Word: daudets
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...champion, was all but forgotten. And the good wines of France, which he claimed would "improve bad heredity, amplify good heredity," were mostly being used for the improvement of Nazis. There was little left for him to live for when, last week, death came to old Léon Daudet, 74, longtime editor of Paris' L' Action Française...
Paunchy, hook-nosed Léon Daudet spent most of his life in a seriocomic clamor for the return of the House of Bourbon-Orleans to the throne of France. His prose style was a far cry from the gentle whimsy which brought fame to his father, Alphonse Daudet (Tartarin de Tarascon, Lettres de Mon Moulin, etc.). Léon Daudet's editorials in L'Action were slapstick smacks in which he called his enemies female camels, unfecund sows, burst dogs, humpbacked cats, circumcised hermaphrodites. In a courtroom squabble Daudet once screamed "liar" at an opponent so long...
...greatest escapade of Daudet's career, a milestone in Third Republic high jinks, sprang from tragedy. In 1924 his 14-year-old son, Philippe, was found dead in a taxi. Police pronounced it suicide. Daudet screamed that the police had murdered the boy in retaliation for his father's Royalist disturbances. Even under France's liberal libel laws, Daudet was convicted of libeling both the police and taxi driver, sentenced to six months imprisonment. But the time of serving the sentence was politely left up to Daudet...
After two years the police became impatient, suggested surrender. Daudet barricaded himself in L'Action offices, surrounded by hysterical young members of the Camelots du Roi (King's Henchmen). For three days the Camelots hurled jeers and inkpots at the police. Then dapper Prefect of Police Jean Chiappe appeared in his yellow gloves, backed by several hundred gendarmes and three fire engines. Daudet yielded and was ensconced in a comfortable cell in the Prison de la Sante, where he was permitted meals prepared by Mme. Daudet...
...disintegration. Her informal luncheons were famous. "There was scarcely a foreign minister visiting Paris who did not make a note in his memorandum book-Wednesday (or Saturday)-lunch at Madame Tabouis' house.' " Actors, poets, writers also came. Once the conversation was about Royalist Writer Léon Daudet's unforgettable nicknames for people he did not like. He called New Dealish Léon Blum "the Circumcized Hermaphrodite." A bewhiskered Rightist deputy was "our most Distinguished Burper." Foreign Minister Boncour was "the Don Juan of the Washrooms." Author Tabouis herself became "Madame Tata, the Clairvoyant...