Marie-Geneviève Raphaëlle Halévy-Bizet-Straus (26 February 1849 – 22 December 1926) was a French

salonnière A salon is a gathering of people held by an inspiring host. During the gathering they amuse one another and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "e ...

who was the wife of

Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...

. She inspired

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in ''

À la recherche du temps perdu ''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...

''.

Life

Geneviève Halévy was born in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

as the youngest daughter of the composer Jacques-Fromental Halévy and his wife Léonie (née Rodrigues-Henriques), both

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. Geneviève Halévy's youth was sad: She lost her father when she was 13 years old, her elder sister when she was 15 years old, and her mother suffered from periods of mental instability. In 1869, she married

, a pupil of her father, and gave birth in 1871 to their son Jacques, who became a school friend of

. Bizet died suddenly of a heart attack in 1875. Shortly after his death, Geneviève and

Élie-Miriam Delaborde Élie-Miriam Delaborde (born Eraïm-Miriam Delaborde; 7 February 18399 December 1913) was a French virtuoso pianist and composer. He was also renowned as a player of the pedal piano. Life His birth was registered under the name of his mother L ...

, a close friend of both her and Bizet, signed a marriage contract. Despite this, they never went through with the marriage. There have been speculations by scholars that Geneviève and Delaborde were having an affair during her marriage to Bizet, a theory seemingly confirmed by their marriage contract a year after Bizet's death. Weber, Caroline. Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris. United States, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018. Geneviève moved to live with her uncle,

Léon Halévy Léon Halévy (4 January 1802 – 2 September 1883) was a French civil servant, historian, and dramatist. Early life Born to a Jewish family in Paris, Léon was the son of the writer and chazzan Élie Halévy and the younger brother of the ...

, and opened a salon for her cousin

Ludovic Halévy Ludovic Halévy (1 January 1834 – 7 May 1908) was a French author and playwright, best known for his collaborations with Henri Meilhac on Georges Bizet's '' Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach. Biography Ludovic Halévy was born in ...

, where she helped him in receiving the artistic society of the time. This was known as ''Ludovic's Thursdays'' (Les jeudis de Ludovic). After a few years, she opened her own salon where distinguished society members, such as Baron and Baronness Alphonse de Rothschild, Comtesse Potocka, Duchesse de Richelieu, and Comtesse de Chevigné (née de Sade, another model for the Duchesse de Guermantes) could meet with writers and intellectuals such as

Guy de Maupassant Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...

Henri Meilhac Henri Meilhac (23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897) was a French dramatist and opera librettist, best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as Jules Massenet' ...

Georges de Porto-Riche Georges de Porto-Riche (20 May 1849, Bordeaux, Gironde – 5 September 1930, Paris) was a French dramatist and novelist. Biography Georges was born into a Jewish-Italian assimilated family. At the age of twenty, his pieces in verse began to b ...

Paul Bourget Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (; 2 September 185225 December 1935) was a French poet, novelist and critic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Life Paul Bourget was born in Amiens in the Somme ''département'' of P ...

Paul Hervieu Paul Hervieu (2 September 185725 October 1915) was a French novelist and playwright. Early years He was born Paul-Ernest Hervieu in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Hervieu was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family. He studied law, but so ...

Joseph Reinach Joseph Reinach (30 September 1856 – 18 April 1921) was a French author and politician. Biography He was born in Paris. His two brothers Salomon Reinach and Théodore Reinach would later be known in the field of archaeology. After studying at L ...

, and her cousin Ludovic. In 1886, she married the lawyer Émile Straus, an acquaintance of the

Rothschild family The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of F ...

, and her salon became increasingly fashionable: She received

Robert de Montesquiou Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac (7 March 1855, Paris – 11 December 1921, Menton) was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, painter, art collector, art interpreter, and dandy. He is reputed to have been the inspira ...

and his cousin Comtesse Greffulhe, painters and journalists. Many supporters of Dreyfus socialized at Mme Straus's salon, including

, who was one of the first intellectuals to sign a petition in ''

L'Aurore ''L’Aurore'' (; ) was a literary, liberal, and socialist newspaper published in Paris, France, from 1897 to 1914. Its most famous headline was Émile Zola's '' J'Accuse...!'' leading into his article on the Dreyfus Affair. The newspaper was ...

'' at the time of the

Dreyfus Affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

. After the Affair, the salon became less prominent. After 1910, Mme Straus became increasingly depressed, and removed herself from society. Her son committed suicide in 1922. A few weeks later, Proust died. She died in 1926 in

, aged 77.

References

Sources

*Andrée Jacob, ''Il y a un siècle, quand les dames tenaient salon'', Paris, Ed. Arnaud Seydoux, 1991 * Painter, George Duncan: ''Marcel Proust: a biography'', London, Chatto & Windus, 1959 {{DEFAULTSORT:Halevy, Genevieve Halevy, Genevieve Halevy, Genevieve Halevy, Genevieve Halevy, Genevieve Halevy, Genevieve