Second marriage to Alfred Edwards, 1905-1909
Alfred Edwards, son of the English physician to King Fuad of Egypt, inherited a considerable inheritance from his father. Edwards, vulgar, scheming, swindler, womanizer, violent, but gifted in journalism and finance, increased his fortune immeasurably. He started as a columnist for Le Figaro, rose to prominence, bought the morning newspaper Le Matin, brought its circulation to a European peak and sold it eleven years later, in 1895.
Edwards continued to do various and varied businesses, including the purchase of “Le Théâtre de Paris”, literally, “The Theatre of Paris ”, at 15 rue Blanche, in the 9th arrondissement and the purchase of the casino next door. He dabbled in writing comedies and operettas and putting them on stage and was part of the Parisian celebrity circle of those years.
Edwards was already married, for the third time, but that didn't stop him from courting Missia. She, twenty-eight years old, was at the height of her glory, blooming more than ever. Edwards met her at the theater and fell in love at first sight. Missia became his lifelong obsession and Edwards marked her as a target for conquest. What Edwards wants, Edwards gets.
Edwards’ wife at the time, Jeanne Charcot, sister of the explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot (children of the famous physician, neurologist and psychiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot), implored Missia to accept her husband’s advances in order to save her marriage. “If you don’t agree to him, he will divorce me and marry you, he threatens! You must save my marriage and become his mistress.” What twisted calculations! Missia was sometimes manipulative, cynical or even vulgar, but she did not reach the heights that characterized Edwards’ associates.
Jean Charcot-Edwards, however, spoke in all seriousness but erred in her judgment. Missia became Edwards' mistress but did not save the marriage of his legal wife, Jeanne. Edwards obtained his divorce from Jeanne and Missia's divorce from Mathade. His money and cunning opened doors for him. Edwards set himself the goal of marrying Missia and so he did.
To achieve this goal, Edwards hatched an elaborate plot. In the first stage, he convinced Theda Nathanson to go to the city of Koloshvar in Hungary to manage coal mines there. Theda was sure that this would make him rich, but Misia, more astute this time, saw the trap.
Edwards planned to lure Theda away from his wife with false promises of profits. Theda, who already saw himself as a builder of modern miners' housing, a paternalistic patron, fell for the trap and lost all his money. Theda was not the only one to be fooled. His brother Fred, Missia's brother, Sipa, and other associates all believed Edwards, invested considerable sums in the mines, and lost all their investments.
Theda and Misia were not innocent, but Edwards outwitted them. Slowly and stubbornly he continued to weave the webs in which the couple were trapped. There is no doubt that this time they were both victims of his cunning. Theda spent many months in Hungary and Misia, in a desperate attempt to save her marriage, decided to join him. She boarded the Orient Express, but before reaching Vienna, Edwards knocked on the door of her compartment. The terrified Misia got off the train and followed him as if hypnotized.
“If you marry me, I will save Theda, who has failed in managing the mines, from bankruptcy. I have a castle, I have a yacht, I will cover you with furs and diamonds. You deserve a better life than the one you lived with Theda and I will give it to you. With me you will be happier than you have ever been, I will fulfill all your wishes.” These were the arguments that Edwards had prepared ahead of time and Misia finally surrendered to him.
Wealth and power seduced and charmed her, but the passion that burned in Edwards' eyes also tipped the scales in his favor. Theda was weak, weak, and defeated, while Edwards was powerful and influential, authoritative, and full of lust. Slowly, Edwards moved Missia from a feeling of repulsion to a feeling of attraction, with his courtship, his pursuits, his gifts.
All of Paris was talking about Missia, Theda, and Edwards, the three celebrities whose presence at a worthy cultural event was essential and who were now entangled in intricate relationships. Missia did not attach much importance to gossip. Her decisions were not based on considerations of what people would say.
