François-Eugène Vidocq

• Born: July 24, 1775
• Birthplace: Arras, France
• Died: May 11, 1857
• Place of death: Paris, France

Type of Plot: Police procedural

Contribution

François-Eugène Vidocq was the first official detective in the Western world. Having led the life of a vagabond, strolling actor, soldier, robber, gambler, dealer in illicit goods, and convict, he offered his services to the préfect of the brigade of the Sûreté in 1809. Hired as a police spy, he became by 1811 the chief of the detective bureau of the Sûreté that he had organized. Phenomenally successful in his investigations, by the time Mémoires de Vidocq, chef de la police de Sûreté jusqu’en 1827 (1828-1829; Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police Until 1827, 1828-1829) appeared, he had become a legend not only in France but also in England and Germany. His fame spread to the United States. An American edition of his memoirs was published simultaneously in Philadelphia and Baltimore in 1834. Excerpts from the memoirs ran from September to December, 1838, in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, a Philadelphia periodical.

Vidocq’s memoirs proved an important stimulus to the development of detective and mystery fiction. They inspired the American writer Edgar Allan Poe to become the “father of the detective story”; it is no accident that Poe set the first bona fide story of this genre, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in Paris. In this story, Poe refers to Vidocq as “a good guesser” but one who “impaired his vision by holding the object too close.” Poe’s detective hero C. Auguste Dupin is not modeled on Vidocq but is a mask for Poe himself. Vidocq is represented by the bourgeois, philistine, bureaucratic Préfect G—, the antithesis of Dupin, the titled aristocrat, poet, mathematician, and amateur detective.

Vidocq’s success as a detective did not depend on any great power of ratiocination. Instead, it depended on his intimate knowledge of the criminal class. He was also a master of disguise and gifted at extracting information from unsuspecting persons. In his memoirs, he describes his methods of investigation swiftly and forcefully, sometimes using the argot of the underworld. In addition to Poe’s work, Vidocq’s influence may be seen in the work of Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Eugène Sue, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins,Émile Gaboriau, Arthur Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc, E. W. Hornung, G. K. Chesterton, and Leslie Charteris. The “gentleman-crook” hero of mystery fiction—Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin, Hornung’s A. J. Raffles, and Charteris’s Simon Templar—derived from Vidocq’s memoirs.

Biography

François-Eugène Vidocq was born in Arras, France, on July 24, 1775, the son of a baker and his wife. At thirteen, he began learning the baker’s trade from his father, starting by delivering bread to customers in the city. A wild youth who loved to indulge himself, he began to steal from his parents. Finally, he absconded with the family savings, planning to flee to the New World. Ironically, he himself was robbed. After suffering a series of misadventures, he returned home to Arras. There, he easily obtained his mother’s forgiveness and his father’s permission to join the army. He enlisted and served in engagements at Valmy and Jammapes. Returning to Arras in 1794, he married Marie-Anne-Louise Chevalier but soon abandoned her on learning that she was having an affair with another man.

Going to Belgium, Vidocq accepted an officer’s commission in the army. Following a quarrel with a fellow officer, he was imprisoned at Lille. In 1796, he was sentenced to eight years of forced labor for complicity in forging an order to release a laborer from imprisonment during the Terror. Vidocq was imprisoned in Bicêtre in 1797. In 1798, he was removed to Brest, from which he soon escaped. Recaptured in 1799, he was incarcerated anew at Bicêtre. Later he was transferred to Toulon, from which he escaped in 1800. There followed a series of adventures, imprisonments, and escapes. When free, Vidocq continued to live among the thieves of Arras, Paris, and the provinces. In 1805, he was divorced from his first wife.

In 1809, Vidocq decided to offer his services to the police. In a report to the chief of the brigade of the Sûreté, in which he discussed the prevalence of crime in Paris, Vidocq suggested that no one knew criminals so well as one who had been a criminal himself, hinting at his own usefulness at criminal investigation. Neither the préfect of the Parisian police nor the minister of the Police General rejected Vidocq’s idea. It was agreed that Vidocq be employed as an undercover agent for the Sûreté. By 1810, he escaped from prison, with the approval of the new préfect, who remained in this post until 1814 and particularly befriended Vidocq. In 1811, Vidocq was officially invested with police powers and appointed chief of the detective division of the Sûreté. By 1817, he had seventeen agents under him and had made 772 arrests, setting a police record. In 1824, the brigade numbered thirty-one agents, including five women. In 1820, Vidocq had married Jeanne-Victoire Guérin; she died in 1824. Shortly thereafter, he married his cousin, Fleuride Maniez.

By 1827, Vidocq’s success and power had gained for him political enemies, forcing him to resign. He bought a paper factory in Saint-Mandé, at which he employed former convicts. This business soon failed, and he turned to writing; his memoirs were published in 1828-1829 and proved to be an immense success. Taking advantage of political turmoil, he returned to his police work in 1831, and he is said to have played an important role in saving Louis-Philippe’s throne. The new préfect of the Parisian police proved hostile to Vidocq, however, and faced with this new enmity, he resigned once again from the Sûreté.

