Henri de Latouche

Henri de Latouche
Medal of Henri de Latouche by David d'Angers
Born	Hyacinthe-Joseph Alexandre Thabaud de Latouche (1785-02-02)2 February 1785 La Châtre, Indre
Died	Châtenay-Malabry, Paris
Occupation	Journalist
Years active	1830–1832
Title	Director of Le Figaro

Hyacinthe-Joseph Alexandre Thabaud de Latouche (2 February 1785 – 9 March 1851), better known by the nome de plume of Henri de Latouche, was a French poet and novelist known for his publication of André Chénier and early encouragement of George Sand.

Life

Henri de Latouche was born at La Châtre, Indre. He belonged to a wealthy family from Lower Berry, and was related to most of La Châtre's notable families.

After studying law in Paris, he began his literary life around 1811, when he won a mention at the Institute for his poem La Mort de Rotrou, and had the comedy Projets de sagesse performed at the Odéon. The government then sent him on a mission to Italy, the purpose of which is not known. Having lost his position as a clerk with the fall of the Empire, he wrote, for a living, hastily-crafted occasional works unworthy of his talent. He did, however, write a few plays and short poems in the style of the Romantic school.

Contrary to popular belief, he was not the father of Louisa or Marie-Eugène, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's first two children, whom he met much later: Louis Lacour was Louisa's father and Eugène Debonne Marie-Eugène's.

Subsequent successes, in which party spirit and scandal played a large part, enhanced Latouche's reputation. He also made many enemies with the articles he wrote in Le Constitutionnel, which ceased publication in 1817, censured by the government for political reasons, due to an obscure allusion in one of his articles. In 1818, he staged Selmours de Florian, written in collaboration with Émile Deschamps, which ran for around a hundred performances.

In 1823, Latouche created another magazine, the Mercure du XIXe siècle, which he edited for the most part from 1825 onwards, and launched an all-out attack on the monarchy. After 1830, when he became editor of the Figaro newspaper, which he ran until 1832, he spared neither the liberals, whose opinions he had hitherto shared, nor the Romantics, who triumphed under the July monarchy. Gustave Planche responded harshly in the Revue des deux Mondes; in his Causeries du lundi, Sainte-Beuve painted an unflattering portrait of him.

In 1827, Latouche published Correspondance de Clément XIV et de Carlin, an epistolary novel directed against the Jesuits, the idea for which had come from a passage by Abbé Galiani. In 1829, he published his major work, Fragoletta, a novel featuring "that inexpressible being, who has no complete sex, and in whose heart struggle the timidity of a woman and the energy of a man, who loves the sister, is loved by the brother, and can give nothing back to either of them" in the words of Balzac, who acknowledged his debt to him, notably for Séraphîta.

That same year, Latouche wrote a famous article in the Revue de Paris against the Romantics, who had been his friends, entitled "Literary Camaraderie", to which Gustave Planche replied with an article entitled "On Literary Hatred".

During this period, he had the honor of spotting the talent of George Sand, whom he facilitated and encouraged in her early years. A friend at first, he nonetheless turned his back on her when her fame became too flashy for his taste. He also contributed to the memory of André Chénier, who was then appreciated only by a small circle; he made him widely known by publishing in 1819 hitherto unpublished works, received from Daunou, whose value he had immediately recognized and to which he would have added some very slight modifications. The changes he made to the original text in this important publication, which remains attached to his name, have been greatly exaggerated. Béranger even went so far as to say that André Chénier's poems were largely the work of the publisher, but one of his friends, Lefèvre-Deumier, has left a decisive testimony on this point: "I saw," he said, "I held the manuscripts, and they were all in the hand of Chénier or one of his brothers... If de Latouche had any faults in this affair, it was, in his fearful enthusiasm for a glory of which he was the first arbiter, to have been a little wary of the public, to have weakened by prudence some expressions which seemed to him of a trivial energy or a dangerous crudity; to have in some places replaced by points or even by nothing verses which he did not find equal to the others; to have corrected here and there some rhymes which seemed to him insufficient."

Latouche, who had a knack for discovering talent and modestly declared: "My only pride in literature consists of two memories: having edited André Chénier and having prevented George Sand from doing watercolor portraits", was also a strong supporter of Honoré de Balzac at the time of the disastrous printing venture, offering him shelter and financial aid on rue Visconti. He also helped him settle in rue Cassini and decorate his home. He also helped with the publication of Jules Sandeau's writings. He was even guilty of more than one literary deception, having published, without an author's name, at Urbain Canel publishing house, in the last days of 1825 or at the beginning of 1826, a licentious story entitled Olivier, which could pass for being by Duchess of Duras, the irreproachable author of Ourika.