After five years of on and off (it was still hard to say goodbye to Theda), Missia agreed to marry the successful multi-millionaire. She married Theda so that she would have a father to protect her, and now he has become a little child who needs her protection as a mother. A better future awaits her when she becomes the wife of one of the richest men in Paris.
Really? A nostalgic sorrow gnawed at her as she thought of the happy days in the paradise of country houses when she played the piano with Stéphane Mallarmé, when Toulouse-Lautrec played as a child with his pendants. How she mourned for her two dear and beloved friends who had been part of her previous, not so distant life. Mallarmé died in 1898 and Lautrec in 1901. An era in her life had ended, a new era would begin. Madame Nathanson would become Madame Edwards in 1905.
Was she about to make a mistake? Doubt gnawed at her. But Alfred spoiled her with expensive gifts, dressed her in finery, wore her in suits, and built her a houseboat in Amsterdam called “L’aimée,” literally, “the beloved.” The ship’s name included the initials of her own name, M for Missia and E for Edwards.
Missia liked to sleep there for weeks on end, even when she docked on the banks of the Seine, even though she had a luxurious apartment at 244 rue de Rivoli, overlooking the Tuileries Garden, which her husband had purchased, as well as a suite on the ground floor of the Hôtel du Rhin at 4 Place Vendôme.
The ship, forty meters long, included a dining room and a living room surrounded by sliding windows, decorated with antique furniture, centered by Missia's grand piano. Seven luxurious cabins with long windows that descended to the waterline. Bathrooms lined with mirrors and white lacquered panels. The deck was covered with a white and pink canvas tent with wicker furniture and huge geranium pots, in the style of a summer terrace. A captain and five meticulously dressed sailors took care of the operation of the ship and the comfort of its passengers.
A pleasure cruise to Normandy with Edwards' friends and a longer and more distant pleasure cruise on the Rhine with Bonnard and another painter named Pierre Laprade, Sipa and Ida Godewsky, Maurice Ravel. With Missia's intervention, Edwards' newspaper published the story of Ravel's exclusion from the Rome Prize because he was too revolutionary for the conservative judges.
Other newspapers followed suit in defense of the young composer, the most talented of his generation. Missia obtained the resignation of the director of the conservatory and the appointment of Gabriel Faure in his place. A new era opened thanks to the efforts of someone who had been a great cultural patron and had not yet said her last word. Far from it.
Missy had everything a woman could wish for, but one Sunday morning, as she rocked comfortably on the rocking chair at the front of the yacht's deck and watched the sun's rays soften the waters of the Seine, she thought to herself sadly: "Mon dia, mon dia, will my life always be so miserable and so bland?"
No, don't say "rich people's troubles." Her mission was not limited to wealth alone. The destiny of this special woman, the unit of virtue, was to give birth to the creativity of geniuses, to enable them to produce masterpieces through material means and encouragement and reinforcement. To create for them the appropriate conditions for their development, to free them from the shackles of representatives of conservatism and stifling academism, to grant them the freedom to turn to revolutionary paths that would advance culture in its various branches, painting, literature, theater, decoration, fashion, music, dance.
As long as she did not devote herself to her life's work, she felt unsatisfied and helpless. Misia knew that she was talented as a pianist but not a genius, so she did not listen to Gabriel Faure's advice and did not develop a personal career. She knew how to recognize genius in painters like Renoir, Bonnard, Viarre, and Luton, in musicians like Stravinsky, Ravel, and Satie, and in the ballet producer Sergei Diaghilev, who saw her as his twin.
Meanwhile, Missia cared for the aging Renoir, in a wheelchair, who came every day to paint her portraits. One of them is in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Edwards, who was as interested in painting as Renoir was in finance, nevertheless became attached to the frail painter in his later years and carried him up the steps of the opera to his cell so that he could watch the performances. Because of her husband's burning jealousy and because of her modesty, Missia refused to expose her magnificent breasts to the pleading painter, a refusal she would regret when she herself was an old woman. Renoir wrote her love letters during this period of his life, which unfortunately have disappeared.
