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, "ei ...
who was the wife of
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the 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'', which has become on ...
. 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 as the youngest daughter of the composer
Jacques-Fromental Halévy and his wife Léonie (née Rodrigues-Henriques), both
Jewish. 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
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the 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'', which has become on ...
, a pupil of her father, and gave birth in 1871 to their son Jacques, who became a school friend of
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 ...
. 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, and opened a salon for her cousin
Ludovic Halévy, 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 Meilhac,
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 Pica ...
,
Paul Hervieu,
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 ...
, and her cousin Ludovic.
In 1886, she married the lawyer Émile Straus, an acquaintance of the
Rothschild family, 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 inspir ...
and his cousin
Comtesse Greffulhe, painters and journalists. Many supporters of
Dreyfus socialized at Mme Straus's salon, including
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 ...
, who was one of the first intellectuals to sign a petition in ''
L'Aurore'' 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
Paris, 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
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Halevy, Genevieve
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Halevy, Genevieve