Hippolyte Auger


Hippolyte Auger, born Hippolyte Augé, 25 May 1796 in Auxerre and died 5 January 1881 in Menton, was a French writer, Russian translator, and editor of the Journal de Saint Pétersbourg.

Biography

Born one of eleven children, in 1810, at the age of fourteen, Hippolyte Auger left his Bourgogne home, with the consent of his parents, to work to Paris. He found employment in a fabric shop owned by the famous textile magnate Ternaux. His teenage charm was employed mostly on men, including Russian soldiers who were present in Paris following the abdication of Napoleon in 1814. Having struck up friendships with four, who like him were devotees of the theatre, at the age of eighteen Auger joined the army of Alexander I, and followed it back to Russia, virtually officer by officer. He served eighteen months.
In St Petersburg, Auger befriended the aristocrat Filipp Vigel, a famous Russian memoirist and friend of Pushkin. Vigel supported Auger for most of his life and enabled him to get to know the imperial family and senior Russian nobility. With the return of Napoleon, Auger's position as a Frenchman in society became awkward, and following Vigel's advice he left St Petersburg.
In Vilna he met a dashing, aristocratic but reckless 26 year old Chevalier Guard officer Michael Lunin, later famous as a political philosopher, revolutionary, and Decembrist. For Auger it was love at first sight. As he later wrote in his memoirs: "the soft look, playful mouth, quick animation, imperturable manner offered, depending on the case, whatever you were looking for." Lunin wanted to distance himself from his father, and in 1816 they decided to head to South America to join Bolivar's Liberadores. They only got as far as Paris, where they shared a tiny garret, Lunin penning a novel about "False" Dmitri, a 17th-century pretender to the Russian throne who may have been gay, while Auger introduced him to Jesuits, Saint-Simonians, and theatre acquaintances.
After more than a year in France, Lunin, returned to Russia to inherit the fortune of his father and a political role. Obliged to earn a living, and having taken his first steps as an author in Russia, Auger remained in Paris. As well as writing articles for the Paris journals, he tried his hand as a playwright, and achieved several successes. In 1820 he met a wealthy Scottish diplomat, William Drummond of Logiealmond, a former ambassador to the courts of Constantinople and Naples. He became his secretary, assisting him with literary and archeological work in both England and Italy.
Back in France, in 1827 Auger befriended the Saint-Simonians Hippolyte Carnot and Philippe Buchez and took an active part in their conferences. He was also a friend and collaborator with, Ancelot, Balzac, Constant, Dumus, and other writers of the period. From 1837 wrote a number of novels, and in 1839 the three volume Physiologie du théâtre into which he poured his deep knowledge of the contemporary stage. In the 1840s Auger chose to return to Russia for a writing project supported by the Tsar, a refutation of the famous work of Marquis de Custine, Russia in 1839. After the scandal of Custine's book had subsided, the Tsar decided it was best not to remind the public of it, and the project was abandoned, but Auger remained some time in St. Petersburg.
In 1844 he published a novel Fernande under the name of Alexandre Dumas, which went through seven editions.
Auger passed the last years of his life in Paris, and on the French Riviera. In Toulon, he befriended the Justice of the Peace and bibliophile Alexandre Mouttet, who encouraged him to publish his memoirs.
Published posthumously in 1891 as Mémoires d'Auger (1810-1859, they were of remarkable frankness; his exploits confirming the presence of his name on the register of homosexuals then maintained by the Paris police.
While Auger was a writer of some celebrity during his lifetime, he has fallen into almost complete obscurity.

Character

As his memoirs confirm, Auger had a talent for making friends everywhere, but he could also be tactless, and the majority of his friendships appear to have ended in quarrels and rupture. His life was one of constant movement as he seemed unable to settle anywhere, or form stable relationships. It has been suggested that his was just the type of personality to be attracted to Messianic all-embracing doctrines like Saint-Simonianism. No other follower wrote as much as he did or so enthusiastically applied its ideology to artistic questions.

Works