Edwards' new obsession: Lentlem
On December 14, 1906, the theater that Edwards had purchased on the Rue Blanche in the 9th arrondissement was inaugurated with great pomp and ceremony under the name “Le Théâtre Réjane.” Edwards’ renovations left the audience, statesmen such as Georges Clemenceau and Aristide Briand, and the rest of Paris’s gentry, artistic and intellectual elite, speechless. A dazzling chandelier of one hundred and twenty bulbs illuminated supremely comfortable white and yellow brocade seats, a cloakroom with 18th-century cabinets, and a superbly elegant bar and smoking room.
The actress Rejane agreed to manage it for the next few years and on opening night appeared in the lead role in a bittersweet melodrama with two supporting actresses. One of them was Geneviève Lantelme, Lantelme for short, a devastating beauty, gifted at acting and loving (men and women), a former courtesan.
When the green-gray curtain, embroidered with cherubs picking clusters of grapes, came down at the end of the play, Edwards was left under the strong impression made on him by the young actress. Lantelm had cast a spell on him.
The fifty-year-old Edwards fell hopelessly in love, with the obsessiveness that characterized him. The previous spring, he had already sent the actress a bouquet of roses after being thrilled by her debut on stage. But the day after the performance at the “Theater Rejane,” the bouquet of roses he sent her was bound in a gold bracelet. And so every day he brought the adored actress a bouquet of flowers and an expensive piece of jewelry. A promise to write a play for her in which she would play the lead role and which would be staged under the auspices of Rejane was not long in coming.
She agreed to be his mistress, without giving up her lover, the actor Paul Ardot. Edwards housed her in a Hôtel Particular, a modest house filled with 18th-century furniture, at 29 rue Fortuny, near Parc Monceau (the house appears on the Secrets of the Courtesan Quarter itinerary ).
Reminds me of something and someone? Missia's frivolous father, Cyprian Godevsky, who also lived in a modest house near Parc Monceau, was probably no stranger to the vicissitudes of his daughter's sentimental life. Missia fell in love with the men who were in his shoes.
Missia was consumed with jealousy, and her jealousy took on the appearance of love. Edwards, who had worshipped her as a goddess, had turned his adoration to another, younger woman. Fifteen years older than her rival, Missia tried to imitate Lentlem's dress, hairstyles, jeweled crowns, and feathered hats, but in vain. Edwards paid no attention to her efforts.
The episode was not ignored, however, by Marcel Proust, who used it to describe how Gilberte imitated the actress Rachel in her dresses and hair style in order to win back the love of Robert Saint-Louis. Missia was the inspiration for two other characters in Proust's work – Madame Verdourne and Princess Yubeltaif.
What did Missia not try to do to keep Lentalem away, who had become, thanks to Edwards' intervention, a famous actress. The betrayed woman even went to the actress's house on Via Fortuny, where Lentalem informed her that she was ready to leave Edwards... in exchange for her own favors, Missia's. The latter, who was not indifferent to Lentalem's charms, preferred, however, to abandon the campaign.
Edwards was jealous of Lentlem, not without reason. One day he followed her to the Patou fashion house. Lentlem was trying on a chinchilla coat and Edwards snuck into the fitting room to see if she had met up there, as was the custom of secret couples, with some lover. This time Lentlem was naked.
Seeing her eternal guard dog, she began to scream and curse, snatching scissors from the seamstress's hand, brandishing them menacingly until her fury cut her to shreds. Edwards' jealousy was stronger than his fear. He paid for the coat and waited stubbornly to make sure no young lover was hiding behind the scenes.
Edwards continued to eat lunch with Missia, but he spent his nights with Lentel. Missia fled to Normandy to escape the awkward situation that had been straining her nerves. In Normandy, she met her good friends, Rejane, Tristan Bernard, Viard, Lucien Guitry, and her son Sacha.
