Alphonse Daudet, born in Nîmes in 1840, owes his fame to a mill that did not belong to him and where he never lived, the one at Fontvieille, discovered at friends' in 1864. The sketches he drew from it became the Letters from My Windmill, and the Provence he invented there — the curé of Cucugnan, the cicadas, Monsieur Seguin's goat — ended up passing for the real one. His wife, Julia Allard, reread and corrected everything.
The story
Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes on 13 May 1840. From 1860 he was secretary to the duc de Morny, Napoleon III's half-brother; in 1864 he discovered Fontvieille. The windmill that gave his book its title belonged to friends — he never lived in it.
The first letters ran as a serial in the paper L'Événement in the summer of 1866, signed with a pen name borrowed from Balzac, Marie-Gaston; in 1869 they became the “Letters from My Windmill”. The Provence he invented in them — the priest of Cucugnan, Monsieur Seguin's goat, the cicadas — has grown so familiar that people take it for the real one.
In 1867 he married Julia Allard, a writer herself, who read over and corrected everything he wrote. “Tartarin de Tarascon” appeared in 1872, “The Nabob” in 1877, then “Sapho”, “Numa Roumestan”, “Le Petit Chose” — the work of a realist novelist, which the Provence of his beginnings ended by hiding from view.
From 1884 a disease of the spinal cord made walking all but impossible and the pain unbearable. He took the waters at Lamalou-les-Bains, went about on a stick, and wrote for thirteen more years in that condition.
He died in Paris on 16 December 1897 and lies in Division 26. Julia outlived him by forty-three years; their son Lucien, writer, painter and friend of Proust, rests with them.
The grave
A bronze medallion signed Alexandre Falguière — who also rests in Père-Lachaise, in Division 4 — accompanied by a large palm in the same metal. The main inscription names three families, “Allard, Navoi, and Alphonse Daudet”, but the essential is around it: the titles of his books engraved on the stone, from “Le Petit Chose” to “Tartarin”, from “Sapho” to “Le Nabab”, from “L'Arlésienne” to “Numa Roumestan”. The grave is a bibliography. His wife Julia Allard, who died in 1940, and their son Lucien, a friend of Proust, who died in 1946, rest there with him.
On site, do not miss
The list of titles engraved around the medallion — a bibliography in stone, where “Tartarin” sits beside “Le Nabab”.
Visitors' questions
Where is Alphonse Daudet's grave?
In Division 26, Chemin Molière-et-La Fontaine, third row — the alley that leads to the twin sarcophagi of Molière and La Fontaine. A bronze medallion by Alexandre Falguière adorns the stone.
Alexandre FalguièreDid he really live in the windmill?
No: the mill at Fontvieille, which he discovered in 1864, belonged to friends he stayed with. The “Lettres de mon moulin” — Letters from My Windmill — grew in 1866 out of a serial, the “Chroniques provinciales”, written in Paris.
Brillat-SavarinWhich titles are engraved on his grave?
About fifteen: “Le Petit Chose”, “Fromont jeune et Risler aîné”, “Le Nabab”, “Sapho”, “Jack”, “Numa Roumestan”, “L'Arlésienne”, “Tartarin”… The stone serves as a bibliography.
Edmond AboutWho rests with him?
His wife Julia Allard, a woman of letters and salon hostess, who outlived him by forty-three years until 1940, and their son Lucien Daudet, writer and painter, a friend of Marcel Proust, who died in 1946.
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