Léon Hennique Novel

Léon Hennique, portrait after Jeanniot from 
'Un Caractère' (G. Crès et Cie, Paris, 1923).

Originally published by Jean de Palacio in Les Cahiers Naturalistes, No. 71, 1997.

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1850 (4th November) Birth of Hubert Florimond Antoine Léon Hennique at Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe), son of Privat François Agathon Hennique, Major in the First Regiment of Marine Infantry, and his wife Héloïse Clarisse Piot.

[This is the correct date, although all bibliographers give 1851, beginning with Léon Hennique himself in his interview with Frédéric Lefèvre (“Une Heure avec M. Léon Hennique”, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 10th May 1930).]

Léon Hennique’s father subsequently became lieutenant-colonel in the 2nd Regiment of Marine Infantry at Brest; promoted to general during the Mexican campaign, he became Governor of French Guiana.

Education at the lycées of Brest and Saint-Quentin, completed at the Jesuit college of Vaugirard; friendship with Maurice Talmeyr.

1870 Commences legal studies; enlists as a volunteer in Faidherbe’s army.

1872 First literary endeavours. Composes poems: “Enamorado” and “Pour la Patrie” (a long poem of 152 verses). Conceives the plan for a tragedy: “Régulus, ou la Patrie en danger”, and the project for a novel concerning the Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard.

1876 Makes his literary début in Catulle Mendès’ La République des Lettres, where he publishes fragments of Les Hauts Faits de M. de Ponthault [sic] (Hennique would later modify the spelling of the proper name). There he encounters Huysmans and Paul Alexis; through them he would come to know Céard, Mirbeau, and Zola.

(20th October–5th December) Publishes in serial form, in the newspaper L’Ordre, his novel Elisabeth Couronneau. The novel was announced in the following terms: “Grand novel by M. Léon Hennique, a work full of warmth and observation, which begins with a burst of laughter and ends in horror and terror like a Shakespearean tragedy. This drama is the work of a young novelist who follows in the footsteps of Balzac, Dumas, and Soulié with personal originality and power.”

1877 (23rd January) Delivers a lecture on L’Assommoir at the Salle des Capucines. In Le Gaulois of Tuesday, 30th January, one may read, under the signature “Spectator”, in the column “La Semaine Parisienne”, for “Wednesday” [24th January]: “I come upon a group of Parnassians greatly agitated by an incident which occurred yesterday at the hall on the Boulevard des Capucines. One M. Léon Hénique [sic] (God preserve him!) proclaimed that M. Zola’s L’Assommoir is superior to M. Victor Hugo’s Quatre-vingt-treize. Thereupon, two camps formed, and battle was joined.”

(15th February) In response to an article by Fourcaud, published in Le Gaulois of 31st January and entitled “Nos Réalistes”, in which he considered himself implicated, Hennique addresses a letter to the editor under the title “Le Réalisme”: “We consider that the writer is a physician, and that he must develop his observations as he notes them, without troubling himself to conclude or to establish precepts that are almost invariably tedious” […] “We have attacked the ideal as it exists in art, because, in recent times, it has been made into a conception for the use of harem guardians, because the cult of conventional beauty is a form of bigotry.”

1878 La Dévouée (Charpentier), his first published novel, dedicated “To my brothers-in-arms Henry Céard and J.-K. Huysmans I offer this naturalist novel” [the novel incorporated, pp. 46-51, a lengthy verse composition by the author, “Entre Cocus”, which would appear in 1881 in the Nouveau Parnasse Satyrique]. At the 1878 Exhibition encounters an alcoholic Englishwoman with whom he lives for nearly two years and who would become the model for his future novel Minnie Brandon.

1879 Elisabeth Couronneau (Dentu), his first written novel, concerning the Convulsionaries, dedicated to his friend Georges Godde. L’Empereur Dassoucy, a comedy in three acts, in collaboration with Georges Godde.

