Henry Bauër

Henry Bauër

Adolphe François Henri Bauër (17 March 1851 – 21 October 1915), better known as Henry Bauër, was a French writer, polemicist, critic and journalist.

At the age of 20, Bauër fought under the Commune, notably as an officer of the Communard troops during the Bloody Week of May 22 to 28, 1871. During the repression of the insurrection, he was sentenced to seven years of exile in New Caledonia. Upon his return, he held an influential position as a journalist and theater critic for the daily newspaper l'Écho de Paris, where he invested heavily in the new literature, particularly naturalism, supporting, among others, Émile Zola both in his literary aspirations and in the Dreyfus Affair. He was also one of the few supporters of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.

He was the natural son of Alexandre Dumas.

Biography

Early life

Henry Bauër was born from the affair of Alexandre Dumas père with Anna Bauër, a jewish woman from Baden, wife of Karl-Anton Bauer, an Austrian commercial agent living in Paris. After Karl-Anton emigrated to Australia, the child was raised by his mother. She was a good businesswoman and provided for her son's education on her own.

After his studies at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Henry Bauër enrolled in the Faculty of Law and Medicine, for studies that would lead him to nothing. He soon joined the bohemia at the Latin Quarter, read Proudhon and became more and more involved in revolutionary circles. On several occasions, he came into conflict with the justice system of the Second Empire, when organizing or participating in public events. During the year 1870, he served several months in prison for various political activities (riot, unauthorized public meeting, lèse-majesté, etc.), before being released by the crowd of demonstrators on the day of the proclamation of the Republic, September 4, 1870.

Paris during Bloody Week. Une rue dans Paris en mai 1871, painting by Maximilien Luce

Barricades of the Paris Commune (1871). Photo by Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg

Bauër, who had volunteered for military service after France declared war on Germany on July 19, 1870, anticipated the call to enlist in the National Guard.

Commitment to the Commune

Once again arrested in October 1870 after his participation in the demonstrations of the 31st, he shared a cell with the future leader of the Commune, Gustave Flourens, who made a strong impression on him, as he reported in his memoirs. Released by men of the National Guard commanded by Amilcare Cipriani during the night of January 21/22, 1871, he began to write for various revolutionary newspapers, including Vallès' Cri du Peuple. It was on this occasion that he chose the pen name of "Henry Bauër" which he would keep for the rest of his life. In his columns, the 19-year-old journalist criticized the capitulation of the French armed forces and sided with the forces of the working class, as in the article "The Youth" of February 23, 1871:

In the face of all these disgraces and denials, only one party has remained faithful to its fighting post: it is the party of the workers, it is the party of the disinherited, it is the party of the future. It must be ours, we who are twenty years old.

When the Paris Commune was proclaimed on March 18, 1871, Henry Bauër was appointed captain of the National Guard on the general staff of General Eudes. On May 10, he was appointed commander of the sixth federated legion of the Commune, and on May 22, he was appointed chief of the general staff of Captain Régère, where he took part, as an officer, in the street battles of the Bloody Week, particularly in the Montparnasse district.

When the Commune fell, Bauër fled the capital before being arrested on June 21, 1871, in Joinville-le-Pont and taken to the Versailles Orangerie, where Communard prisoners were held. The officer's certificates found in his home led to his being sentenced to exile by the council of war, where he was sentenced on September 25. His mother tried in vain to appeal and to obtain a pardon. He was taken on board on May 1, 1872 with 300 Communards on a ship bound for New Caledonia.

Seven years of exile in a penal colony

Portrait of Louise Michel taken at the prison of the Chantiers de Versailles (1871). The card bears the inscription: "Louise Michel, leader of the incendiaries"

After a five-month crossing, spent in part in a disciplinary cell, on bread and water for refusing to carry out an order, Bauër arrived in Nouméa and had to settle in the Presque-isle of Ducos, where the French penal colony was located. Also suspected of having supported the Commune, his mother, whom he kept regularly informed of the hardships he suffered in New Caledonia, was expelled from French territory. It was from Geneva and Lausanne, where she would live from that time on, that she would always send him money to live.

In New Caledonia, Bauër met many prominent Communards, especially Louise Michel, to whom he soon developed a close friendship that would translate into an ongoing correspondence. Bauër provided articles to French newspapers about the prisons of New Caledonia and organized, often in collaboration with Louise Michel, a number of cultural events, including an evening of Kanak music. He also wrote La Revanche de Gaëtan, a play printed in 1879 in Nouméa.

In spite of her son's plea not to do anything about it, Anna Bauër came to visit him in New Caledonia, where she arrived in early 1875. She rented a house in Nouméa, where she lived for 15 months until she was expelled by the governor of the penal colony.

On July 12, 1876, Bauër addressed an appeal for pardon to President Mac-Mahon, which was rejected in March 1877. Following Mac-Mahon's resignation in January 1879, the National Assembly decreed a partial amnesty for acts related to the Commune. The absence of Bauër's name from the list of amnesties redoubled the energy of his mother, who wrote again in April 1879 to the new president Jules Grévy to obtain a pardon for her son, enclosing a letter of recommendation from Jules Favre, Édouard Lockroy and Victor Hugo. Having finally obtained a pardon, Bauër left New Caledonia on July 19, 1879 and arrived in France in October.

