Victor Billaud (1852-1936) was born in Saint-Julien-de l'Escap, near Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Charente-Maritime, and started his own weekly newspaper, La Chronique charentaise, in the town at the age of 22 in 1874. It contained articles on literature, poetry, and science. He abandoned the venture two years later, though, encouraged by Frédéric Garnier, the mayor of Royan, to settle in the town and run his own printing press.
There, he started printing Le Phare Littéraire, which had little success, but he soon established La nouvelle Gazette des Bains de Mer de Royan sur l'océan, which was very successful, particularly after the artist Barthélemy Gautier was recruited to draw for it. René, Billaud's elder son, took over the illustrations after Gautier's death in 1893. The paper became a mine of information on life in Royan.
He also founded several other papers, such as Le Royan, which his son Pierre later directed. But Billaud was also known for his postcards, his Guide du touriste (to Royan, of course), his photography, and also for his poetry. He remains one of the best known figures in Royan.
Billaud wrote a poem on each occasion of the unveiling of three public monuments in Royan: for the author and journalist Eugène Pelletan's statue in 1892, for Frédéric Garner's in 1907, and the above World War I memorial in 1921. Only the last has survived.
A street in Royan remembers both Victor Billaud and his son Pierre.
And Monique Chartier's Victor Billaud: Le Chantre de Royan (Vaux-sur-Mer: Bonne Anse, 2005) makes a very good job of remembering not only Victor Billaud, but also much of the history of Royan in general.
Étienne Baudry (1830-1908) is not a name well known in France, the country of his birth, let alone the UK, but a new book, Étienne Baudry: Une vie chantentaise...châtelain, dandy et écrivain militant (Saintes: Le Croît vif, 2010), written by his grand-daughter Yvonne Melia-Sevrain, may begin to change things. Baudry was born in Saintes and spent much of his life in the castle at Rochemont, near Saintes. Rochemont more or less depended on the revenue from its extensive vineyards.
In 1864 Baudry married Isabelle Bardin, a younger woman incapable of dressing herself without a servant, and the disastrous marriage was later satirized in Baudry's Le Camp des bourgeois (1868), a publication that came out two years before the essay Les Bras mercenaires. In these publications, along with his La fin du monde, Baudry sketched out his ideas for a future socialistic - even to some extent anarchistic - society, partly influenced by Louis Blanc and Charles Fourier.
Baudry established a workshop at Rochemont, where the artist Louis-Augustin Auguin lived for some months, and, for a longer period and more (in)famously, Gustave Courbet, who was a considerable financial burden to Baudry.
Due to the failure of his vineyards, Baudry was forced to sell Rochemont and move to Royan, where he died. Until recently, his grave in the cemetery in Royan lay unnoticed, and it is only a few years ago that it has been restored.
Originally, I posted a very bad shot of Royan seen in the distance from the ferry from La Pointe de Graves (Le Verdon) at the peak of the Médoc peninsula, but this is a much better one taken from Royan itself.
Eugène Pelletan (1813–84) was a writer, journalist and politician born in Royan, and much noted for his oratory. He was a Saint-Simonian during the republic.
In 1892 a statue in Royan was erected in his memory, although this was melted down during World War II. In the town of his birth, only a street name remembers him.
However, in the neighboring seaside town of Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, a bust of Pelletan was recently erected.
And although Saint-Georges-de-Didonne is a very small town, there are in fact three streets there named after Pelletan.
And there is a street in Saintes too which bears his name.
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