[Nothing is known of the friendship that united Léon Hennique to Georges Godde. He later intervened on his behalf, as this unpublished, undated letter, whose recipient has not been identified, attests: “Dear sir and colleague, I come to thank you for the assistance which, thanks to you, the Minister of Public Instruction accords to my friend Georges Godde. And as the poor fellow himself could no longer express his gratitude to you, I beg you, dear sir and colleague, to accept mine with all my heart, together with the assurance of most cordial sympathy. Léon Hennique” [Private collection].]

(June) Léon Hennique and Henry Céard undertake to adapt Émile Zola’s novel La Conquête de Plassans into a five-act play, under the title L’Abbé Faujas. The two writers each compose a scenario (July) and submit it to Zola. They would work assiduously upon it until September. The project apparently came to nothing.

(July) Hennique reads to Paul Alexis “the first act of a play of his own, Une Femme honnête in 3 acts” [letter from Paul Alexis to Émile Zola, 17th July 1879]. The play doubtless remained unfinished.

1880 Contributes to the collection Les Soirées de Médan with the short story “L’Affaire du Grand 7”.

Zola devotes a study to him in Le Roman expérimental (“Trois Débuts. 1 Léon Hennique”, pp. 234-240).

Les Hauts-faits de Monsieur de Ponthau (Derveaux), a novel in dialogue form, set during the reign of Henri IV, described by its author as a “romantic jest upon romanticism”, which earned him Flaubert’s approval: “You intended to write a farce and you have written a beautiful book!” (Corr. [Conard ed.] VIII, 374).

1881 Pierrot sceptique (Rouveyre), “naturalist pantomime” [this last word, struck out in the manuscript, does not appear on the printed title page]; in collaboration with J.-K. Huysmans [in fact, the pantomime was written by Hennique, and Huysmans merely contributed some alterations].

(20th April) Marriage of Léon Hennique to Louise Dupont. “His marriage assured him the honest comfort and relative independence which permit a writer to choose his works and not to dissipate his energies in journalism” (Lucien Descaves, “Léon Hennique, de l’Académie Goncourt”, Candide, 2nd January 1936).

Deux Nouvelles (Brussels, Kistemaeckers): “Les Funérailles de Francine Cloarec” and “Benjamin Rozes”, which rank amongst the author’s finest texts.

1882 Birth of his daughter Nicolette.

1884 L’Accident de Monsieur Hébert (Charpentier), arguably Léon Hennique’s masterpiece. Dedicated to Émile Zola, upon whom the novel made “an enormous impression”: “there is therein an originality that asserts itself, a most curious sense of human stupidity. Your adulterer possesses a genuine imbecility that makes one shudder. The amorous conversations are particularly stupefying as photographic cruelties […]” (25th November 1883; Émile Zola, Correspondance, vol. IV, p. 436).

1885 Pre-publication of Pœuf in the Revue Contemporaine, vol. II, pp. 16-38 and 179-202.

1886 First bookshop edition of the play La Mort du duc d’Enghien (Tresse & Stock). The print run was limited to 150 copies.

1887 (January) Pœuf (Tresse & Stock), a short story, dedicated to Maupassant. A strongly autobiographical text, set in Guadeloupe. Hennique would later write: “Poeuf is an episode from my past, a recollection of that early age when, despite the joy of living, every child, a miniature man, is already a little machine for loving and enduring” [written on the flyleaf of a copy of the original edition and dated “12th December 1905”. Private collection].

Jacques Damour (Charpentier), a one-act play adapted from Émile Zola’s short story and performed at the Théâtre-Libre on 30th March 1887.

Esther Brandès (Tresse & Stock), a three-act play, performed at the Théâtre-Libre on 11th November 1887.

Contributes to Félix Fénéon’s La Revue Indépendante, with whom he maintains a correspondence.

Aline, a two-act play, in collaboration with Paul Alexis and adapted from the latter’s short story “Un Député”. Hennique wrote the first act; the play would remain unfinished owing to Alexis [it remained unpublished until 1987, when it appeared in Les Cahiers Naturalistes].

(December) The periodical Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui (7th volume, no. 314) devotes an issue to Léon Hennique. The text, written by J.-K. Huysmans, is lucid and penetrating.

