Jean-Jaques Bixiou was the grandson of a Parisian grocer.

His father, who died a colonel, left him to the care of his grandmother, who married her head-clerk, named Descoings, after the death of her first husband, and died in 1822.

Finding himself without prospects on leaving college, he attempted painting, but in spite of his intimacy with Joseph Bridau, his life-long friend, he abandoned art to take up caricature, vignette designing, and drawing for books, which twenty years later went by the name of "illustration." The influence of the Ducs de Maufrigneuse and de Rhetore, whom he knew in the society of actresses, procured him his employment under government in 1819.

On good terms with des Lupeaulx, with whom in society he stood on an equality, and intimate with du Bruel, he was a living proof of Rabourdin's theory as to the steady deterioration of the administrative hierarchy in Paris through the personal importance which a government official may acquire outside of a government office.

Short in stature but well-formed, with a delicate face remarkable for its vague likeness to Napoleon's, thin lips, a straight chin, chestnut whiskers, twenty-seven years old, fair-skinned, with a piercing voice and sparkling eye,--such was Bixiou; a man, all sense and all wit, who abandoned himself to a mad pursuit of pleasure of every description, which threw him into a constant round of dissipation.
Hunter of grisettes, smoker, jester, diner-out and frequenter of supper-parties, always tuned to the highest pitch, shining equally in the greenroom and at the balls given among the grisettes of the Allee des Veuves, he was just as surprisingly entertaining at table as at a picnic, as gay and lively at midnight on the streets as in the morning when he jumped out of bed, and yet at heart gloomy and melancholy, like most of the great comic players.
Launched into the world of actors and actresses, writers, artists, and certain women of uncertain means, he lived well, went to the theatre without paying, gambled at Frascati, and often won.