the proofs of my chronique dramatique . . . When I got them I told Morisse I was going to surprise every passage which might lead anyone to think I was tinted with antisemitism. He protested. But Dumur was there, and he sided with me, saying it was quite unlike me to say anything antisemitic.
But at five, when I took the corrected proofs back, Morisse reproached me almost bitterly for my cowardice in suppressing the passages in question, saying he would never have expected it of me, etc. It took me a long time to convince him there was no question of cowardice, and that in any case there was in me something that went beyond all questions of cowardice or courage and that was the pleasure I derived from saying what I had it in my heart to say to all and sundry, whether it be for or against. In this particular case I didn’t want people to think I thought what I didn’t think, and that was all, except that I wasn’t very sure of my facts and didn’t relish having passed remarks on a subjet I was not sufficiently well-informed about.’
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