Henri Fauconnier
Henri Fauconnier (26 February 1879 Musset Barbezieux (Charente) – 14 April 1973 Paris) was a French writer, known mainly for his novel Malaisie, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1930. He was part of the Groupe de Barbezieux.
Fauconnier was the son of Charles, a brandy dealer who operated on his property near Cru Chevanceaux, and Melanie. Melanie Fauconnier lived in Limoges, where she was the best friend of Anna Haviland of Haviland porcelain. Haviland had arranged the 1874 marriage between the pair after she had married George Boutelleau, Barbezilien poet, playwright and novelist. (His family produced and promoted brandy butter Charente.) Fauconnier was the third of six children. His siblings included Genevieve Fauconnier (1886–1969), herself an award-winning writer who received the Prix Femina in 1933. He later sired his own son, Bernard.
In a cultured, artistic Catholic family of six children, Fauconnier lived very freely with his siblings, cousins and friends in the garden and cellars of Musset. His friend Jacques Boutelleau (who would later be known under the pen name Jacques Chardonne following the publication of The Epithalame in 1921) came every day. They published a newspaper, and dramas were played on the castle square with text and music written by Fauconnier. In 1901, Fauconnier's father died following a long illness, and Fauconnier left Bordeaux for England, where he taught French music for two years in the small college of Wells House. There, a journal article drew his attention, suggesting there was a fortune to make in Borneo by planting sago. The idea took shape: if he wanted to write, he must first become a man of leisure. The easiest way to become a man of leisure would be to first make a fortune.
He left from Marseille, March 10, 1905. On a stopover in Singapore, a month later, he decided to leave for the Borneo rubber plantations of Malaysia, which seemed more promising. He got an internship at his expense to a planter Klang near Kuala Lumpur so that he could learn the craft and the two essential languages, Malay and Tamil. In August, he discovered the location where he would eventually open his own plantation, in fertile land located on the distant hills beyond the Selangor River. He obtained a grant of 600 acres (2.4 km2) and settled in Rantau Panjang in early 1906, when he built his first "Maison des Palmes". He loved all people, places, landscapes, hard work, the climate, life and 'la vie'. His mother mobilizes funds for this rich uncle to "give" her younger sisters. Thanks to these 20,000 francs, and the funds that his friend Jacques puts into his business, he was able to begin planting. In 1908, he founded at Brussels the "Plantation Fauconnier & Posth", with the assistance of the banker Adrian Hallet. He converted all he had in stocks and founder shares. Some friends joined the Charente to help expand its plantations. His grew wealthy with a doubling in the price of rubber in two years and the tripling of the value of its shares in the single year 1910. He was then chief of the Hallet plantation group, in the Far East (Sumatra, Java, Indochina and Malaysia). In 1911, on an idea of Hallet, he sent a few bags of seeds of palm oil (Elaeis guineensis) from Sumatra to Malaysia which would grow into the vast plantations of Malaysia. He established Tennamaram near Rantau Panjang, the first plantation of palm oil from Malaysia. After several visits to Malaysia, his family joined him there to settle. But, he felt that a page in his life had turned: material success was assured, and it had only been a means to an end. Keeping an eye on the plantation, he arranged to delegate his powers so that he might finally devote himself to writing.
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