(seated),
Robert de Flers (left), and Lucien Daudet (right), ca. 1894 The Daudet family was composed of the father, Alphonse, the mother
Julia (née Allard),
Léon, the older brother, Edmée, and Lucien. Every member of the family wrote books: father, mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law (
Marthe Allard under the pseudonym of “Pampille”) and uncle (
Ernest Daudet). 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 (correspondence of Proust; catalogue by
Anna de Noailles). All his life, Daudet was overshadowed by his father in literature ("I am the son of a man whose celebrity and talent count for several generations, I remain under his shade"), and by Whistler in painting ("He gave me a certain taste in painting, but also very great contempt for that which is not of first rank... and I apply this contempt to what I make.") Towards the end of his life, in 1943, he married Marie-Thérèse, the younger sister of
Pierre Benoit. ==Works==