He was never really able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his romantic ties[2] to fellow novelist Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time).

The Daudet family was composed of the father, Alphonse, the mother Julia (née Allard), Léon, the older brother, Edmée, and Lucien.

Every member of the family wrote books: father, mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law (Marthe Allard under the pseudonym of “Pampille”) and uncle (Ernest Daudet).

Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust.

His tableaux are not known anymore except by literary allusions to them (correspondence of Proust; catalogue by Anna de Noailles).