Claude Moreau (1856-1927), born to a prosperous cheese merchant in Provence, scandalized his family by abandoning the family business to pursue art in Paris. His paintings, described by one ruthless critic as “resembling moldy Roquefort viewed through rain-spotted spectacles,” earned him the dubious distinction of being rejected by the Salon a record fourteen times.
After his notorious “Incident of the Purple Cats” exhibition in 1888 (which reportedly caused three elderly patrons to faint and one to renounce art entirely), Moreau retreated to his grandmother’s cottage in the countryside. There, while attempting to paint the local garden mice (who proved to be remarkably uncooperative models), he discovered his true calling as a writer of whimsical tales.
His distinctive style, which blended meticulous attention to detail with an almost hallucinatory sense of wonder, was attributed by some to the questionable mushrooms he frequently foraged for his omelets. Though he never achieved the artistic immortality he sought with his paintings, his stories found an eager audience among those who suspected that mice might indeed hold tea parties when humans weren’t looking.
Through the patronage of Les Petites Merveilles, Moreau’s garden chronicles gained a devoted following. His two collections, Les Livres du Jardin (1905) and Une Année au Jardin (1906), were modest successes, though critics remained divided about whether to classify them as natural history, pure fantasy, or something entirely new.
In his later years, Moreau was frequently seen taking his evening constitutional in the garden, apparently deep in conversation with invisible companions. He maintained extensive correspondence with several leading academics, including Henri-Jules Favreau of the University of Aix-en-Provence, though his letters often included peculiar postscripts about proper tea service and the philosophical inclinations of certain mushrooms.
Moreau died peacefully in 1927, following his namesake Claude Monet by just one month. He left behind a collection of half-finished paintings (mostly of unimpressed mice), a remarkably detailed map of what he claimed was an extensive mouse civilization living in his garden, and an endowment ensuring that the garden would remain undisturbed in perpetuity.
His last words were reportedly, “Ah, but you should see how they dance when the moon is full!”
The garden still exists, protected by what his lawyers described as “the most peculiarly specific endowment” they had ever encountered. Its terms stipulate not only that the garden must remain undisturbed, but also that proper tea service must be maintained, that the library teapot must never be moved, and that a certain patch of mushrooms behind the herb garden must be allowed to pursue their philosophical inclinations without interference. The endowment also provides for the maintenance of several seemingly empty structures built to mouse scale, though Moreau’s lawyers learned not to ask too many questions about these after their paperwork began rearranging itself into poetry.
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