During his career, Vidocq formed close friendships with some of the most prominent figures of French literature. By 1832, he had become a friend of Honoré de Balzacand inspired him to create his great fictional character Vaudrin, the master criminal who figures in several volumes of La Comédie humaine (The Comedy of Human Life, 1885-1893, 1896; best known as The Human Comedy, 1895-1896, 1911). Vidocq wrote additional works as well, including Le Paravoleur: Ou, L’Art de se conduire prudemment en tout pays, notamment à Paris (1830) and Les Voleurs: Physiologie de leurs mœurs et de leur langage (1836). In 1844, he published Les Vrais Mystères de Paris and Quelques mots sur une question à l’ordre du jour: Réflexions sur les moyens propres à diminuer les crimes et les récidives. In 1845-1846, he published Les Chauffeurs du nord, a novel about bandits who terrorized Picardy during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. During this period, Vidocq made trips to Belgium and England. In 1847, his third wife died. In 1848, Vidocq became well acquainted with the poet Alphonse Lamartine and had an interview with Prince Louis-Napoléon, who was to become Napoléon III. In 1849, Vidocq renewed his friendship with Victor Hugo, who began to write Les Misérables (English translation, 1862), which was published in 1862. Vidocq died in Paris on May 11, 1857.

Analysis

François-Eugène Vidocq’s memoirs may be considered a novelistic autobiography. The central character, Vidocq himself, appears simply as the narrator, “I.” The narrator is the only character who appears throughout the work, and his narrative takes him from his birth in Arras, France, in 1775 to his resignation in 1827 as the chief of the detective division of the Sûreté in Paris. For the most part, secondary characters appear only in short scenes, but their significance is always clear. The most important secondary character in the book is the chief of the brigade of the Sûreté when Vidocq joins the force. A model police officer, this man becomes Vidocq’s mentor, teacher, and friend.

Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police Until 1827

As {I}{/I} his story unfolds, the narrator experiences, at about the age of thirty-five, a complete reversal of character. His many years of imprisonment and association with criminals have finally disgusted him, and he believes that his life up to this point has been wasted. Believing that he must do something to make up for the past, both for himself and for society, he offers his services to the Paris police. When given the opportunity to serve in the Sûreté, he develops a new social consciousness and becomes society’s protector.

This transformation of the central character is paralleled by a change in the plot structure. Vidocq’s vagabond adventures follow in the tradition of such picaresque novels as Lazarillo de Tormes (1554; English translation, 1576), Alain-René Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715-1735; The History of Gil Blas of Santillane, 1716, 1735; better known as Gil Blas), and Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). After the narrator’s transformation, however, the plan of action is something entirely new to narrative; it represents the birth of the police procedural—the kind of plot that Poe would satirize when he opposed his amateur detective Dupin to the official préfect of the Paris police. Given the opportunity to play pursuer rather than pursued, Vidocq zealously attempts to limit crime and contribute to the public welfare, using his past experience.

The most important legacy of Vidocq’s memoirs has been the image they have presented of him as the great detective. By 1825, Vidocq had been the chief of the detectives of the Sûreté for fourteen years. During this period, he had established an amazing record as an indefatigable and unbribable crime fighter. Vigorous, broad-shouldered, powerfully built, of medium height, with tousled blond hair and penetrating steel-blue eyes, this man is built for action, whether it be prowling the Paris streets, visiting resorts of ill fame, listening to reports from police spies, or using various names and disguises during his rounds. Gifted with rare intelligence, prodigious memory, keen perception, and no mean acting abilities, he has through experience acquired a comprehensive knowledge of criminal behavior—argot, specialties, and modi operandi. A master reader of expressions and body language, he maintains files on criminals and their past histories, uses scientific graphology to distinguish forged writing from the authentic, and believes that fingerprints can be used for the identification of people. He possesses an uncanny instinct for ferreting out criminal activities. Altogether, he is a dedicated, relentless, courageous crime fighter. Once he has made an arrest, however, he is not lacking in compassion. He firmly believes that if society would cooperate, most criminals could be rehabilitated. (In real life, Vidocq was often generous in helping former prisoners.)

Because of the fuzzy publication history of Vidocq’s memoirs, it is hard to say anything definitive about his style or technique. The text that the world has known is the four-volume edition prepared by editors Émile Morice and Louis L’Héritier de l’Ain, based in turn on the work of the original editor to whom Vidocq had unfortunately entrusted his manuscript. All three editors were unscrupulous. By the time Vidocq realized what they had perpetrated, it was too late: The work was in print in France and translations of it had been published simultaneously in England and Germany. Nevertheless, Vidocq at once engaged Froment, who had been the chief of the brigade of the special cabinet of the préfect of the Parisian police, to prepare for him an edition that would conform to his original intentions. Froment’s edition was issued in Paris in 1829 as Histoire de Vidocq, chef de la police de Sûreté: Écrite d’après lui-même (the story of Vidocq, chief of the Sûreté, as told by himself). This edition essentially contains the contents of the original manuscript. Yet as Edwin Rich, the English translator of the memoirs, has stated:

Whether the Memoirs of Vidocq are genuine or ’spurious’ has been a question that has disturbed many critics, who appear to overlook the fact that their value and importance remain exactly the same. . . . The importance of the book . . . depends in no degree on who was the actual author. Ever since this material appeared in print, it has been a source of inspiration.

