Missia, Queen of Paris, Part I: Missia Godewska, childhood, youth, first marriage

Misia Sert played such an important role in the cultural life of Paris in the first half of the 20th century that she was nicknamed the “Queen of Paris.” Misia embodied, indeed, for half a century the ideal of the elegant, charismatic, intelligent Parisian. The sophisticated, the wise. Her life has become a legend, the subject of biographies, novels, plays, exhibitions, treatises, films. The myth of Misia Sert never ceases to arouse interest and there is still much to discover, with wonder and admiration.

Missia Sart, pianist, model, muse, socialite, talent hunter and midwife, mediator and mediator (between artists themselves, between artists and organizers and financiers, between artists and the audience), patron of the arts, was a huge cultural icon in the fields of music, painting, poetry, literature, theater, dance, decoration, and fashion.

Franz Liszt admired the prodigy's piano playing, Gabriel Fauré later gave her piano lessons, August Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Viard, Felix Vauton, Toulouse-Lautrec, painted her in her youth, Stéphane Mallarmé wrote her a poem Every Christmas on a Japanese Fan, Proust was inspired by her for the character of Madame Verdour, Sergei Diaghilev supported her in his revolutionary ballet productions and saw her as his twin, Maurice Ravel, Francis Poulenc, and Erik Satie dedicated works to her, Pablo Picasso admired her and her taste, and fashion designer Coco Chanel , thanks to whom El Al broke through, was her close friend.

Let us follow the path of Missia Sert, the only woman of virtue who was born in 1872 in St. Petersburg and died in 1950 in Paris.

A dramatic birth that shaped her entire life

Marie Godebska, nicknamed Missia, was born in 1872 in St. Petersburg, the daughter of the Polish sculptor Cyprien Godebski and Sophie Servais. The latter was the daughter of the Belgian cellist Adrien-François Servais and the Russian Sophie Féguine.

Adrien-François Serva met his wife, Sophie Pagin, the daughter of a converted Russian Jewish family, on one of his tours in Russia. It is a bit confusing because the mother and daughter were both named Sophie: the mother was Sophie Pagin-Serva (the cellist's wife) and the daughter was Sophie Serva-Godewska (the sculptor's wife). The granddaughter was Missia. The following list will make it easier to understand:

Mary Godewska, known as Missia Sert, was the daughter of Cyprian Godewski (Polish, sculptor) and Sophie Serva (Belgian-Russian).

Sophie Serva, Missia's mother, was the daughter of Adrien-François Serva (Belgian, cellist) and Sophie Pagin (Russian).

Adrien-François Servais and his wife Sophie Pagin, who would become Missia's grandparents, built an Italian-style villa in Halle, near Brussels. They invited Cyprien Godewski to decorate it with his sculptures and reliefs. This is how he met his future wife, Sophie, the eldest daughter of the owners of the house.

The young couple, he 35, she 22, celebrated their marriage on January 23, 1865. Two sons were born, Sophie was expecting a daughter. Everything seemed rosy because the Serva family, including Sophie, did not suspect that the handsome groom with the romantic appearance, the sought-after artist who traveled a lot for his work, was a hopeless womanizer.

Sophie Serva-Godevska was about to give birth to Missia when her husband, the same Cyprian Godevski, the successful and celebrated sculptor, was in St. Petersburg where he had been invited to decorate a princely palace. Instead of staying in a hotel, he stayed at his mother-in-law's house. However, Olga, the mother-in-law's younger and beautiful sister, also lived in the house.

Anonymous letters informed the pregnant Sophie that her husband was having fun with her aunt Olga, her mother's younger sister. The mother, Sophie Pagin, of course, did not foresee that Cyprian would take advantage of the hospitality she offered him in her mother's house to start an affair with her sister, Olga Pagin. How did Olga betray her? Olga betrayed her sister and niece and, as it turns out, brought disaster to the family.

Sophie, gritting her teeth, was at a loss and traveled to St. Petersburg in the cold winter to find out. There was no room for doubt. The anonymous letters did not lie. Cyprian had an affair with her aunt, who also got him pregnant. A scandal in the family that led to tragedy. Sophie, desperate, found no more interest in life, gave birth to Missia the day after her arrival in St. Petersburg in a city hospital and died at the age of 29.