When she entered Le Grand Hôtel de Cabourg , literally, “The Grand Hotel of Cavour,” she saw Marcel Proust in the dining room. When she turned her head, she saw Jean-Baptiste Charcot, Edwards’ former brother-in-law, the brother of Jeanne Charcot-Edwards, the woman Alfred had divorced to marry her, Missia.
When she turned her head again, she saw Edwards sweetening a secret with Lentelm. When she turned her head again, she saw Theda Nathanson at the other end of the long, narrow dining room, waving happily at her. Missia burst into uncontrollable laughter.
The bitter truth was that Missia was on the verge of a breakdown. Edwards swore to her that he still loved her, that she was the angel while Lentlem was the devil. Give me time and I will end the affair. But his promises did not stand the test of reality. Missia felt deeply humiliated when Edwards informed her in 1908 that he had decided to move in with Lentlem.
The feeling of humiliation was even more intense when Edwards staged a play he had written about his victory over Theda Nathanson, “Par Ricochet.” What Missia experienced as a tragic experience, the painful separation from Theda, Edwards cynically and coolly reduced to the level of an entertaining comedy designed to highlight the abilities of his new lover, Lentlem. The main role, the character of Missia, the rejected woman, was given to Lentlem, the beautiful mistress!
It is worth noting here that in that terrible year, 1908, Theda Nathanson himself staged for Misia, a daring play, “The Foyer,” which he wrote in collaboration with Octave Mirbeau about the same triangle, Theda-Misia-Edwards, plus a young lover of Misia, a figment of his imagination.
It was in the theater. In reality, Missia did not have many lovers and, apart from her three husbands, she briefly socialized, after separating from Edwards, with two playwrights, Romain Coolus and Henri Bernstein, just to cheer herself up a little and regain the self-confidence she had lost during the bad years between 1906 and 1909. Missia was thirty-six, consumed by regrets and heartbroken, lonely.
Four years after her marriage to Alfred Edwards, on February 29, 1909, Missia officially divorced again. Five months later, on July 5, 1909, the newly divorced man married Lentelm. Two years later, Missia was horrified to read in the media that on July 25, 1911, the twenty-eight-year-old Lentelm had drowned during a pleasure cruise in Germany on the “Lema,” the ship built for Missia and which she had not boarded for years. Lentelm’s body was pulled from the Rhine waters lifeless. Accident? Suicide? Murder? All of Paris was abuzz.
The police investigation ruled the cause of death an accident, but two newspapers published articles saying that Edwards had murdered his wife because she was preparing to leave him. According to the same sources, a handwritten postcard was found in Lentlem's cell, addressed to her on-duty lover, the actor André Brulé, in which she informed him that Edwards belonged to the past and that she was preparing to divorce. The same André Brulé, ironically, played the role of Missia's (fictional) young lover in the play written by Theda Nathanson and Octave Mirbeau.
The river yacht, “Lemma”, 1900. Photo source: Wikimedia
Edwards sued the newspapers for libel and won. The fifty-five-year-old widower sold his house and ship to live in a modest ground-floor apartment, but he continued to socialize with beautiful actresses and singers. Two years later, on March 10, 1914, at the age of fifty-seven, he died of influenza.
The meeting with José Sert
Missia received a royal check every month from Edwards, but what role would she play in the future? And could she live alone? She felt inferior as an abandoned woman, but on the other hand she felt relieved as a liberated woman and therefore available for the next chapter in her life.
About a year before her official divorce from Edwards, she met through the painter Jean-Louis Forain with his colleague José Sert. Sert arrived in Paris from Barcelona in 1899 and settled in eye-popping luxury in the magnificent studio where Horace Vernet had previously worked, at 19 rue Barbet de Jouy, in the elegant 7th arrondissement, near the Invalides.
Passionate and loud, his grandiose views on life and art, his personal charm, his family fortune and his passionate passion for women paved his way into the heart of Parisian life. His extravagant dress, sombrero and cape and his penchant for alcohol, cocaine and morphine completed his image as a quintessential artist who would later be known as the “Tiepolo of the Ritz”. His huge works, such as theatrical sets, were inspired by Tintoretto, Goya and Lascaux.
