Hippolyte Auger

Hippolyte Auger (born Hippolyte Augé; 25 May 1796 in Auxerre – 5 January 1881 in Menton), was a French writer, Russian translator, and editor of the Journal de Saint Pétersbourg.

Biography Hippolyte Auger was born in 1810. Being one of eleven children, he left his Bourgogne home at the age of fourteen, with the consent of his parents, to work in Paris. He found employment in a fabric shop owned by the famous textile magnate Ternaux. His teenage charm was employed mostly on men, including Russian soldiers who were present in Paris following the abdication of Napoleon in 1814. Having struck up friendships with four, who like him were devotees of the theatre, He served for eighteen months.

In St Petersburg, Auger befriended the aristocrat Filipp Vigel, a famous Russian memoirist and friend of Pushkin. Vigel supported Auger for most of his life and enabled him to get to know the imperial family and senior Russian nobility. With the return of Napoleon, Auger's position as a Frenchman in society became awkward, and following Vigel's advice he left St Petersburg.

In Vilna he met a dashing, aristocratic but reckless 26 year old Chevalier Guard officer Michael Lunin (1787-1845), later famous as a political philosopher, revolutionary, and Decembrist. For Auger it was love at first sight. Lunin wanted to distance himself from his father, and in 1816 they decided to head to South America to join Bolivar's Liberadores. They only got as far as Paris, where they shared a tiny garret, Lunin penning a novel about "False" Dmitri, a 17th-century pretender to the Russian throne who may have been gay, while Auger introduced him to Jesuits, Saint-Simonians, and theatre acquaintances.

After more than a year in France, Lunin, returned to Russia to inherit the fortune of his father and a political role. Obliged to earn a living, and having taken his first steps as an author in Russia, Auger remained in Paris. Alongside writing articles for the Paris journals, he tried his hand as a playwright, and achieved several successes.

In 1820 he met a wealthy Scottish diplomat, William Drummond of Logiealmond, a former ambassador to the courts of Constantinople and Naples. He became his secretary, assisting him with literary and archeological work in both England and Italy.

While Auger was a writer of some celebrity during his lifetime, he has fallen into almost complete obscurity.

Character

As his memoirs confirm, Auger had a talent for making friends everywhere, but he could also be tactless, and the majority of his friendships appear to have ended in quarrels and rupture. His life was one of constant movement as he seemed unable to settle anywhere, or form stable relationships. It has been suggested that his was just the type of personality to be attracted to Messianic all-embracing doctrines like Saint-Simonianism. No other follower wrote as much as he did or so enthusiastically applied its ideology to artistic questions.