jean dorsenne web site, writer

On the trail of my cousin Etienne Troufleau, alias Jean Dorsenne, a Parisian journalist and writer of the 1930’s, I call from a telephone booth in the Gare du Nord (train station) in Paris to a small town in England for Claude Stauderman, Troufleau’s daughter. In fact, Claude is the daughter of his second wife, Sofia Cueto.


Picture of Claude	Claude lives in Florida now.

Leslee Poulton while a graduate student at Indiana University in the USA, wrote a dissertation on Dorsenne in 1986. I found Dr. Poulton in June 1995 in the state of Wisconsin. She is accompanying me today.

Claude is surprised by my call, nevertheless, she understands quickly the situation : “Jean Dorsenne is the man of my life,” such are her first words. Claude clarifies that his real name is Etienne, however, she continues to call him Jean. She seems very moved emotionally. I ask her if she is planning on coming to France. She suggests that I come to England. That very evening, I send newspaper clippings and articles on Dorsenne to England. As soon as they arrive, Claude calls me. She has received my package and informs me that she was born in October 1923, thus based on a quick calculation, she was seven years old when Dorsenne married her mother and twenty-two years old when he died. Today Claude is 72 years old. She recalls the circumstances of Dorsenne’s death, tells me about a letter from a Doctor P. Raine from Fontenay aux Roses. And I quote: “On the other hand, concerning Jean Dorsenne, Parisian journalist and writer, whose true name I believe is TROUFLEAU, he died at the hospital of Zwielege in my camp sometime in February. I admitted him for pneumonia, yet despite all of my care, in forty-eight hours, he passed away. I attended his last moments myself and confirmed his death.” Claude tells me of her doubts concerning this letter and wonders whether Doctor Raine had wanted to spare her; whether the version given by Francis Carco is not the more accurate (Dorsenne was shot by an SS guard in the camp at Oranienburg). Claude quotes from another letter, this time written by Dorsenne where he had noted: “the problem with suffering, is it good for salvation, this depends on the way in which one accepts it.”

Thursday, we have to get up early, 4:00 am, to make the ferry in Calais at 8:30 so that we will be at Claude’s around noon. To make matters worse, the weather is not good; there is a snowstorm. It doesn’t matter, let come what may!

We only hope that the ferry will not be like the “bateau ivre,” an autobiographical novel by Dorsenne in which the ship which was to bear him to Tahiti, runs aground on the coast of Panama.

On the right, in Colorado in front of the Cadillac

We arrive at the home of Claude and Bruce around 1 o’clock (French time), on this Thursday, February 22, 1996. Our visit, of course too short, will last five hours.

After a short hour in the living room meeting each other and laying out the situation, Claude takes us to lunch at a pub where she has reserved a table. We will stay there until 4:00 o’clock. During the meal, I am seated across from Claude and Leslee across from Bruce and in fact, although all speak French, I essentially discuss things with Claude in French; whereas, Leslee converses with Bruce in English or rather in American.

Claude and Bruce met in Paris during the war. Bruce, an American officer, was a member of the intelligence service.

It is September 1944. Bruce’s friend, John Wade Wimmer (Jack), knows Claude and her mother Sofia. Bruce wants to make their acquaintance in Paris. Since he speaks French, his friend Jack asks him to accompany him to Sofia’s and Jean’s home to a reception. It is that evening that Bruce meets Claude at 11 Victor Hugo Avenue in Paris.

Jean Dorsenne participates in the French resistance. He is part of a group of about thirty resistance fighters. For Claude’s safety, Jean and Sofia send Claude to Brittany to the home of their friend, Jacqueline. One day, Jacqueline’s father asks the two girls to run an errand to the tailor’s shop. At the shop, Claude grabs an inkbottle and draws a V for victory on a German uniform. The Germans will not appreciate her art. After returning to Paris, Claude celebrates her eighteenth birthday on October 7, 1941. Two days later, when she returns from school, Jean is waiting for her in front of the door. He is very worried; the French police have come by to get her. They want to see her immediately. She learns that she has been judged “in absentia” by the German tribunal in Brittany. She has been sentenced to two months in prison. Claude and Jean know some collaborators whom they ask to intercede. They refuse. Claude finds herself in the prison “La Santé” for two months.