Like Misia's father, the sculptor Cyprian Godewski, who was sought after, successful and famous during his lifetime but forgotten after his death, so was the painter José Sert. Who knows José Sert today? During his lifetime, however, Sert mostly received commissions. Wasn't Misia so attracted to him because of his resemblance to his father, also in personality? Like Cyprian, who died, by the way, at the age of 74 when Misia's divorce from Edwards became official, so was José, like him, an accepted artist, trendy, a man of high society, an extreme egoist, a lover of wealth and luxury, a womanizer, authoritarian and tyrannical.
And in the meantime, a first meeting. With hand gestures and thumbs raised, passionately, José told Missy fascinating stories and Jean-Louis Foran, who felt himself superfluous, slipped away without a trace. José Sert restored Missy's joy of life and lust for activity. In the future, she would say that he was the man of her life, that she had loved him for thirty years (thanks, Freud, for the explanation).
That same evening, José detailed her body and thanks to him, and only thanks to him, she knew for the first time what physical pleasure was. The next day they traveled to Rome and he served as her guide to understanding the art and architecture of the Eternal City. After recovering, they immediately went to see the opera “Boris Godunov” by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, the first time it was performed outside of Russia. It was on May 19, 1908 at the Paris Opera , in Rimsky-Korsakov’s version, starring Fyodor Chaliapin and produced by Sergei Diaghilev.
Another intense experience for Missia, who left her room and climbed to the upper platform to watch the spectacle alone. Sitting on the steps, undisturbed, she focused mesmerized on the wonders of the stage. The opera was performed seven times over five weeks, and Missia went to all the performances, bought all the tickets that were not bought (how to endure the sight of the empty seats) and distributed them to her friends (how to let them miss out on the experience).
The meeting with Sergei Diaghilev
While she was sitting in a restaurant after one of her performances with José, a refined young man suddenly entered, a strand of white hair like a swan's feather shining in his black hair, on the right side, fastening the black pearl brooch to his tie in his ring-laden hand. Sergei Diaghilev. José, who knew him from an exhibition of Russian portraits that Sergei had organized in Paris the previous year, invited him to dine with them.
Diaghilev set himself the goal of importing Russian culture to Paris. First painting – he organized exhibitions, then music – he organized concerts, and now opera. The path to ballet, which combined all these arts and more, is becoming clear. Meanwhile, Misia, a Slav like him, sits with him and José and passionately praises the national opera “Godunov” that he produced in the heart of Paris, the music, the scenery, the scenery! Diaghilev was captivated. At five in the morning when they parted, they agreed to meet the next day.
Misya could have been Sergei's twin. Both were born in March 1872 in Russia, both grew up orphaned by a mother with a neglectful father and a stepmother, in a fine musical atmosphere, both thought of becoming musicians but later realized that they were not born to be artists themselves but rather the birth parents and patrons of artists.
Both were refined and elegant in their dress, despised conventions (Sergey never hid his homosexuality, Misia was Edwards' open lover even when she was officially married to Nathanson and Sert's open lover even when she was officially married to Edwards), did not adhere to high morality in their relationships with people and did not shy away from deception.
Both had a fine taste that in Sergei reached the level of artistic creativity. Both had a Slavic soul made of contrasts, cynicism and tenderness, a tendency to enthusiasm and a tendency to boredom, arrogance and modesty. Sergei said that Misya was the only woman in the world he could marry… Misya was, without a doubt, his best friend.
Sergei had no money, Missy did. From now on, she no longer wondered about the futility of her life, whose purpose had become clear: to help the two men most important to her – José Serret and Sergei Diaghilev. The latter spared no effort to recruit more and more wealthy, well-connected people, writers and artists to the success of his enterprise, members of the Rothschild family, members of the Efrossy family, Jean Cocteau, the poet Anna de Noailles, the music critic Robert Brussel and others.