1888 La Mort du Duc d’Enghien (Tresse & Stock), a play in three tableaux, one of the great successes of the Théâtre-Libre where it was performed on 10th December 1888. “[…] one of the most perfect works that have been performed upon the French stage” (Frantz Jourdain, 1895).

1889 Un Caractère (Tresse & Stock), a spiritualist novel, dedicated to Edmond de Goncourt. A reflection of Léon Hennique’s interest in occultism and its practices, to which the writer had devoted himself for some time and of which his correspondence with Émile Desbeaux bears witness.

Contemplates writing “a splendid study of a female drunkard“, modelled upon his English mistress encountered in 1878, and confides this to Edmond de Goncourt (this would become, ten years later, Minnie Brandon).

1890 Amour (Tresse & Stock), a play in three parts, set “at Brescia 1512—then in France […] in the following years“. Performed at the Odéon, 6th March 1890. Papus describes the play as a “marvellous esoteric drama” (1893).

1891 Responds with a refusal to Jules Huret’s Enquête sur l’Evolution littéraire: “I cannot bring myself to mock the masters, to scratch at the writers of my generation, to run through the young colleagues, nor in any manner to trumpet mediocre and useless things… nor even to speak of myself laudatorily” (May 1891) (p. 206).

(June-September) Conducts, from his house at Ribemont (Aisne), experiments in “long-distance telepathy” with Émile Desbeaux and the “magus” Papus [Gérard Encausse].

1892 La Menteuse, a comedy in three acts, in collaboration with Alphonse Daudet (performed at the Gymnase on 4th February 1892). The play met with no success.

Executes a “translation and adaptation” of Shakespeare’s Othello “in seven tableaux and in prose”. Begun at 22, rue des Écuries d’Artois and completed at 11, rue Decamps, where the Henniques had just moved, the work aroused Porel’s interest, but was never staged and remains unpublished.

Publishes two short stories in Gil Blas Illustré: “Madame Olympe” (24th April) and “La Cantinière” (22nd May), not collected in volume form.

1893 L’Argent d’autrui, a comedy in five acts (performed at the Odéon on 9th February 1893 [Paris, Tresse & Stock, 1894]).

Publication of Papus’s Traité élémentaire de Magie pratique (Paris, Chamuel, 1893), which relates Léon Hennique’s esoteric experiments (pp. 480-485).

Works on “a short story about the mistress of whom he […] has already spoken [to Goncourt], the English drunkard” [Ed. de Goncourt, Journal, 19th November 1893]. This would become the novel Minnie Brandon (1899).

1894 Article by Frantz Jourdain in the series: “Les Décorés. Ceux qui ne le sont pas”. “Léon Hennique”, in Le Courrier Français (16th September 1894).

1895 (4th January) Appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, under the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts (received by Alphonse Daudet).

Deux Patries, a drama in three acts (performed at the Ambigu on 16th March 1895) [Paris, Charpentier & Fasquelle, 1895].

Publication of La Menteuse by Flammarion [Talvart erroneously indicates 1893, but the date of legal deposit is indeed 1895].

1896 La Petite Paroisse, a play in four acts, adapted from Alphonse Daudet’s novel, with the latter’s collaboration. Doubtless completed in 1897, after Daudet’s death [in the manuscript, the fourth act is entirely in Léon Hennique’s hand].

(16th July) Death of Edmond de Goncourt, of whom Léon Hennique is, together with Alphonse Daudet, testamentary executor. Beginning of the legal battle surrounding the will, which would result in the foundation of the Académie Goncourt in 1903. Hennique devotes himself entirely to this task.

Paul Alexis informs Léon Hennique of a conversation he had at Champrosay with Alphonse Daudet, during which the latter spoke to him “of everything—of you, of your novel Lady… (he did not tell me the name) which he finds absolutely very good” (letter to Léon Hennique of 1st October 1897; Cahiers Naturalistes no. 61, 1987, p. 145). This refers again to Minnie Brandon.

