I first heard of Vidocq when, in college, I read several of Balzac’s novels. In “Pere Goriot,” the book’s provincial young hero, at sea in 19th-century Paris, is befriended by a daring criminal mastermind named Vautrin. In “Lost Illusions” and “The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans,” a worldly prelate turns out to be Vautrin in disguise. Ultimately, Balzac tells us, this elusive Napoleon of crime shifts allegiances and, when last glimpsed, has risen to become head of the Paris secret police. Vautrin, I learned from my teacher, was based on the amazing Eugene-Francois Vidocq (1775-1857).
As James Morton reminds the reader in his introduction to “The First Detective,” Vidocq led the kind of devil-may-care life that most men simply daydream about. When little more than a boy, he ran away from home, lost all the money he had stolen (from his father’s shop) in a drunken debauch at a brothel, then landed a job with a circus. Exceptionally strong, apparently irresistible to women and an excellent swordsman (as well as a master of the French foot-fighting technique called savate), Vidocq passed the first half of his adult life as a soldier, thief, smuggler, gambler and convict. No prison could hold him, as he escaped from one after the other, often through the use of ingenious disguises.
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Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book” and of four collections of essays: “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book” and “Classics for Pleasure.”
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"The First Detective: The Life And Revolutionary Times Of Eugene-Francois Vidocq Criminal, Spy and Private Eye" by James Morton (OverlookPress. 266 pp. $27.95)
Eventually, Vidocq switched sides. Faced with a long sentence on a chain gang, this natural-born, if somewhat unscrupulous, survivor cut a deal. Why not, he asked, set a thief to catch a thief — or rather many thieves? In 1809, while still locked up in La Force prison, Vidocq quietly began to pass along information and cellblock gossip to the authorities. In 1811, given his freedom, he started a new career with the Paris police, at first snitching on his former companions in larceny, then tracking down the culprits behind various robberies and killings, and sometimes acting as an agent provocateur. Within a year, he had founded the undercover division of the police — the Surete — and had become its first chief.
As such, Vidocq regularly hired ex-cons and prostitutes as his agents, attempted to prevent crimes and not just solve them, and — no surprise here — somehow managed to enrich himself. Under his command, the Surete captured thousands of criminals (about 1,500 a year). In 1827, though, Vidocq fell from favor, being accused of graft and blamed for the recidivism of some of the rough men and women he employed. Almost immediately, he did what all public officials do when they leave office: He published his memoirs. In 1828, the four volumes of his life and adventures became an international bestseller. One modern translator has said that they contain nothing less than “the best criminal stories in the world.”
Yet Vidocq’s career was far from over. During the last 25 years of his life, he poured money into a paper mill, which failed; started the first private detective agency (the Bureau des Renseignements — that is, the Office of Information); repeatedly got into trouble with his staid successors at the Surete; traveled to London with a kind of “Chamber of Horrors” show, which displayed instruments of torture as well as the manacles and weighted boots he had worn as a prisoner; and dined out regularly with the high and the mighty. What host or hostess could resist the postprandial stories of this charismatic rogue?
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