Missia was, of course, among those invited to the rehearsal of the future show, but unlike Jean Cocteau and Anne de Noy, who burst into enthusiastic shouts and were ignored without consideration, she knew how to maintain the necessary calm. Jean Cocteau flirted with Nijinsky to the displeasure of Diaghilev and Robert Brussels flirted with Tamara Krasbina to the displeasure of choreographer Mikhail Fokin, who chased the visitor away.
On May 19, 1909, the Ballets Russes, which Diaghilev had founded, made its debut in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet, which had been completely renovated at Diaghilev's initiative. No one expected the resounding success. The Polovtsian Dances from Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor swept away the Parisian audience, who discovered the exotic and wild legends of Russia, who held their breath at the spectacular performances of the dancers, the richness of the costumes and the scenery. As soon as the curtain fell on the stage, hundreds of spectators rushed to see their new idols, Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Krasbina, up close.
The show that followed, “Cleopatra,” choreographed by Mikhail Fokin, in which he also danced with Ida Rubinstein and Anna Pavlova, was no less exciting. The sets and costumes by Leon Bakst contributed to its success.
In the gardens of the home of Maurice Ephrussi and his wife Beatrice de Rothschild, Tamara Krasbina danced, by the light of glowing trees, to the delight of a privileged audience, duchesses and countesses, models for Marcel Proust's future characters. In the salons of high society, in the elegant cafes after the performances, Proust sat, opened his eyes, sharpened his ears, and took notes.
What did Misia do for Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet?
Diaghilev was neither a writer, nor a painter, nor a composer, nor a singer, nor a musician, nor a choreographer, nor a dancer, but he was endowed with a genius sense of smell to combine all these fields, in which he had a deep understanding, to create a total experience. The admiration in Paris for the ballet performances he organized was so great that Diaghilev cultivated programs without paying attention to the financial debts that had accumulated.
In his intrigues and schemes as a reckless and tactless lone wolf, he clashed with Gabriel Astruc, the important and necessary administrator, and with other stakeholders. Diaghilev's method aroused the hostility of the establishment, and until Tsar Nicholas II, Astruc arrived to shame the smell of his disgusting partner. Without Astruc, Diaghilev was blocked, at a dead end.
Here Misia again entered the picture to rescue him, she wrote letters, made connections and her efforts bore fruit. While the Paris Opera management was hostile and Moscow was no less, Misia managed to turn the tables. With the help of her partner and other privileged women from the compass (who entered directly, excuse me, indirectly, into Proust's novel) she organized a reconciliation meeting between Astroc and Diaghilev in the calming presence of her partner José Sert and the music critic Robert Brussell. After months of quarrels, the way was finally paved, Diaghilev's dreams began to come true.
The ballet season of 1910 and 1911 was a great success. Kings and princes, aristocrats and dignitaries, diplomats and ambassadors, dignitaries of all kinds, writers and artists flocked from Paris and abroad and applauded enthusiastically. Ravel, Debussy; Proust, Gide, Claudel, Henry James, Joseph Conrad; Rodin, Rejan, Lentlem, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt.
The French audience, however, who knew Orientalism through Delacroix, Moreau, Flaubert, Loti, Pierre Louis and others, had never seen such an orgy of dances with perfect technique, a romantic dream, burning eroticism, exotic cruelty, a stylized expression of passions to the sounds of new music. Unknown and distant regions connected with familiar, nearby regions to vibrate and amaze. A new and revolutionary page was opened in the history of dance. Thank you too, Missia!
In the third season, which opened in 1911, Diaghilev hoped to reach further heights. The lights were out, the performance of “Petrushka” was finally about to begin after the last scene was completed at the last minute, but twenty minutes passed without anything happening. The audience showed signs of irritation that turned into real protests when Diaghilev rushed to Missia’s seat and whispered in her ear that the costume designer was threatening to leave with his creations if he was not paid on the spot.