1897 (February) Responds to the “Enquête sur l’influence des lettres scandinaves” organised by the Revue Blanche: “Yes, certainly! foreign literatures, the German, especially the Scandinavian, have recently had influence upon French letters, or rather upon the young men of French literature, – an influence helping to reflect, to regard one’s surroundings properly, to no longer fear the Idea, in the theatre. And there is reason to favour this influence, I believe—if only to see the result, not yet definitively determined, but perhaps good” (Revue Blanche, 15th February 1897, p. 157).

1899 Minnie Brandon (Fasquelle). “[…] here is this woman, of the very gentle name, who has just emerged from the shadow where she had slept within me for fifteen years…” (pp. 1-2). The novel is dedicated “To the Memory of the illustrious Master my dear friend Alphonse Daudet“.

1901 La Petite Paroisse is performed at the Théâtre-Antoine on 21st January 1901. The play apparently remained unpublished.

1903 Constitution of the Académie Goncourt. The members are: Léon Hennique, J.-K. Huysmans, Octave Mirbeau, Rosny aîné, Rosny jeune, Léon Daudet, Lucien Descaves, Paul Margueritte, Élémir Bourges, Gustave Geffroy.

(under the signature: Hennique (L.) & Mayneville (L.H.)) Chronique du temps qui fut la Jacquerie (Romagnol), with illustrations by Luc-Olivier Merson.

La Rédemption de Pierrot, pantomime (Ferroud), with etchings by Louis Morin.

Le Songe d’une nuit d’hiver (Ferroud), pantomime, with compositions by Jules Chéret engraved by Bracquemond.

Reine de rois, a play in five acts (in collaboration with Johannès Gravier). Set “In France 1546-1547”, during the reign of François I.

1907 Upon Huysmans’ death, elected President of the Académie Goncourt, to which he would henceforth devote the greater part of his time.

Illustrated re-edition of Minnie Brandon (Romagnol), with watercolours by François Thévenot.

1908 (17th January) Promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour (received by Gustave Geffroy).

1909 Performance of Reine de rois at the Odéon, 17th November 1909 [Paris, Imprimerie de L’Illustration, 1909].

Jean Thorel adapts Pœuf into a play in three acts and four tableaux. The text is very extensively revised by Léon Hennique. The latter would attempt in vain to have it performed by Firmin Gémier at the Théâtre-Antoine. The negotiations would continue well beyond the First World War, until 1921. The play would never finally be performed, and the printing appears to have remained at the proof stage.

Responds to Amédée Boyer’s enquiry on the present state and future of literature. “No, schools have never existed as aesthetic groupings… It is so much the case that the masters have always been in disagreement with their so-called pupils… Only, formerly, one adopted a label to be agreeable to a master… or else, it was the critics who fitted you with a label according to whose society you frequented. We naturalists grouped ourselves around Zola, because we were outraged by the attacks of which his literary work was the object; otherwise, we knew neither one another nor the others” (Amédée Boyer, La Littérature et les arts contemporains, Paris, Méricant, n.d. [1909], p. 94).

1912 Simplicité, a one-act play in prose. The play was accepted by Gémier, but never performed, and apparently unpublished.

(4th December) Hennique resigns from the presidency of the Académie Goncourt; he is replaced by Gustave Geffroy.

1914 Léon Hennique’s house at Ribemont is pillaged and sacked by German troops.

1922 Writes a postface for the definitive edition of Edmond de Goncourt’s study Hokousaï. L’Art japonais au XVIIIe siècle (Flammarion/Fasquelle).

1923 Writes a postface for the definitive edition of Edmond de Goncourt’s novel Les Frères Zemganno (Flammarion/Fasquelle).

1924-1928 Publishes youthful verses in various small journals: Les Idées Françaises, La Pensée sur la Côte d’Azur.

1930 Fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Les Soirées de Médan. Léon Hennique writes a preface for the commemorative re-edition.

1932 (12th January) Promoted to Commander of the Legion of Honour (received by Pol Neveux).

1935 (25th December) Death of Léon Hennique at his residence, 42, rue Hamelin. The funeral takes place at Ribemont.