A childhood immersed in sounds

The father did not bother to take care of his two newborn babies, one from his deceased legal wife, the other from her aunt, a temporary lover. The cheerful widower entrusted the two babies to the mistress, Olga Pagin, and continued his life as if nothing had happened. After some time in St. Petersburg, Missia, an orphan of a mother, was picked up by her grandmother, Sophie Pagin-Serva, a music lover.

Sophie Pagina-Serva's grandfather, her husband, was the famous and successful composer and cellist, Adrien-François Serva (1807-1866), whom his contemporaries called “the Paganini of the cello.” Serva played with Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, and Ferdinand David and gave concerts throughout Europe. The music he composed is still performed today.

The grand house where Missia grew up, in the town of El near Brussels, hosted artists such as Liszt, Berlioz, and Anton Rubinstein. The grandmother, Sophie Pagin-Serva, short, beautiful, and bejeweled, was surrounded by a circle of friends, most of them artists, some of whom would stay overnight at her house for weeks or even months. Even after her husband's death in 1866, she continued to maintain her home as a musical center.

Two grand pianos stood in the living room and seven or eight more in the rooms of the house. Missia grew up to the sound of music and learned her notes naturally, without lessons, even before she knew the letters of the alphabet. Franz Liszt, who used to visit his grandmother when he came to Belgium, heard her play and was amazed.

A paradise where Missia and her two brothers spent a happy time, like in a Russian estate where they worshipped Beethoven, Liszt, and especially the avant-garde Wagner, where dramas and melodramas occasionally took place, sudden deaths or suicides occurred, where maids and servants worked hard to keep things clean and shiny, where they ate and drank the finest delicacies on silver and crystal at a huge table (sixty seats), covered with a lace tablecloth. The winery was full of wines, in the warehouse bloody cuts of beef hung from the ceiling, hanging on hooks, the estate gardens and the paths of the peaceful countryside beyond were bathed in golden light.

But heaven expelled Missia and her two brothers in 1880 after their father, Cyprian, decided to leave Warsaw, where he had found work, a new wife, and a place to live, and move to Paris. Cyprian was invited to Warsaw to perform several sculptural works, met a wealthy widow in the city, married her in 1874, and founded a sculpture school. Cyprian and his wife's home became a cultural salon to which everyone flocked. Despite their success, both personal and professional, Cyprian decided to leave Warsaw, where he had exhausted himself, in order to develop further in Paris.

Cyprien's second wife, Mathilde Nathanson, née Rozen, a sculptor and pianist, was the widow of a Polish Jewish banker. With the money from her inheritance, the couple built a grandiose house with a studio near Parc Monceau, on rue de Prony. Cyprien remembered that he had children and brought them from his grandmother's house to his new residence in Paris.

Cyprien and Mathilde also ran a successful salon in Paris, whose patrons included Alphonse Doude, Felicien Rupes, the Goncourt brothers, and members of the Poniatowski family. The most important of the guests for Missia was the great composer and pianist, Gabriel Fauré.

Cyprien, who noticed his daughter's talent, entrusted her to the care of Fora once a week. It was quality time for the orphaned mother during which she received treasures from the great teacher. All her life, she said, she derived joy from music, thanks to Gabriel Fora's lessons, where she had only to hear him play to understand the nuances and secrets of his art. Another bright spot was her little brother, Sipa (short for Cyprien), who was born to Cyprien and Mathilde when Misia was three. Misia will always love him.

In 1882, at the age of ten, under the influence of her stepmother, Mathilde Nathanson, Missia was sent to a strict nunnery in the house that now houses the Rodin Museum . This dark period, which lasted seven years, will remain in Missia's memory as a sad tunnel illuminated by the kindness of Gabriel Faure and the joy she saw in his eyes as she progressed in her musical studies. Faure predicted a brilliant career for her as a soloist.

Cyprien lost his second wife, Mathilde Nathanson, in 1887, quickly married a third, who had been his mistress even before his wife's death, and moved to Belgium. Missia found refuge in London and settled in a family boarding house in the Mayfair neighborhood. When she returned to Paris, she rented a one-room apartment and supported herself by giving piano lessons. She obtained the students thanks to the recommendations of Gabriel Faure.

First marriage to Theda Nathanson, 1893-1905

Through Mathilde Nathanson, in the old days, when she was still alive, Misia met her three nephews: Alexandre, Thadée, Alfred. The Nathanson brothers were sons of a wealthy, respectable, and active Polish Jewish family. Their father, Adam Nathanson, emigrated from Poland with his Russian wife and three children to Paris and settled in an apartment overlooking the Seine River, on the Place Saint-Michel. Misia loved visiting them so much, the Russian accent, the samovar, and the hot tea cups with silver bases reminded her of her beloved grandmother.

