Oscar was born in 1859 into a police family. Initially he followed his father's footsteps into the police. I have no shame, and this isn't being academically marked, so I'll use Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, Metenier's first performed play was "In the Family" at the Theatre-Libre in 1887. As I look down the list of plays I can see that his first three plays are all at Theatre-Libre, his fourth is at the Theatre des Varietes (this is a very small coincidence as it's the theatre Max Maurey will move onto after his years at the Grand Guignol). His sixth play on the list, "La Confrontation", is performed at the Theatre de la Scala, which doesn't have a Wikipedia page (mind you neither do I) in 1891.
He does a couple of collabs with Jean-Louis Dubut de Laforest. He does a collaboration with Jean Lorrain, who will go on to have two pieces in the Grand Guignol's opening night, at the Théâtre-d'application (La Bodinière) in 1893. Three years after that, in 1896, he will have Mademoiselle Fifi produced at the Theatre-Libre, and that will be that (according to Wikipedia) until he takes on the Grand Guignol the following year. According to Agnes Pierron he will have two pieces in the opening show; La Brême, which appears to be making its debut, and Mademoiselle Fifi, which isn't. His last play at the GG is Son Poteau in 1901. There are three more productions listed, one at the Theatre Antoine in 1902, one in the Théâtre Robinière also in 1902, one in the Scala in 1910. He died in 1913, at the age of 54, probably of syphilis.
It's not much to go on.
The following is taken from Larent Tailhade's autobiography. 1854 to 1919, Tailhade was a satirical poet, essayist and translator. He appears to have been a keen member of Paris' cultural scene and frankly not a terribly nice person. The translation is from ChatGPT. Like I said, I have no shame. This is the nearest I have (so far) to an obituary for Méténier. Tailhade really doesn't appear to have liked Méténier very much, which would give poor Oscar something in common with his hero Edgar Alen Poe, whose obituary was also a character assassination.
Tailhade says "The poor man succumbed to the same illness that claimed Maupassant and Baudelaire, to name only the immortals." Both of these men died of syphilis.
At that time, the author of Monsieur Betsy, Madame la Boule, Les Frères Zemganno, and other works devoid of general ideas could barely glimpse the rise of his star through the mists of the future. He had just left the army. His fine handwriting, relentless bluster, vulgarity, naive arrogance, and, crowning it all, an unshakeable respect for the established order had made him the model sergeant major. In civilian life, though dressed like any ordinary clerk, he retained a military bearing. Belted tightly in his gear, he had something dashing and self-important about him that gave away the irresistible non-commissioned officer. As secretary to the police commissioner for the Saint-Jacques district, he was beginning his intellectual career through a role inherited from his family. In fact, Mr. Méténier Senior had taken Oscar into his office on rue Jean-de-Beauvais, where he instructed him in the secrets of the trade.
Despite the Ossianic first name he bore, young Méténier had nothing Gaelic or reflective about him. Small and constantly in motion, agitated by a perpetual fretfulness that never allowed him to stay still for ten minutes, he darted around like a panicked beetle. He was a young man without youth—brown hair, brown eyes, round and expressionless, oily skin with the jaundiced-black complexion of liver patients, splendid teeth he hardly cared for, a soldier’s pomaded moustache, a round head with a receding chin and no distinct features. That’s how Oscar Méténier appeared in the bloom of his early years. He was also a dreadful chatterbox. Neither the hour, nor the presence of strangers, nor the express desire to end the conversation could silence him. Once he began to speak and got hold of his victim, it was over. With a shrill, hoarse, grating voice—one that came neither from lips nor throat, but seemed filtered through a Punch-and-Judy puppet, or perhaps the rasping gullet of a hunting owl—he would babble on for hours without pausing for breath or punctuation. He talked the way a dog barks at the moon. He talked the way the sea rises, or the rain falls.
Around 1885, he could be found at the home of Charles Buet, a literary drudge who hosted weekly gatherings in his apartment on rue de Breteuil, drawing together a paradoxical, motley crowd. Méténier, delighted to perform for lesser-known colleagues or those reputed for useful connections, buzzed about, darting from one group to another, cornering people in doorways and drowning them in his flood of speech. Messrs. Félix Fénéon, Victor Margueritte, myself, and—among the deceased—Jean Moréas, formed an audience he relished. Before long, his aesthetic held no secrets from us. Police reports had inspired him. Tasting this strong prose, reeking of leather, cheap wine, rum, tobacco, and the barracks, he had instantly grasped the essence of Naturalism—the beauty of raw language. He aspired to an art that was simple and truly plebeian—in short, to art without artifice, pitched at the level of the common man.
These conversations, deep into the night, would continue along the Esplanade and the quays, up to the doors of our homes. A certain intimacy developed, to the point where one evening, Méténier invited Moréas, Fénéon, perhaps also Margueritte and myself, to spend the following Sunday afternoon and evening with his family. He promised to read us one or two plays written for the Théâtre Libre, in the most uncompromising realist style. He also planned to show us rare editions and curious books inherited, along with a working library, from a godfather who was intellectually inclined.