The Gestapo arrests Dorsenne on February 19, 1942. On that day, Claude has returned from school for lunch. There is a knock at the door; she goes to open it. The police have come to arrest Jean, but Jean has already left the house to return to his office. Claude tries to telephone Jean to warn him. Each time she asks to be connected to him, the line is cut off. She understands right away that the Germans are waiting for Jean at the office of the newspaper Les Débats. The trial is not quite honest. There is insufficient proof against Jean, but just the same, he will spend one year at the “Santé,” then he will be deported to a camp. After February 19, 1941, Claude will never see her stepfather again.

It is April 1945. Bruce, because of his position at HQ, is aware of the dates for the liberation of the camps, and thus, he knows that the allies are going to liberate Buchenwald. He procures a jeep and armed with a photo, he seeks Jean in the crowd of Frenchmen lining the road, which leads to the camp. He arrives at Buchenwald without having found Jean. Bruce returns to Paris; rumors emerge everywhere. Jean is alive. Jean is dead. Claude’s friend who works with repatriated French citizens sends out enquiries concerning the case of Dorsenne. One day she calls Claude and asks her to come to her office. She has news about Jean; he is dead. Claude does not have the heart to announce this to her mother. First, she wants to verify it.

Claude’s engagement is being celebrated at her home on Victor Hugo Avenue. Among the guests there is a certain Colonel Lugai. This colonel is eventually transferred to New York. Bruce, having also returned to the States, seeks Colonel Lugai’s help, requesting that he do all in his power to bring Claude and her mother to the USA. At the time, all of the ships are reserved for the military. It is André Malraux, Minister of Propaganda and a friend, who at the end of the war provides Claude and her mother, Sofia, a false certificate so that they can join Bruce in the United States. Armed with these papers, Claude and Sofia go to the American Embassy where they procure visas. The day after their departure, Malraux is asked to resign and his signature no longer has any value. Ooo, just in time! They embark on a boat named the George Washington, their first hotel on 23^rd Street in New York is called the George Washington; and they arrive in the USA on February 22, 1946, which is George Washington’s birthday. These coincidences supply Sofia and Claude with word plays concerning America. Bruce greets them at the port.


Claude and Bruce’s home.	July 1999

February 23, 1946, Claude and Bruce marry at the Presbyterian Church on 5^th Avenue in New York City.

Bruce and Claude have been in England for six years, however their house, which dates from the XIV^th century, is for sale because they are planning to return to live in the United States. They have chosen to move to Florida since Bruce has former colleagues and friends living there. Bruce worked in advertising and was vice president at one of the largest ad agencies in the Unites States. He has also written scripts for American television.

Claude is lively, has a youthful spirit, a keen sense of touch, and a ready wit. Dorsenne loved cats, theirs was called Kotik after one of the characters in Kipling’s Jungle Book. Claude would have liked for me to have a cat.

Concerning Dorsenne’s involvement in the Resistance, Claude remembers having said to him: “You certainly are not going to join the Resistance, you have a family, do you realize that you have a family?” And Dorsenne answered: “If only there were people without families…” Claude is still angry with Malraux for having influenced Dorsenne to join in the resistance movement.

Claude’s mother, Sofia, married three times. The first, with Mr. Sleven, brought about the birth of a son, James (who lives in Colorado); the second, with Mr Outhier, brought forth Claude; the third, was with Dorsenne. After his death, she refused to remarry, although she did have several romantic adventures in the U.S. Claude’s mother, Sofia Cueto became part of what Bruce calls the “Argentinian Jet Set.” Her family possessed apartment buildings and other properties, but the family were partially ruined with Peron’s second nationalization of the country. Sofia’s mother, Clara Dolores de Machain, was of noble ancestry, which leads Bruce to pronounce the following typically American witticism: “That and a five franc coin and you can buy yourself a cup of coffee.”

There is a portrait of Sofia in the Stauderman’s dining room. This portrait was painted by Louis Laloy’s niece. Louis Laloy was the mayor of a village in the Vosges and wrote a book in which he speaks of Dorsenne, La Musique retrouvée.

Claude remembers their apartment at 11 Victor Hugo Avenue, an apartment which occupies the entire fifth floor. She remembers, as an adolescent, sitting in a corner and listening to conversations at parties given by Sofia and Dorsenne when they received their friends: Francis Carco, Vincent Muselli, Georges Reyer, Calderan, Maurice Bedel (who had barely beaten Dorsenne for the Goncourt Literary Prize in 1927), and Gaston Cherau). She sat in on these conversations until her mother told her to go to bed because it was late.

