Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi

Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi, also known by the pseudonym Norbert Lorédan, (21 November 1865 – 30 January 1943) was a French theatre director, librettist, journalist and writer. He was born in Toulouse and died in Paris. A son of a banker and distant cousin of Gambetta, Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi studied at the college in Castres, where he met Jean Jaurès, who was at that time a tutor there, and became a friend of the doctor and scholar François de Vesian. He went to study law in Toulouse. In 1887–1888, at the instigation of Laurent Tailhade, Gheusi worked on the revue Le Décadent, but his literary career struggled to take off, despite the recommendations of Émile Zola and Catulle Mendès. Gheusi was involved in republican politics and joined the electoral campaign of Jaurès in the legislative elections of 1889 in Castres. In the following years, the government called on his services from time to time. In 1897, Ernest Constans sent him on an inspection tour of Christian schools in Palestine. After a short period at the Ministère des Colonies in 1906, beside Georges Leygues (also from south west France), he was charged by Jean Cruppi, then minister of Foreign Affairs, to work in 1911 for the restoration of diplomatic relations between France and Venezuela. In 1894, he married Adrienne Willems, nièce of the painter Florent Willems and frequented, alongside many free-thinkers and free-masons, the Luscrambo, an association which grouped the Toulousains of Paris, founded by the singer and future director of the Opéra Pedro Gailhard. His novel Gaucher Myrian, written in collaboration with the Bordeaux intellectual and musicologist Anatole Loquin was published in 1893, and attests to his interest in catharism. In 1906, he became a member of the Eglise gnostique catholique, alongside Léonce-Eugène Fabre des Essarts and Gabriel Fauré. In 1897, Arthur Meyer entrusted him with the direction of the illustrated literary supplement of the Gaulois which had just been created with the title Le Gaulois du dimanche.