Le Nabab (Daudet, novel and 1880 Vaudeville play)

Overview

The novel. Le Nabab, mœurs parisiennes (end of 1877; Charpentier edition dated 1878) is Alphonse Daudet's novel of the Second Empire. Bernard Jansoulet, a porter from Marseille who made a colossal fortune at the court of the Bey of Tunis, comes to Paris, is fleeced by the swindlers, parasites and journalists around him, wins and loses a seat in the Chamber for Corsica, and dies of apoplexy. The character was inspired directly by the deputy François Bravay, and the book was a thinly veiled portrait of contemporary Paris. The "famille Joyeuse" (chapter V in the Wikisource edition, from p. 84) is a modest household of dreamers, with M. Joyeuse the clerk whose compulsive imagination drives the comedy. (Wikipedia fr, "Le Nabab".)

The play. Daudet and Pierre Elzéar Bonnier-Ortolan made it into a comedy in five acts, first given at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 30 January 1880. (Wikipedia fr, "Le Nabab".)

Marie and this work

The novel, May-June 1878. On 24 May 1878, after painting until four, she reads "Le Nabab, roman d'Alphonse Daudet" non-stop: "C'est très intéressant et ce type de Nabab ressemblerait à quelqu'un d'autre si on l'affinait et l'anoblissait" (080.0261), a barely veiled comparison with Paul de Cassagnac, whom she was then infatuated with; she then copies a description of the Nabab ("Une grosse voix douce et chaude, des yeux de velours...", 080.0262). She adds that she recognizes herself in M. Joyeuse "pour l'imagination" (080.0263) and tells "les misérables qui publieront ce livre" to insert pages 87 and 88 of the novel at that point; the diary does so (080.0265) with the passage in which M. Joyeuse, on an omnibus, imagines that his daughter is being molested by the giant in front of him. On 13 June 1878 she and her mother build castles in the air about Cassagnac "comme M. Joyeuse dans le Nabab" (080.0602).

The play, 2 February 1880. "Nous allons voir Le Nabab au Vaudeville, c'est la quatrième représentation" (087.0411), in a very chic stage box with a "défilé considérable de cocottes". She calls it "une machine à sensation" and says that Daudet "prend à peine soin de déguiser les noms de ses personnages" (087.0412). The date fits: four performances after the première of 30 January.

Sources

Supersedes: `people/mentioned/LE_NABAB.md` (stub filed under people/). For the author see Alphonse Daudet and, for Cassagnac, Cassagnac.