Albert Patin de La Fizeliere

Albert de La Fizelière (in full Albert-André Patin de La Fizelière; pen-name Ludovic de Marsay, see box to the right) (b. 7 August 1819 in Marly; d. 11 February 1878 in Paris) was a French littérateur, writer on electoral and constitutional law, art critic, and historian, known for his friendship with Champfleury and for his ties to the Café Guerbois circle. He was described by Edmond Antoine Poinsot (Georges d'Heylli; 1833–1902) as one "of the small number of our learned men who are both spiritual and without pedantry". He was a friend of Baudelaire and published the first bibliography of the latter a year after his death.

To the general public he is known for his dictum that "the public generally prefers a gibe to a word and a buffoon to a comedian" (le public préfère généralement le lazzi au mot et la queue-rouge au comédien), which had been anthologized in dictionaries of quotations from 1840 onwards.

His earliest publication in book form seems to have been an elaboration of the popular historical work, Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de France... of Charles-Jean-François Hénault (1685–1770), which was issued in 1842 as "updated to the present times" by "Ludovic G. de Marsay". He was the editor of the art magazine Bulletin de l'Ami des arts (published 1843–1845), of the Journal de l'album des théâtres, of La Petite Revue (published 1863–1870?; since 1867 as La Petite Revue anecdotique), and of the weekly foreigners' guide to Paris, the Gazette parisienne. Many of his art reviews that appeared in the magazine L'Artiste were subsequently reprinted as independent brochures. La Fizelière was the founder of the magazine Notre Histoire in 1848.

He was an admirer of the work of Charles Nodier, whose obituary he published in the Bulletin de l'Ami des arts of 30 January 1844, having been instrumental in bringing his Franciscus Columna to print posthumously in the same year. Some years later he would publish Nodier's correspondence with Alphonse Martainville.

In 1855 (in some reports, at the end of 1854) La Fizelière married the fifteen-year-old Sara Bouclier (1839–1913), whose beauty, grace and spirit had already attracted an entourage of suitors before her marriage to La Fizelière, and who would go on to become at his side a translator of English literature into the French language. Her portrait (an oil painting on canvas) executed by Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin in 1845 when Sara Bouclier was 6-years' old (looking considerably more mature) and preserved today at the Musée national du château de Compiègne, is an ample testimony to her assets, both physical and intellectual.

In the latter part of his life he edited the 12-volume Œuvres diverses of Jules Janin.

He edited and published literary monuments of the regional dialects of France, such as the hitherto unpublished 17th-century Dialogue de Thoinette et d'Alizon in the Lorrain dialect (1856), and several pieces in the Franco­phone dialect of Metzgau (the so-called patois messin).

His publications in the field of art history include an essay on Vivant Denon, and another on Antoine Chintreuil.

La Fizelière's caricature was drawn by the famous artist Nadar towards the middle of the century, in which La Fizelière is called "Lafiselière" (preserved in the manuscript collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France). Four months after his death his personal library was dispersed in a public sale, while his manuscripts and his art collection went on sale five months later.