A play entitled La Reine d'Espagne (1831), which proved too indecent for public taste, a few novels, a collection of essays in prose and verse entitled La Vallée aux loups (1833), and two collections of verse, Les Adieux (1842) and Les Agrestes (1844), rounded off his literary life.

In novels such as Grangeneuve, Fragoletta, Aymar and Leo, Henri de Latouche shows a pronounced interest in Berry, which he describes and whose dialect, customs and beliefs he evokes in whole passages of digression. In this sense, he prefigures the peasant novels of George Sand, who takes this interest even further, making Berrichon peasants her main characters.

Those who came close to Latouche and were able to appreciate him fully are unanimous in pointing out the vivacity of his mind in conceiving a subject, and his inferiority in executing it. This, they say, was the torment of his own life and the secret of his bitterness towards others. He spent his last years in solitude, a few leagues from Paris, at Val d'Aulnay, where Chateaubriand had lived.

Works

Theater

• Projets de Sagesse (1811)
• Selmours de Flavian (1818; with Émile Deschamps)
• Un Tour de Faveur (1818)
• La Reine d’Espagne (1831)

Novels

• Histoire du Procès Fualdès (1818)
• Mémoires de Madame Manson (1818)
• Dernières Lettres de Deux Amants de Barcelone (1821)
• Fragoletta: Naples et Paris en 1799 (1829)
• Le Cœur du Poète (1833)
• Grangeneuve (1835)
• France et Marie (1836)
• Léo (1840)
• Un Mirage (1842)
• Adrienne (1845)

Poetry

• Blanche, Egbert, la Chambre grise, le Juif Errant, Phantasus, Rosalba, Trivulce (1818-1820)
• Lettres à David sur le Salon de 1819 (1919)
• Biographie Pittoresque des Députés (1820)
• Vallée aux Loups (1833)
• Les Adieux (1843)
• Les Agrestes (1844)
• Encore Adieu (1852)

Notes

Citations

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

References

Ageorges, Joseph (1909). "Une amitié de journalistes: Henri de Latouche et Honoré de Lourdoueix," Le Correspondant, Vol. CCXXXVI, pp. 361–84.

Borowitz, Albert I. (1975). "Henri de Latouche and the Murder Memoirs of Clarisse Manson," Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. III, No. 3/4, pp. 165–91.

Clergue, Helen (1926). "André Chénier: His Manuscripts and His Editors," The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. XCIX, No. 588, pp. 269–85.

Crouzet Michel (1984). "Monstres et merveilles: poétique de l'Androgyne, à propos de Fragoletta," Romantisme, No. 45, pp. 25–42.

Deberdt, Raoul (1899). "Un grand exciteur d'âmes: le maître de Balzac et de George Sand (à l'occasion du centenaire de Balzac)," La Revue des revues, Vol. XXIX, pp. 265–80.

Jullien, Adolphe (1897). Le romantisme et l'éditeur Renduel. Paris: Charpentier et Fasquelle.

Missoffe, Michel (1960). "Le Duel Piscatory — H. de Latouche ," Revue des Deux Mondes, pp. 324–30.

Pilon, Edmond (1906). Portraits français. Paris: E. Sansot.

Séché, Léon (1911). "Henri de Latouche et la Camaraderie littéraire." In: Le cénacle de Joseph Delorme (1827-1830), 1. Paris: Mercure de France, pp. 210–55.

Ségu, Frédéric (1932). Latouche et le Berry. Paris: Les belles lettres.

Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Charles de (1901). Une Pièce de vers de M. de Latouche adressée à Mme Desbordes-Valmore. Paris: H. Leclerc.

Vrancken, Georges (1910). "Une Commédie de Henri de Latouche: La 'Reigne d'Espagne'," Annales romantiques, Vol. VII, pp. 56–64.

Vrancken, Georges (1911). "Un Roman politique sous la restauration, Clément XIV et Carlo Bertinazzi par H. de Latouche," Annales romantiques, Vol. VIII, pp. 10–25.

External links

• Works by Henri de Latouche at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Henri de Latouche at Gallica
• Works by Henri de Latouche at Hathi Trust