Theater critic

On March 24, 1880, Bauër, 29 years old, married, largely against his mother's wishes, Pauline Lemariée, 13 years younger than him. Louis Blanc was among the witnesses to the marriage. On their honeymoon, the young couple went to the Bayreuth Festival, as Bauër had been a lifelong admirer of Richard Wagner's music, which was also reflected in his journalistic work. In 1882 Charles, the couple's first child, was born. In 1884, he lost his mother. In 1888, his second son, Gérard, was born.

In 1881 Bauër resumed his activity as a journalist, writing first of all for the Réveil founded by Lanessan, and to which Verlaine collaborated. Alphonse Daudet, who noticed him and appointed him as his successor as a theater critic, was also there. In 1884, Valentin Simond, the editor of Le Réveil, launched the daily newspaper L'Écho de Paris, where Bauër remained until 1898, when he became one of the most influential theater critics in France, regularly publishing a column on the front page, reserving for himself the criticism of all the important premieres of Parisian theaters, and writing a column twice a week on Parisian literary life.

Bauër, to whom the new naturalist theater was particularly important, vehemently defended the Théâtre Libre of André Antoine and the Théâtre de l'Œuvre of Lugné-Poe, contributing to the breakthrough of writers like Octave Mirbeau, taking the side of Émile Zola in the debates on his literary texts, but also in the Dreyfus affair, and contributing moreover to introduce in France of the "men of the North" like Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and Leo Tolstoy.

Sarah Bernhardt in 1900. Portrait by William Downey

Bauër also supported other young artists outside naturalism, such as Oscar Wilde and his Salomé, which he defended against violent attacks on the decadence of the work. During the scandal caused by Ubu Roi, he was the only recognized critic to have sided with Alfred Jarry. He also had a particular predilection for the actress Sarah Bernhardt, whose performance he praised in numerous enthusiastic articles, and with whom he lived a passionate love affair that lasted seven years.

His collaboration with the Écho de Paris did not prevent Bauër from publishing a series of works. The novel Une comédienne (1889) and the collection of short stories De la vie et du rêve (1896) were not very successful, while the Mémoires d'un jeune homme, a novel strongly tinged with autobiography, was noticed, even abroad.

His career as a critic brought in a considerable income for Bauër, whose family lived in a house in Le Vésinet, and he could afford another home in Brittany in addition to a two-story Parisian apartment. However, his profligacy in promoting both theatrical and private projects left him in a bad financial position after his activities at the Echo de Paris ended.

Last years

Bauër's stance in favor of Zola and Dreyfus was already out of step with the political line of the rather conservative Écho de Paris, but tensions escalated with the conflicts over Ubu Roi. As a result, Bauër eventually left the paper in 1898 to write theater reviews, albeit with a distinctly smaller scope, for the socialist paper La Petite République. Occasionally writing in influential sheets, he vehemently defended Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande in 1902 in Le Figaro.

Bauër (c. 1893–1894)

A collection of his chronicles in the Echo de Paris was published in 1899 under the title Idée et Réalité. Bauër also tried his hand at comedy, giving Sa maîtresse in 1900 (printed in 1903) at the Théâtre du Vaudeville where it did not exceed twelve performances. Chez les bourgeois (printed in 1909) was hardly noticed.

Bauër fell ill in 1915 and went to Evian on Lake Geneva in order to recover, but his condition deteriorated so rapidly that his son Gérard took him to the hospital in Paris, where he died at the age of 64. His funeral took place in the Père-Lachaise cemetery and his ashes were taken to the family crypt in Chatou, from where they were transferred, in 1963, on the initiative of Gérard Bauër, to the Charonne cemetery, where since that time a tombstone commemorates Henry Bauër.

Writings and personality

Bauër was described in contemporary literature as a "handsome giant": about six feet tall, stout with an imposing mane of early gray hair and a vigorous complexion that, with age, must have resembled more and more his biological father, Alexandre Dumas. He was considered irascible, polemical, but very benevolent towards all the young artists who were distinguished by a "new profile". Moreover, he is not known to have had any quarrels or duels.

Bauër's influence on the Parisian cultural scene is described as considerable. A contemporary report describes him as the champion of progressive theater criticism and the great opponent of traditionalist critics, notably Francisque Sarcey and Jules Lemaître. Anyone who had attended a dress rehearsal would know his striking appearance in a theater box. His word had force of law, especially among artists. He also generously used this influence, among other things, in the service of theatrical programming (as at the Théâtre Libre) or to have roles assigned to his favorite actresses.

The part of his work that is considered most important is therefore his journalistic activity, while his attempts at poetic writing were valued, but not very successful. As a journalist, he showed himself in his columns and theater reviews vigorously in favor of women's equality, against discrimination against homosexuals and Jews, for disarmament and pacifism.

Works

• La Revanche de Gaëtan (1879)
• Une comédienne. Scènes de la vie de théâtre (1889)
• Mémoires d’un jeune homme (1895; modern edition by Luc Legeard, "De Ducos à l’or des théâtres." Édition Annotée et Commentée de l'Ouvrage: Mémoires d’un Jeune Homme, de Henry Bauër, 2013)
• De la vie et du rêve (1896)
• Idée et réalité (1899)
• Sa maîtresse. Comédie en 4 actes (1903)
• Chez les bourgeois. Comédie en 4 actes (1909)

External links

• Works by Henry Bauër at Gallica