Amaury de Cazanove

Amaury de Bigault de Cazanove (5 January 1845 – 8 October 1916) was a French military officer and writer.

Biography

Amaury de Cazanove was born at Château d'Avize (Avize, Marne), the son of Charles Nicolas de Bigault de Cazanove (1818–1903), director of the Charles de Cazanove champagne house and president of the Horticultural Society of the Épernay district, and Clarisse Poultier.

Born into an ancient family of chivalric extraction in Champagne, he left the region to settle with his wife at Château de Salles, Sallespisse, in 1879.

A gentleman poet, the "thoroughbred aristocrat" built up a veritable literary cenacle, which he gathered in the smoking room of his estate. This distinguished circle included intellectuals such as novelist Charles de Bordeu, poet Francis Jammes, Pau museum curator and engraver Paul Lafond, deputy Adrien Planté, among others.

An avid horseman, he enjoyed hunting hounds in the Landes forests and foxes at the Pau Hunt.

Amaury de Cazanove, who graduated in literature from the Collège de Saint-Dizier (Haute-Marne) in 1863, was a literary critic from 1867 to 1970, when he joined the army. He was a volunteer serviceman, then a lieutenant in the National Mobile Guard.

Seventy-year-old Amaury de Cazanove tried unsuccessfully to enlist in 1915.

He died the following year at the Château de Loran, near Mirande (Gers).

Private life

He married Marthe d'Ariste, daughter of Auguste Dariste, Vice-President of the Imperial Senate. Father of five children, he was also the grandfather of Admiral Paul de Bigault de Cazanove.

Works

• Les Chevaleresques (1879)
• La Mandragore (1886)
• Maylis (1906)

References

• Gonot, Roger (1986). Un Chevalier servant de la muse: Amaury de Cazanove, 1845-1916. Pau: Impr. Graphique Marrimpouey.
• Tranchesse, P. (1988). "Un poète gentilhomme, Amaury de Cazanove. Un ami de Francis Jammes," Revue Régionaliste des Pyrénées, Vol. LXXI, No. 257/260, pp. 203–25.

External links

• Works by Amaury de Cazanove at Gallica