Youth is reckless. We accepted. So at around two o’clock on the appointed day, we knocked on Oscar’s door. He greeted us and led us into his study. This was the showpiece room; you could tell that the family’s great man—pride of the Météniers—was named Oscar, and that everything now revolved around his comfort and the mechanics of his inspiration. The day was cold. A lovely fire of logs glowed in the hearth, setting the mood for lazy, meandering conversation. But that wasn’t what our host had in mind. The reading commenced without delay. For three full hours, without even pausing for a glass of water, he treated us not only to the two promised acts but also to several lengthy short stories, and even the outline of a serialized novel. Already, the author was dreaming of greater ventures. Though he didn’t know Russian, he was sure he could translate The Power of Darkness for Mr. Antoine into the vivid slang of the Parisian slums, and he planned to adapt a Goncourt novel for the stage. One of us gravely suggested he shouldn’t stop there, but extend his talents to Athalie and Mithridate, which would surely benefit from being rendered in his startlingly new French.
At half past five, Mme. Méténier—the mother—arrived to set up a large shell-shaped roasting pan and a clockwork spit in front of the fire, where she mounted a massive turkey (she said “un dinde”) of truly magnificent appearance. Soon the skin puffed and crackled, butter sizzled and dripped, and the rich aroma of roast poultry clung to our clothes and hair. This didn’t stop Oscar from continuing to read until, with the turkey perfectly cooked, we finally had to sit down to dinner. Even then, the reading was not entirely interrupted. Oscar frequently neglected his bird to fetch a book or a notebook, asking our opinion on some point of esoteric knowledge. I couldn’t help but think of Martial’s epigram, easier to quote than to translate, against Ligurinus:
You read while standing, you read while sitting,
You read while walking, and while—er—shitting.
I come to dine, you flee the chair,
When I lie down, you wake me there!
Méténier’s apprenticeship was brief. Like Pierre Loti—though less of an artist than the author of Aziyadé—he proudly claimed to know nothing. And in return, success came quickly. This was the heyday of Naturalist fervour. Only in a few avant-garde papers could one sense the coming reaction from the Decadent school. Symbolism’s lilies were still in bulb form. The Théâtre Libre—and soon after, the Variétés, where the peerless actress Réjane, José Dupuis, and others worthy of such leads took up Oscar’s work—brought him nothing but triumphs. He had, after all, hit upon the winning formula: “No ideas, no style—that’s enough to gain fame and money.”
Success did not ennoble his character, as it sometimes can. Shortly after Monsieur Betsy, a few friends and I were dozing over our beers during an intermission at the Chat-Noir. In walked Oscar, all bows and flourishes, escorting Camille Lemonnier. He was none too pleased to run into us. After we amused ourselves for a bit at his awkward attempts to hide both the celebrity and himself, we approached Lemonnier, whom we had known for ten years and had often met in Brussels at the home of our glorious mentor, Edmond Picard. Oscar’s smile turned an even deeper shade of jaundiced yellow!
Then came the Grand-Guignol, with performances where yesterday’s inouïsme was replaced by scandal and horror: Dupont the Eel and the rest. Then the noisy affair with Lantelme, in which the charming young woman exchanged punches—and even chair blows—with her first love. Méténier, now a theatre director and respectable businessman, had gone from being a half-wit in 1884 to a “Parisian personality,” a well-known boulevardier, as they said back then.
And finally came the end—gloomy, depressing, and sordid. The poor man succumbed to the same illness that claimed Maupassant and Baudelaire, to name only the immortals. But alas! it is not that hideous disease that bestows immortality.
Shortly before his death, I ran into him on the Passy train. He lived in Courcelles-Levallois. He recognized me with some effort—and was more gracious than he’d been at the Chat-Noir. Already, his illness was far advanced. He searched for words, stammered at the ends of sentences. But he chatted like before, never letting anyone else get a word in. He was carrying a bag full of bananas, which, due to the lack of coordination typical of his condition, he spilled across the train seats, the carpet, and among passengers’ feet. It was a pitiful sight to watch him, shaky and unsteady, chasing after the fruit as the train’s jolts sent them rolling to and fro. He was as distraught as a child. The whole train carriage—like Apuleius’s ants retrieving Psyche’s pearls—set about gathering his bananas. When the train stopped at Courcelles, Oscar was finally comforted.
I never saw him again. Shortly after this meeting, I received a letter from him, reduced to a few scribbled traces. In the same envelope were a few lines from Mme. Méténier—the mother—asking me to visit her son. Then the next day, a cancellation. She feared, she said, the emotional shock of a visit—the surprise and all that might follow. Perhaps the dear lady was afraid of a last-minute attempt to influence the will. In any case, the laurels were cut, and the golden age of the turkey was over.
Tailhade, L. (1921) Petits Mémoires de la vie. Paris: Éditions G. Crès et Cie, pp. 45 ff. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20070630203952/http://freresgoncourt.free.fr/portef2001/PortfOct/metenier.htm (Accessed: 30 May 2025).
Pierron, A. (ed.) (1995) Le Grand Guignol: Le Théâtre des peurs de la Belle Époque. Paris: Robert Laffont. Collection: Bouquins. ISBN: 9782221069011.