The Original True Detective
Tracking down the historical figure who helped unleash your favorite fictional sleuths.
When you talk about real-life figures who influenced the evolution of detective fiction, you can’t get much bigger than Eugène-François Vidocq (1775-1857), whose jam-packed existence featured stints as a thief, puppeteer with a troupe of traveling performers, soldier, convict, cop, private detective, and a massive celebrity in Europe. Although not as well-remembered as some of his contemporaries, he’s notable for inspiring crime-fiction writers of the 19th century, who in turn influenced generations of mystery and suspense writers—which means he’s at the root of a bloody, weird, interesting evolutionary tree.
Not a bad outcome, in other words, for someone who once ignobly dressed as a nun to escape a prison hospital (if you believe the stories), proving so convincing in the disguise that he fooled other nuns. “I was then compelled to go to church, and it was no trifling embarrassment for me to make the signs and genuflexions [sic] prescribed to a nun,” Vidocq would later write in his memoirs. “Fortunately, the curate’s old female servant was at my side, and I got through very well by imitating her in every particular.” (His skill at disguise would serve him very well much later on, as a detective.)
Although he spent a great deal of his youth committing criminal deeds and landing in prison, Vidocq decided in his early thirties to clean up his act. In order to secure his freedom, he fed information on other criminals to the Paris police (being a snitch is one of the world’s oldest professions, for better or worse). Then he decided to become a cop: by 1811, he was running a plainclothes unit, Brigade de la Sûreté, that eventually employed dozens of agents (many of them former criminals like Vidocq). From his memoirs:
“Before my time, strangers and country people looked on Paris as a den of infamy, where it was requisite to keep incessantly on the alert; and where all comers, however guarded and careful, were sure to pay their footing. Since my time, there was no department… in which more crimes, and more horrible crimes, were perpetrated than in the department of the Seine; now there is none in which fewer guilty offenders have remained unknown, or fewer crimes remained unpunished.”
However, his use of former criminals drew complaints, and the Paris police administration warned him repeatedly about his men toeing the line between cop and criminal. Incensed, Vidocq resigned and launched a short-lived career as an entrepreneur. When that failed, he was forced to slink back to the Sûreté, where the criticisms continued unabated. He resigned again in 1832 and founded his own detective bureau, Le bureau des renseignements.
As you can imagine, the Paris police resented a private firm elbowing into the crime-fighting business. But as an entrepreneurial effort, Le bureau des renseignements was a success, largely by focusing on sparing businessmen from swindlers (for a handsome fee) and collecting debts (also for a fee). Vidocq, always the peacock, also saw his detective agency as a way to secure broader fame.
From Detective to Celebrity
Back in the 19th century, a key way to quickly achieve fame was to write a memoir (often with as many entertaining embellishments as possible). Vidocq’s memoirs were a hit, particularly once the English-language translation reached Britain’s bookshelves. In 1829, at the Coburg Theatre in London, the curtain rose on “Vidocq! The French Police Spy,” a melodrama with all the overwrought dialogue you might expect. (Other plays would follow, mostly after Vidocq’s death.) Inspired by Vidocq’s tales of crimes and crime-solving, Honoré de Balzac based a brilliant fugitive in his novels, Vautrin, off Vidocq.
Vidocq also made a point of networking heavily with other famous people, including ultra-famous author Victor Hugo, who used his new friend as inspiration for two of his key characters in Les Misérables: Jean Valjean (who escapes the law with the young Vidocq’s ingenuity) and Inspector Javert (who echoes the older Vidocq’s tenacity in pursuing criminals).
For nearly two centuries, academics and literary critics have argued that other authors were inspired by Vidocq’s tales, including Charles Dickins (whose Abel Magwitch, a criminal with a predilection for disguises who manages to make a questionable fortune, definitely has some Vidocq-like aspects) and Edgar Allan Poe (specifically, his ultra-famous detective C. Auguste Dupin). In Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin even refers to Vidocq as “a good guesser, and a persevering man… [but] without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations.” A correct assessment, according to Vidocq’s critics.
Authors such as Poe and Dickens and Maurice Leblanc (creator of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief, who some see as likewise Vidocq-influenced) would eventually inspire and influence mystery writers all over the world, which suggests that Vidocq had an outsized impact on one of the world’s most enduring kinds of entertainment.** In a certain way, Vidocq’s afterlife has proven as colorful as his actual existence.
**Fun footnote: A couple of years back, I was commissioned to write a 19th century novel in which Vidocq was a major character. The book was never published—perhaps for the best—but in the meantime I have a trove of journals and research I may try to use for something longer than a newsletter essay.