L'Affaire Minou
By PETER QUENNELL LITERARY disputants in France are not inclined to pull their punches. Even child prodigies must expect to receive a share; and a number of heavy blows have been aimed at the unfortunate Mademoiselle Minou Drouet. 'Tous les enfants ont du genie—sauf Minou' ran Jean Cocteau's unkind witticism; and he proceeded to describe the eight-year-old poetess as no child but an 'octo- genarian dwarf.' Mademoiselle Minou's recent visit to London, her attractive performance on the television screen and the publication of her First Poems,* translated into English by Miss Margaret Crosland, have all helped to revive interest in the literary controversy that so excited Paris. It was a member of the Academie Francaise, Professor Pasteur Vallery-Radot, who originally drew the attention of a well-known French publisher, M. Rene Julliard, to the verses of this extraordinary little girl; and M. Julliard, who already had under his wing another youthful prodigy, the astonish- ing Mademoiselle Frangoise Sagan, at once made room for the new arrival and has fostered her devotedly ever since.
At the same time, he has fought to defend his nursling—particularly against the charge that she did not write her own poems, but that they were composed and dictated by her somewhat mysteri- ous adoptive mother. L'Affaire Minou tempor- arily divided France; and, as in a more celebrated Affair, the evidence of handwriting experts helped further to confuse the issue, two experts having announced that the childish script was obviously genuine, two of their colleagues, with an equal show of conviction, declaring that it was evidently forged. This allegation, however, seems to have been disproved by recent events. When separated from her guardian, M. Julliard informs us, Minou continues to write both verse and prose with no loss of her accustomed fluency; while English readers will doubtless recollect the verses about London that she obligingly dashed off to order- not perhaps one of her most spirited productions but a characteristic piece of fancy. If we agree, as I feel we must now do, that First Poems were indeed conceived in the brain and written by the hand of a remarkably intelligent and imaginative child, the question still remains whether they show authentic traces of genius. First Poems is a strange and unnerving book; for where we might expect to find immaturity we observe a high degree of sophistication and, throughout the volume, in- stead of innocence and freshness, a curious strain of adult melancholy. Myself; I failed to distin- guish genius, but was constantly taken aback by indications of the writer's skill. She knows so many of the adult tricks of the trade, is so artful at producing verses that have a promisingly poetic air, that closely resemble the 'real thing' but, when they are re-examined, dwindle away into a thin- spun tissue of more or less unmeaning imagery. Minou is clever—alarmingly, uncannily clever; but such technical skill should come with experi- ence, with an increasing knowledge of life and art. Minou's talent exists in the void, disembodied, unsupported. It is as alarming as a ghostly appari- tion, which speaks eloquently and urgently but somehow does not quite make sense. . . .
A valuable clue to the study of Minou's prob- lem was supplied just a year ago by an illustrated French weekly. On behalf of Paris Match, M. Pierre Joffroy visited Minou and Claude Drouct at 'Le Nain fauna,' the little house in Brittany that they inhabit during the summer months. He brought home with him some interesting facts and impressions. Minou was born Berthe-Marie Trehorel on July 24, 1947. Presumably she was an illegitimate child; at least, her mother, who has since married an agricultural labourer, very soon consigned her to L'Assistance Publique. She was rescued from her orphanage, in June, 1949, by Claude Drouet, the daughter of a provincial businessman, one-time governess, teacher of lan- guages and, on occasions, palmist and fortune- teller, whose happiest years, before she adopted Minou, had been spent in the household of a local nobleman, where she became the inseparable companion of the Vicomte's three children. M. Joffroy describes her as the 'eternal student,' an ascetic and rather forbidding personage, lonely, ambitious, self-centred, her natural appearance of severity exaggerated by a pronounced squint. Now Minou also squinted—she owes her recovery of normal vision to the good offices of M. Julliard- and, although Claude Drouet stoutly denies that she 'read' the hands of over two hundred orphan children in the process of arriving at her final choice, it is clear that Minou's defect must have constituted an immediate bond. Claude Drouet rapidly acquired the conviction that the child she had adopted was destined to become a child of genius.
In the light of the information that M. Joffroy provides, the problem underlying L'Affaire Minou appears a trifle easier to solve. Granted that Minou writes her own verses, she may de- pend, when she sets pen to paper, on a subtler * FIRST POEMS. 'By Minou Drouct. Translated by
Margaret Crosland. With an Introduction 'by Rene i Julliard. (Hamish Hamilton, Its. 6d.)
method of collaboration. Children, we know, are natural mimics and remain intensely impression- able until they 'reach the age of puberty. Ideas can be suggested to them, without being dictated or imposed; and it is not difficult to imagine a poetic Trilby who is almost completely unconscious of Svengali's operations. Nor need Svengali be wholly aware of the delicate formative influence that he or she is exercising. Nevertheless, a collaboration is, in fact, established between the formative and the receptive mind; and this, I believe, is the type of collaboration that has en- gendered Minou Drouet's verses and letters. They are the utterances of an uncommonly gifted medium who 'picks up' the messages relayed to her by a far more complex brain. She responds, remembers and deftly reproduces; and the feat of reproduction is all the more impressive because Claude Drouet's acknowledged writings—she has contributed alexandrines to one or two provincial literary contests—are said to be composed in an entirely different manner. But the message is that of a middle-aged woman, with over-sensitive nerves and a lonely and unsatisfied heart.
A rbre pareil it moi lamentable comme moi qui n'es plus comma moi que des nerfs tendus stir le Os du del ...
writes Minou in her opening poem. Her moods are tense and tortuous; and reflections of childish experience only appear in the frequent references she makes to youthful grief and adult cruelty, to a slap when she grinds her teeth in her sleep :
Quaid tine gifle m'eveillait
le matin
pour me punir d'avoir grince des dents en dormant et que mon deur baitait comme an cheval fou . . .
and to her fear that she, too, will one day become 'une abominable grande personae.' Is Minou her- self speaking here? I am inclined to hope not. We are told that she is completely devoted to her authoritative but affectionate guardian, despite the stringent discipline to which she has been subjected since she first began to read. Her book may not be recommendable as literature; but I can certainly recommend the text to every student of child psychology. Poor Minou! Yet she is blithe and gay,'cherishes her toy giraffe and enjoys a walk around the Zoo in the benign company of Mr. Hamish Hamilton. It is the later years of the prodigious child that seem likely to be over- shadowed.
Strix is on his travels again. We hope to have articles from him from time to time.
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