A renewed meeting between Misia and Theda Nathanson led to their marriage in 1893. And she was recruited to the important undertaking of the three brothers: the publication of “La Revue Blanche,” a journal with avant-garde and anarchist touches, which would play a decisive role in French and even international culture from 1889 to 1903.

Felix and Lawton, portrait by Theda Nathanson, 1897. Image source: Wikiart

Missia and Theda's Parisian salon on Rue Saint-Florentin

The salon of Missia and Theda, in the Hôtel de Ségur, rue Saint Florentin, number 9, near the Place de la Concorde , hosted all those who contributed their talents to the magazine “Le Revue Blanche”: writers such as André Gide, Paul Valéry, Stéphane Mallarmé, Willy and his young wife Colette, Proust, Apollinaire, artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Viard, Félix Vauton, Toulouse-Lautrec. Also musicians such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, as well as actors, directors and theater people.

Theda and Misia joined Toulouse-Lautrec's nights in the cabarets of Montmartre where he was, as is well known, a household name. The couple enjoyed many entertainments and outings, theater, opera, concerts, exhibitions, horse races, performances, such as puppet theater, in private homes. The couple's presence at premieres and exhibition launches was a guarantee of the importance of the event and a condition for its success.

Toulouse-Lautrec, Missia in the Theater, 1895. Image source: Wikimedia

Note: In Toulouse-Lautrec's drawing, Missia is seen in a theater box, looking out in front of her. On the right, stagehands are lowering the curtain after the performance.

Missia, Pierre Bonnard and Jeanne Bleu

It is interesting to note that Pierre Bonnard’s famous picture of Missia at breakfast was purchased by the art dealer Eugène Bleu in 1906. In his book, Bleu describes it as “a small, pure masterpiece.” Bleu gave the picture as a gift to his son Jacques. Thanks to Joel Temanlis, Eugène Bleu’s great-grandson (Jacques was his grandmother’s brother), for the information.

Howdy, how cheerful!

Alexandre, Theda's brother, and his wife Olga moved into a new house at 60 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, literally, "Boulogne Forest Avenue," now 74 Avenue Foch. In the winter of 1895, Alexandre and his wife celebrated the inauguration of their home with an alcohol-soaked evening that all the Paris newspapers talked about.

The wealthy young couple was proud to show their party (three hundred guests) their magnificent residence and their collection of pictures. They were particularly delighted with the nine decorative panels that Vair had commissioned for them, depicting children playing and women chatting in a green park, a testament to the calm, everyday life, the peaceful intimacy of Paris in 1900.

The invitations to the party were drawn by Toulouse-Lautrec, who wrote in English: “Mr. and Mrs. Nathanson will be happy to receive their guests starting at eight-thirty in the evening. American drinks and more will be served at the bar.” The next day, the newspaper “Le Figaro” published a sarcastic, humorous prophecy that the invitation to the Nathansons’ next party would be written… in Hebrew!

Toulouse-Lautrec, 1.40 m, together with a painter friend, 2 m, in white uniforms, were in charge of the drinks. Toulouse-Lautrec, with a shaved head and wearing a vest cut out with an American flag, concocted three-layer cocktails, green, red and yellow, that got everyone drunk at once. Beds and mattresses, everything the house contained, were prepared ahead of time for the dizzy ones. It's a good thing the organizers thought of everything...

The summer homes of Missia and Theda, a pastoral refuge for artists: La Granget 1896-1897, La Relais 1897-1899

Theda bought a summer house in a village called Valvins, near Fontainebleau, a house called “La Grangette”, literally, “the little barn”. The house next door was rented by Stéphane Mallarmé, who often stayed there with his wife and daughter. A strong friendship connected Missia to the Mallarmé family.

Artists and writers frequented the house. In the evenings, Missia would play the piano, Beethoven, Schubert, Handel, surrounded by admirers. Villard and Bonnard were regular guests, Toulouse-Lautrec would come on weekends. Julie Morisot, Berthe's daughter, was part of the group. A magical time for Missia, who had a deep need to be constantly surrounded.

