In De Gaulle, my father, Philippe de Gaulle comments on the events in the General’s political and family life. The following extracts are taken from the first volume of this book of interviews with Michel Tauriac (Plon, 2003):
At what age did you receive his last reprimand?
It was at the end of the war, in 1945. I was 24 years old then. I had just left the marines and was preparing to join my naval aeronautics internship in the United States. I had obtained three months’ leave, the first since the start of the war, and my comrades at Stanislas had invited me to go out with young girls. I lived with my parents. We returned at one in the morning. My father got angry. He growled: “So, like that, you have nothing to do but go out into town and live a life of a chair?” » Like my mother, he feared – he admitted this to me later – that I would become involved with a young girl who would not have suited them in their own eyes. (…)
From time to time I had to endure [de la part de tel ou tel] vexations. Sometimes I was allowed a few barbs like: “How are you, temporary son?” », this because of my father’s recent creation of the provisional government of the Republic in 1944. It didn’t go very far but it was annoying. There were also some who invented a nickname of some sort.
Sosthène, for example, why this nickname?
Because when we can’t do anything against someone, we use irony or derision. From what I understand, this nickname was drawn – who knows why! – from the La Rochefoucauld family, whose ancestor, who bore this first name and the title of duke, directed the Fine Arts under the July Monarchy and was ridiculed for having, it seems, decided to lengthen the dancers’ dresses of the Opera… He certainly left the memory of a character ridiculous enough for my scoffers to have had the idea of taking inspiration from him. (…)
[Mon père] wasn’t funny every day, but he had very pleasant moments where, without laughing out loud himself – I never saw him want to – he would train me to do it (…). Sometimes, still in patois, he sang the Little Quin-Quin. “It’s a sad song, “Little Quin-Quin”, he taught me. The troops sang it during the war [de 1914-1918] because they were homesick. » He had sung it a lot, as a child, with the kids of farmers and miners from the suburbs of Lille, people who often only spoke Flemish. [élevé à Paris, Charles de Gaulle retournait à Lille – où il était né en 1890, chez sa grand-mère maternelle – pendant les vacances scolaires].