The memoirs generally contain antiquated references, interpolated passages, and indulgences in verbosity. Nevertheless, the emphasis is placed on descriptions of actions. These descriptions are concerned primarily with the activities of the central character, Vidocq. They are speedy and effective, often developing a rhythm of suspense and excitement until resolved to the satisfaction of the reader. A typical example occurs when Vidocq is seeking to capture the counterfeiter Watrin. Having learned Watrin’s address, Vidocq has hurried to the place and has arrived

just as someone was going out. Persuaded that it was Watrin, I tried to seize him. He escaped me; I dashed after him up the staircase, but, just as I was reaching for him, a kick in my chest sent me down twenty steps. I dashed after him again and with such speed that, to get rid of my pursuit, he was obliged to get into his quarters through a window on the landing. I then knocked on his door and summoned him to open. He refused.

Annette [Vidocq’s assistant, an agent of the Sûreté] had followed me. I ordered her to go in search of the police, and, while she went to obey, I imitated the noise of a man going downstairs. Watrin was deceived by this feint, and wanted to assure himself that I had really gone. He put his head out of the window.

That was what I wanted, and I at once grabbed him by the hair. He seized me in the same way, and a fight started. . . . I gathered my strength for a last jerk; already he had only his feet left in the room; another effort and he was mine. I pulled him out vigorously and he fell into the corridor. To deprive him of the shoemaker’s knife with which he was armed and drag him outside was the work of a moment.

The development of Vidocq’s narrative is essentially ironic. An unprincipled social nonconformist becomes a consistent lawbreaker. He is punished by society, becoming a long-term convict. His failure produces within him a change of attitude toward himself and society. Thus, when given the opportunity, he becomes a lawman and a renowned detective. He transforms his antisocial behavior into something socially productive, exchanges rags for riches, and changes failure into success. The effect of the narrative is the exaltation of the detective as police officer and crime fighter.

Perhaps the greatest of ironies in both the work and the life of Vidocq was that the more successful he became as a detective, the greater was the envy of his colleagues in the police department. They engaged in intrigues against him, even attempting to incriminate him falsely and trying to return him to his former criminal status. Thus, occasionally Vidocq found that he had more to fear from his lawman peers than from criminals. Inspired by Vidocq, Poe made his detective French and placed him in the city of Paris. In 1841, Paris was the only city in the Western world to have a detective-police organization. Indeed, for thirty years the Sûreté had enjoyed renown for its skill and efficiency in solving crimes and capturing its perpetrators. Yet Poe did not see Vidocq’s memoirs as a model for the kind of detective story he envisioned, nor did he consider Vidocq a proper model for his detective. His composition was not to be a loose series of episodes but a tense, concise, unified narrative of detection whose solution was to be reserved for the end. His detective, C. Auguste Dupin, is not a vulgar, middle-class bureaucrat, an unthinking man of action, but a cultured aristocrat, a scholarly recluse, an amateur solver of mysteries, to whom crime is not a social problem but a problem in philosophy and aesthetics. Dupin’s cognitive powers make the solution of a murder not only an exercise in the relationship of intuition to logical demonstration but also a creative act whose formal perfection amounts to a fine art. If Poe refrained from exploring the possibilities of the detective-story genre any further, that challenge was taken up by Gaboriau—nevertheless, he remained closer than Poe to Vidocq—and then by Doyle, who extended the work of both Poe and Gaboriau, putting the detective story on the map of popular literature.

Bibliography

Edwards, Samuel. The Vidocq Dossier: The Story of the World’s First Detective. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Biography of Vidocq, emphasizing his role in creating Paris’s detective bureau.

Morton, James. The First Detective: The Life and Revolutionary Times of Eugène Vidocq, Criminal, Spy and Private Eye. London: Ebury, 2004. Comprehensive biography of Vidocq, discussing his sometimes ambiguous position in the Paris underworld and the role played by that ambiguity in the invention of the police detective.

Murch, Alma E. The Development of the Detective Novel: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. New York: Philosophical Library, 1958. This broad overview of the detective story gives Vidocq his due as the first detective author, as well as the first real-life detective.

Porter, Dennis. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Study of the ideological and aesthetic effects of stylistic choices made by mystery and detective writers; sheds light on Vidocq’s works.

Sayers, Dorothy L. Les Origines du Roman Policier: A Wartime Wireless Talk to the French. Translated by Suzanne Bray. Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, England: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2003. Address to the French by the famous English mystery author, discussing the history of French detective fiction and its relation to the English version of the genre; provides perspective on Vidocq’s writings.

Stead, J. P. The Police of Paris. London: Staples Press, 1957. Useful study of the Paris police department, its history, administration, and methodology. Helps readers understand Vidocq’s novels. Includes bibliography.

Vidocq, François Eugène. Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime. Translated and edited by Edwin Gile Rich. Reprint. Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2003. Vidocq’s own account of his life in the Paris underworld, which influenced most great detective-fiction authors of the nineteenth century.