There were times when Missia's car driver would wait for her outside the opera house. Within ten minutes Missia would return with the necessary four thousand francs. The curtain rose, phew! Missia became Diaghilev's deputy and advisor, performing alongside him the roles she had once played alongside Theda Nathanson.
She quickly learned his admirable method of dealing with the court of laborers around him, those loved and those hated. She mediated between him and the rest of the workers on the condition that she appreciated their talent, listened to their arguments, and often paid from her own pocket.
With patience and kindness, she supported the Russian artists who came to a foreign city, Paris, serving as their confidant, easing difficulties, resolving complications. Her subtlety and shrewdness, her ability to immediately and unerringly identify avant-garde masterpieces, earned her a respected status among the artists who considered her one of their own.
From the beginning, Misia tried to interest Diaghilev in French composers, Debussy, Ravel, Cocteau, and now, in 1912, she reaped the rewards when she produced three French dance works:
1. “The Blue God” (Le Dieu bleu), by composer Reynaldo Hahn, partner of Proust, libretto by Jean Cocteau and Federico de Madrazo y Ochoa, choreography by Fokine.
2. “Daphnis et Chloé,” by composer Maurice Ravel, choreography again by Fokine.
3. “The Afternoon of a Faun” (L'Après-midi d'un faune), by composer Debussy, based on a poem by Mallarmé, choreographed and performed by Nijinsky.
Missia became a first-rate cultural activist who helped Sergei Diaghilev bring Russian culture to France and work to bring the two countries closer together. Not to mention her contribution to Diaghilev's enterprise, which left its mark forever on the history of dance. And it is impossible to talk about Missia without talking about the content she provided, not against her will but this time without effort, to another huge cultural icon, Marcel Proust.
Missia and her friends forever in the novel “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust
French princesses, marquises, duchesses and countesses, who were aware that Missia was Diaghilev's best friend, sought her closeness. Missia did not say no, especially since some of them helped her support her protégé. Not only that, Missia enjoyed being the center of attention. Her snobbery was expressed in the fact that she only socialized with those who pleased her, interested her and amused her.
A focal point around which the ladies of high society gathered, it is no wonder that Proust followed Missia and did not miss a word of hers for the title of his future philosophical novel that would also be a social snapshot of snobbery in all its subtle shades. “Aren’t you a bit of a snob?” Missia asked Marcel while she was very pleased with her rise in the ranks, just like him.
Missia was the model for Princess Yourbeletieff in Proust’s work. But while Princess Yourbeletieff was entirely Missia, her friend Madame Verdourne was modeled after Missia and other women. The two friends, Princess Yourbeletieff and Madame Verdourne, work together, in Proust’s novel, to promote the “Ballets Russes” which, according to Proust, revolutionized dance, as the Impressionists did painting.
Proust praises the evenings at Madame Verdourne’s house, assisted by the captivating Princess Yorbelteif, where the members of the troupe and all those associated with it, composers, designers, ate at her table after one or another performance, “Prince Igor,” “Les Sylphides,” or “Scheherazade.” There were those from high society who did not hesitate, despite their status, to join in on these delightful evenings in order to see up close the artists who breathed new life into the traditional French ballet that was expected.
This concludes Part II of the article. In Part III, Leading and Supporting, Supporting and Leading , we read about Missia's growing support for the legendary ballet producer Diaghilev, marvel at her fortitude during World War I, celebrate her marriage to José Sartre, and look at her friendship with Chanel.
This article is the second in a series of four articles about Misia Sert.
To read Part 3, click on the link above, in the previous paragraph.
To return to the introduction and read all the articles, click on this link.
More on the subject
Ruthi Shimoni
What a post!!!
What a story in the sequel!!!
How did such a cardinal figure in culture and art escape the spotlight on her...
Thank you Orna Lieberman
Thanks to you, we are exposed to a fascinating story – much more than any telenovela (in my opinion).
And your style, and your flirtation with the Hebrew language...
What a pleasure!!!