The house was too small to accommodate all the good, dear and well-known friends and the Nathansons left it to Sipa, Missia’s younger and beloved brother, and his wife Ida. Missia and Theda bought another, larger house in its place, “Le Relais”, literally, “the station” because it had previously served as a horse post station. The spacious and pleasant house from 1807 was located in a village called Villeneuve sur Yonne, in the heart of a garden shaded by elms that descended towards a bend of the Yonne river (a tributary of the Seine).

Bonnard, Lautrec, Apollinaire, and Lawton, Roussel, and Viar were among the regular guests. The latter would walk around with a Kodak camera (the invention fascinated everyone) until he would call out, “One moment, please.” Those present would freeze in place and only break free from the silence after the click of the bellows camera. The photographs served as sources of inspiration for the painter, as drafts for his paintings, and thus immortalized a chance moment.

How did Viar exorcise the demons? With his art, of course. His unrequited love in the decorative panels of Viar (1897) and in other paintings in which he depicted the Garden of Eden in Villeneuve, where harmony reigned between man and nature. The light seemed to burst from the back of the paintings and no shadow clouded the happiness.

The friends are walking, reading, Bonnard, in the company of his partner Martha, glances at a cartoon newspaper, Missia sits in a soft white dress, her feet dipped in the tall grass, immersed in golden dreams, an enigmatic smile of satisfaction on her lips. Missia walks with outstretched arms, merging with nature. Missia in the summer of her youth. The tenderness, friendship and affection that Viar felt for Missia are reflected in his paintings.

However, in many of the works, one can sense Viar's sadness. Missia is depicted either with her back to him or when she is lost in thought or busy with something else and not looking at him. These poses express Viar's (justified) feeling that Missia will always be an unattainable woman for him.

Edouard Vierre, Missia seated in an armchair, 1901. Image source: Dorsa Museum website

At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem you can see another painting by Viar, Missia on the Sofa , 1900, in the same style.

Missia, with her artistic sensibility, was ahead of her time.

Painters, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Bonnard, Viarre, and Luton, sketch her portrait, poets, Mallarmé, Verlaine, compose poems for her. Missia, twenty years old, graceful, seductive, became a famous muse, accepting with a frank innocence the admiration she had won for granted.

Missia was seductive but not seduced. Quite the opposite. Being close to her intellectual father, at the head of the “Le Revée Blanche” factory, opened up broad horizons for her. These conditions enriched her education, which was limited at the starting point, and further developed her taste, which was good from the start.

Theda and Misia had power and used it well. The writers and artists all knew that to win Theda's heart they had to first go through Misia's approval. Publishing an article, a novel, a serialized play in the journal "Le Revue Blanche" was a step on the way to gaining recognition and reputation.

The painters also had an interest in connecting with the couple. Theda promoted his protégés through critical articles on their works in the journal and through organizing exhibitions at his residence or in other galleries.

Missia knew how to appreciate art. In the days when people burst out laughing at Renoir paintings, mockingly asked how not to hang Bonnard landscapes upside down, refused to pay for Van Gogh paintings, and disowned Mallarmé, Missia knew how to identify masterpieces and was ahead of her time with her correct judgment.

Thirty years later, she harshly criticized all those people who denied the great artists whose greatness she, Missia Sert, recognized. She said:

I have always believed that more than artists need respect, they need love. I loved them, I shared their joys, their work, their pain and their happiness. The works of those who were my friends now fill museums. It is no longer dangerous to admire them after they have become public property.

But I knew how to love them, then, day after day, in my own way. And with a slightly amused smile I remember the young woman I was, carefree and impatient, now hanging on the walls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg or taking up space in the Barnes Collection catalog in Philadelphia.

And not only that. Quite a few masterpieces have survived for future generations thanks to my personal taste. Lautrec's paintings on cardboard would not exist today if I hadn't coated them with a thick layer of car varnish because I thought they would be more beautiful that way.

The journal Le Revue Blanche, its birth, life and closure

The magazine was very successful during its 14 years of existence and remains a fascinating encyclopedia, even today, of the social, literary, and artistic life of its time. The editors were wise enough to publish previously unknown writers, and the gamble later proved to be a winner.

Among the foreign writers translated into French (for the first time!) were the Russians Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Bakunin, the Scandinavians Ibsen, Strindberg, Bjornsson, Hamson, the English Jane Austen, Kipling, Stevenson, Wilde, the American Mark Twain, the Italian Marinetti. The French were, of course, wonderfully represented, Saint-Simon, Jarry, Stendhal, Gide, Zola, Peggy, Mallarmé, Proust, Verlaine, Apollinaire.

