"Vous, moi, quelques uns avons aimé Céline quand il avait un grand talent"

Autograph letter signed by Lucien Daudet addressed to Lucien Descaves; six pages written in black ink on a double sheet and a single sheet. Creases inherent to the mailing.
Fine and long unpublished letter addressed to Lucien Descaves, to whom Daudet had not given news for two years. He outlines broadly the tragic events that occurred since: "Since that time, I remained in Paris, I witnessed the days of June 40 [...] I undertook, to forget my life, to write a life of my father [...] Then in August, I understood that I was very ill [...] I was operated on, reoperated on, in November I was dying, I knew nothing anymore, then a phlebitis. [...] A month later I learned of my brother's death."
All these sad misadventures do not prevent him from thinking about the Goncourt Academy which he evokes at length in this missive. Indeed, his brother Léon Daudet having died a few months earlier, the academicians are seeking a successor and Lucien's name figures among the favorites: "As soon as the newspapers mentioned my name for the Goncourt Academy, I was very embarrassed." He nevertheless states the reasons why he does not wish to join the ten: "Because I could not appear, my brother being dead, to say 'my turn' [...] And finally, it is difficult to write when one is the son of Alphonse Daudet, but when in addition one is the brother of Léon Daudet [...] the game was lost in advance for me." It is finally La Varende who will be elected on the recommendation of René Benjamin and Sacha Guitry and despite his certainties ("I would present myself one day or another to the Academy") Lucien Daudet will never join the prestigious jury.
Lucien has attached to his first letter another sheet in which he comments on Germaine Beaumont's latest novel: "One must not have the slightest idea of what a novel is, a true novel, to not have understood that for years no one had written a novel of such density." This literary consideration is the occasion for Daudet to address the Céline case, who - still in France at this time - has just published his third pamphlet Les Beaux Draps: "You, I, a few others loved Céline when he had great talent. And then all the imbeciles discovered him when he imitated himself and it was no longer anything but the waffle iron..."