Frédéric Théodore Gaillardet

Background

Gaillardet was born on April 7, 1808 in Auxerre, France.

Education

Gaillardet early studied law and was admitted to practice at Tonnerre (Yonne) where his family lived, but soon abandoned the law.

Career

Gaillardet went to Paris, where he became interested in the theatre and, under the influence of Victor Hugo and the romantic movement, wrote a play, La Tour de Nesle, brilliantly and successfully produced at the Théâtre de Porte-Saint-Martin in May 1832. The unwelcome collaboration of Alexander Dumas père in this play provoked a noted literary quarrel which culminated in six legal suits, in which Gaillardet was successful, and a duel in which both successfully escaped injury. Gaillardet wrote two more plays, Georges, ou le Criminel par Amour and Struensée, ou le Médecin de la Reine, both produced the following year (1833) at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, before turning his attention to historical studies. His Mémoires du Chevalier d'Éon, an important study of one of the most enigmatical figures of the eighteenth century, was published in two volumes in 1836. The following year Gaillardet accompanied his two brothers, one a physician and the other a merchant, to New Orleans. He planned a book on the United States in the fashion which De Tocqueville had established. From the time of his arrival in America he contributed to two Parisian newspapers: La Presse and Le Journal des Débats. As a preface to his American studies he traveled in Cuba and in Texas, and then went up the Mississippi Valley to Kentucky. A series of his articles on Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas appeared in the Journal des Débats during 1839. After having visited the French populations of America he determined to found a newspaper for them and for the French language. This newspaper he built from the ruins of the Courrier des États-Unis. Founded in New York in 1828 by Joseph Bonaparte, it had been sold several years later to a German bookseller named Beer, who had just died when Gaillardet came to New York. This newspaper, with its few remaining subscribers, Gaillardet bought, and to it he gave new life. He assumed control in January 1840, and his generous and liberal program brought forth an immediate response. Of a party organ he made a national newspaper, the oldest French newspaper in America that has continued publication to the present time. In 1848 Gaillardet, attracted by the newly founded republic in France, sold the newspaper to a Mr. Arpin of New Orleans and returned to Tonnerre, where his friends persuaded him to become a candidate for the National Assembly. There he found that his old enemy Dumas and Prince Louis-Napoleon were his opponents; Dumas and Gaillardet withdrew and Napoleon was elected. In this year he published Profession de foi et considérations sur le système républicain des États-Unis présentées aux électeurs de l'Yonne (1848). He had not entirely given up his journalistic career in New York, for he remained the Parisian political correspondent for the Courrier until his death in 1882. After the publication of new material on the Chevalier d'Éon, he wrote another study, Mémoires sur la Chevalière d'Éon, which appeared in 1866. He died in 1882 at Plessis-Bouchard (near Franconville) where he had, in his retirement, become mayor of the village. His long-awaited book on America, L'Aristocratie en Amérique, brilliant though fragmentary, was published in 1883, the year after his death.

Achievements

• Gaillardet was a writer, notable for his works.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Tower of Death: A Play in Five Acts

    (Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Death) is one of Alexandre Du...)

  • La tour de nesle: drame en cinq actes et en neuf tableaux: par MM. Gaillardet et ***, represete, pour la premiere fois, a Paris, sur le théatre de ... (French Edition)

    ( Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literat...)

  • The Tower of Nesle: A Play in Five Acts and in Nine Tableaux

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Mémoires sur la chevalière d'Éon: La vérité sur les mystères de sa vie, d'après des documents authentiques, suivis de douze lettres inédites de Beaumarchais (French Edition)

    (This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)

  • L'Aristocratie en Amerique (French Edition)

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Sketches of Early Texas and Louisiana
  • The memoirs of Chevalier d'Éon;

Connections

Friend:

James Buchanan Jr.

He was the 15th President of the United States (1857-1861), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War.

Friend:

Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

He was an American lawyer, a Civil War veteran, politician, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Free Thought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism.

Friend:

Pierre Soulé

He was an attorney, politician and diplomat from Louisiana during the mid-19th century.

References

• Alexandre Dumas Et Son Œuvre: Notes Biographiques Et Bibliographiques (Classic Reprint) (French Edition)