The relationship between the two wives of Dorsenne is ambiguous and full of rivalry. Dorsenne remarried in a civil ceremony (Paris 5^th arrondissement). He married Sofia Cueto, nine months after divorcing Micheline Picard. They surely inspired Dorsenne in those novels, which are, in my opinion, mostly autobiographical. Claude hardly appreciates Micheline Picard whom she finds strange and not very pretty. It is only four years after this civil marriage that Jean and Sofia remarry with great pomp because Clara, Sofia’s mother, really wanted it (Claude must be between 11 and 12 years old).

After her divorce, Micheline Picard married a German named Laske with whom she had a daughter, Axelle. Sometimes Micheline Picard came to the apartment at 11 Victor Hugo Avenue, (whose floor plan Bruce sketched for us) and with her very young daughter slept in the guest room sent up for such an occasion. Relationship seemed to be

strained, Cueto family jewelry disappeared; a short time later, Micheline Picard is living life largely. Micheline Picard, journalist, also wrote. Was she successful? Claude doesn’t know. The relationship she had with Dorsenne at the time, was it only professional? Let’s note just the same that Micheline shared Dorsenne’s life for ten years and in particular, during his Tahitian period from 1921 to 1924.

Claude knew Dorsenne’s mother whom she called Madame Troufleau. She was familiar with Charles Troufleau (poet and uncle of Dorsenne, whose name is inscribed in the Pantheon) and specifies that he died in 1916… “There might have been books by Charles in the apartment, but there were so many books…”

Claude did not know Louise either, Dorsenne’s aunt (school principal in Brest) who had raised him from the time he was ten years old when his father, Jules (a high school principal) died. Clearly Claude is learning something from us when we unveil Dorsenne’s childhood to her. Jean must not have spoken of it often.

Mentioning the deaths of Gerard Troufleau, Dorsenne’s nephew, and of his wife Annie, in an automobile accident in July 1992, on the outskirts of Nantes, Bruce and Claude, commiserate. They had experienced this as a great misfortune. They obviously knew each other well.

In the middle of their sojourn in the United States, which lasted forty years—from 1946 to 1990—there was a period of five years around 1960, when Bruce had to work in advertising in Paris. It must have been during this period that he made contact again with Maxime, Dorsenne’s brother. Maxime was brillant, intelligent, but really difficult to deal with; quite the opposite of Dorsenne who was kind and gentle. Claude has always found that curious. I propose the following explanation. Dorsenne had been only ten when his father died and so he was raised by a woman, Louise; on the other hand, Maxime, six years his senior, had already formed his personality and therefore Louise had a lesser influence on him.

Besides the painting of Sofia Cueto in the dining room, there are pictures in the Stauderman home, photos of Francis Carco and his wife, a very pretty woman. Claude wonders how such a beautiful woman could marry such an ugly man (in fact, Carco at 20 years of age wasn’t so bad looking). Carco’s wife gave up everything to go live with him. On another wall, a photo of Romy Schneider can be seen as well as a photo of Bruce with an American actress. They are arm in arm. Elsewhere there are pictures of the family in the U.S. as well as photos taken in Tahiti where they stayed while on the trail of Dorsenne, where they can be seen surrounded by beautiful vahines (women).

On the wall, there is also a beautiful photograph of Dorsenne in the midst of his books in his Paris apartment. It is a photo that Claude lends to us to reproduce—not without first

having kissed it. On the sideboard there is another photo of Dorsenne, it is the one that appeared on the cover of the newspaper “Illustration” and it certainly shows him at his most handsome. It is this photo that Claude took everywhere with her when in 1945, she enquired about his disappearance, asking his camp comrades. For our visit, Claude has gathered several papers, a notebook where Dorsenne noted his impressions; a writers’s journal, a few letters one of which, addressed to his wife, had been folded in fourths, sewn into a sleeve and carried out of the Santé prison without the guards knowledge

by a French mason. Also, for us, there is a copy of the wonderful interview given by Madame Dorsenne in Montreal on March 11, 1947.

Hanging on the wall is a framed copy of one of the poems that Muselli wrote for Dorsenne. Claude recites one of Muselli’s most beautiful poems. Also on the wall is a diploma addressed to Dorsenne by the Emperor of Annam.


Claude’s library in Florida.	Above, the university Leslee


Blanche, Nicole, and Claude in France in the Beauce.	No, this isn’t the actress, Romy Scheider. It is Blanche Hill, Claude’s friend. She was a model and was on the cover American fashion magazines.