Theda and Misia knew how to recognize talent with their senses, with their intuition, decades before public recognition. Thus, they organized for Alfred Jarry the staging of his play “King Obo” at “Le Théâtre de l'Œuvre” (Le Théâtre de l'Œuvre), founded by Theda’s childhood friend, the actor and director, Lugné-Poe, an important figure in the history of French theater.

The set for the play was created by Bonnard, with the help of his friends Villard, Lautrec, Serozia, and Ranson. With youthful joy, the painters assisted the director, Lunier-Poux. The music was written by Bonnard's brother-in-law, Claude Terrasse, the "Prince of French Operetta."

On December 10, 1896, Missia received a lesson in Parisian theatrical scandal. It was a historic performance. Before an audience of about five hundred spectators, twenty-three-year-old Alfred Jarry, his jet-black hair stuck to his scalp, heavily made up and dressed as a clown, sat before a table covered in coarse wrapping paper, reciting a monologue in a metallic voice. When he finished, the curtain opened to reveal a house broken into by snow, owls in the windows, a skeleton hanging on a gallows, a bed and a chamber pot beside it—the home of Mr. and Mrs. Aubo.

Some of the audience booed, others shouted, “It’s as beautiful as Shakespeare.” Everyone boasted the next day that they had attended the show, even if they hadn’t been there. Bonnard called his dog “Obo,” Mallarmé called his pair of cats “Mr. and Mrs. Obo.” Alfred Jarry became a permanent and brilliant editor of “Le Revue Blanche,” and the lion’s share of his salary came from this position. When the magazine closed, Jarry was left poor and destitute, and four years later he died. Jarry tried to destroy himself with the same original fervor with which he attacked bourgeois society.

But in the meantime the journal continued to flourish and prosper. Theda wrote critical articles on art, Debussy on music, and Leon Blum, not yet prime minister, on literature, theater, and sports. The journal's regular staff included, among others, Tristan Bernard, Jules Renard, Octave Mirbeau, and Henri de Rainier.

Faced with the rising wave of anti-Semitism, and with no shortage of comments condemning Theda Nathanson and his brother, all members of the journal's editorial board rallied to unanimously defend Alfred Dreyfus. Except for Henri Gauthier-Willer, Colette's new husband, who signed his writings with the pseudonym "Willy."

When Helz refused to sign the protest document that the editors had written in 1898 against the arrest of Dreyfus, Pierre Weber, one of his shadow writers, declared: “This is the first time he has refused to sign a text that is not his.” It was already famous that Willy’s name was emblazoned on articles and novels written by a whole team of shadow writers at his disposal, including, of course, his then wife, Colette.

The Dreyfus Affair sharpened Theda Nathanson's desire to leave the cultural sphere in favor of the socio-political sphere, to fight anti-Semitism and act for the working class. Her mission mocked the wave of humanitarianism that swept through Theda, Zola, Leon Blum and the others who spoke passionately about distributing free bread to the poor while collectively devouring champagne and kangaroo meat in their luxurious guest rooms.

“Le Revue Blanche” lost its success. His support for Alfred Dreyfus was no stranger to decline. Thede also realized that he would not be a great writer himself and was tired of doing things for other writers. The magazine weighed heavily on the family budget until it brought Thede and his brother into real financial distress. Thede’s initiatives, a light rail in Toulon, a hydroelectric plant in Cannes, came to nothing. Thede did not excel in business. Where would the money come from?

From a surprising source. Theda, fed up with the magazine and simultaneously tired of her mission after fourteen years of marriage, pushed her into the arms of a multimillionaire newspaper magnate who promised to solve his financial problem if he would give him his wife. Unworthy, extremely outrageous, but that was exactly what happened before the mocking eyes of Parisian high society.

This concludes Part I of the article. In Part II, Madame Edwards Gets Divorced , we read about Missia's second marriage and divorce, which paved the way for her meeting the Spanish painter José Sert, whom she would marry for the third time, and the Russian ballet producer Sergei Diaghilev, whose enterprise she would support to the end.

This article is the first in a series of four articles about Misia Sert.

To read Part II, click on the link above, in the previous paragraph.

To return to the introduction and read all the articles, click on this link.

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