Fifty-year-old Jose falls in love with a Georgian beauty
Twenty years old
Misia and Serge were both over fifty and had lost their youthful enthusiasm, though not their ability to recognize talent. In 1924, the dancer and choreographer Georges Balanchine fled the Soviet Union with his wife Tamara and other friends while on tour in Germany.
Balanchine was summoned to an audition at Misia's apartment and, before Diaghilev's eyes, performed a daring exotic dance with his dancers. Diaghilev and Misia were not mistaken in their assessment of the genius of the twenty-year-old Balanchine. Stravinsky asked Misia to introduce him to the star, and thus began the most celebrated collaboration in ballet history.
Serge Lippard, a slender dancer with Byzantine beauty, who had also fled the Bolshevik terror, immediately won Diaghilev’s heart, became his protégé and endeared himself to Missia, Chanel, and everyone around him. On an unforgettable evening at Chanel’s house, a dreamy man lay at the piano. Missia began playing the prelude to Claude Debussy’s “The Afternoon of a Faun,” and Serge sensually removed his jacket, got down from the piano, and immediately danced a personal version of Nijinsky’s choreography.
Another graceful animal creature stormed into Jojo's life, and hence inevitably into Missia's, in those days, in 1925. Roussadana Mdivani, known as Roussy, a nineteen-year-old Georgian beauty who had fled with her family to Paris because of the revolution, knocked on the door of the painter's new studio in Montparnasse.
Rusadna from Dnipro (Russian). Photo source: brbl-dl.library.yale.edu
Note: At this link , the Yale University Library website, you can see more rare photographs of Rossi, some of them with animals – a dog, a monkey – that she collected for her home.
Rossi, a budding sculptor, sought advice from Jojo while looking enviously at the spacious and elegant studio, spread over two floors. With gray-blond hair highlighted with golden streaks, slate eyes, tall and thin, she was also interested in renting a studio because hers was too small. “A studio that big for one person?” she asked with the angelic smile of a medieval sculptural work.
Rusadna Madibny (Russian), Aviation Award, bronze statue on wooden base, 117 cm, 1925. Photo source: Sotheby's
Jojo generously made room for her and soon the art lessons turned into lessons in love. The aging Jojo called the fantasy girl, who pretended to be a princess, the daughter of a prince, while her father was a general, and this time it was not just an easy adventure. This is how Missia understood, who hurried to make an appointment with Rossi and fell, too, captive to her charm. The daughter she didn't have? An attraction that was more than just maternal? Since falling in love with Chanel, nothing like this had ever happened to her, Missia.
Missia invited Rossi to dinners, outings, events, all three of them. Jojo's love for the girl grew stronger. All of Paris was concerned about the complicated relationship that had developed between the three. Rossi brought a sweeping breeze of joy to the old couple's curtained apartment. Missia feared, despite everything, that José would leave her and marry Rossi, as he had written in a letter to his young lover that she had accidentally found in the pocket of his suit.
Rossi's family did not take kindly to her uncertain situation and sent her to the United States, to her brothers who had married American heiresses. Couldn't Rossi, the beautiful sculptor, accept work orders and at the same time hunt for a millionaire herself? José cried with longing and Misia closed herself off in silence. When Rossi returned after a year, relations between the three returned to normal.
Rossi was attacked by a persistent cough and high fever. Misia took her to a doctor in Bern, Switzerland. Each of them saw José as the man of her life and hoped that the other would give up. In the end, José decided to leave Misia and on December 28, 1927, he obtained a divorce through Rossi's sister's husband, who was a lawyer in The Hague, Netherlands. Misia and Rossi continued to support each other, and Misia even brought Rossi to Chanel to have her wedding dress made and, with José, chose the giant ruby that adorned the bride's neck.
The civil marriage ceremony of Rossi and José took place on 18 August 1928 in The Hague. Misia had hoped to entertain them as before but soon realised that she was unnecessary. Rossi and José's love became exclusive and Chanel, seeing Misia's plight, invited her to join her and her then-partner, the Duke of Westminster. While they were spending time on each other's yacht, in the summer of 1929, Misia received an urgent message from Diaghilev: "Ill. Come quickly. Serge".
The death of Diaghilev
But when the yacht dropped anchor in Venice, Misia and Coco rushed to Serge's bed in his hotel on the Lido. Boris Cousin, the secretary and poet, along with Serge Lippar, the dancer and choreographer, were already there. Tensions between the two would erupt after Serge's death in a real struggle.
Serge shivered despite the intense heat and his mouth was twisted in pain, but when he saw Missia, his eyes lit up like they always did when he met her. “Oh,” he whispered, “how happy I am, how beautiful white is on you, always wear white!” But later his eyes were closed tightly again and his spirit sank into hallucinations.
“How I loved “Tristan” and “The Pathetic,” most of all,” he said, “What, don’t you know? Go listen quickly and think of me, Missia!” Missia’s heart sank when she heard him speak of himself in the past tense. The dying man turned to her to declare that she was his best friend, his only true friend. And suddenly, in Russian: “I think I’m drunk.”
Missia was overcome with grief. Lippar told her about the last difficult weeks in which he had not left the dying man’s bed for a moment, listened to his words. Serge wandered through the labyrinths of his memories, his studies as a student, his journey on the Volga, his first performances abroad, his victories in Paris, sang a passage from Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” to postpone death. Lippar refused his request to change beds because he was afraid that the change would bring the end sooner and was shocked to see how Serge tried to crawl towards another bed.
Missia brought German doctors, hired a nurse to replace Lippar and Cousineau. On August 18, at dawn, Sergei Diaghilev's heart stopped beating. Missia took care of the funeral arrangements. Chanel, who had been told by Hoss that she should return to Venice, helped financially, not forgetting her duty to Missia, who nine years earlier had opened the gates of Diaghilev's magical circle to her.
A funeral gondola decorated with golden-winged angels sailed towards the island of the dead, San Michele. Diaghilev was buried in the small Orthodox cemetery there, and about forty years later, at his request, Igor Stravinsky was buried next to him. An entire era ended in the history of ballet and in Missia's life, more than twenty years of soulful friendship had bound her to Serge Diaghilev.
Diaghilev used dance, with the help of innovative choreography and combinations of dancers, to discover the subconscious, like his contemporary Freud who explored that unknown realm with the help of dreams and colloquialisms. Without Missia, his soulmate, without her friendly, professional and financial support, he would not have soared.
Serge Diaghilev, 1910. Photo source: Wikimedia
Life goes on without Jose.
When Missia returned to Paris, she was dealt another severe blow. The Archbishop of Paris summoned her to a meeting with four red-robed bishops to question her about her infertility. José Sert used this as a reason to request the annulment of their religious marriage.
Misia couldn't believe her ears. A whole speech about her internal organs, José revealed her most hidden intimacy to get what he wanted. She was sure that José would do nothing about it. Secretly, she believed that she would remain his wife from a religious point of view, that Rossi would one day disappear as she had come and she and José would return to their marriage that had never been annulled. Surprised and shocked, she burst into uncontrollable laughter and signed everything they asked of her.
Missia collapsed. Sailing to New York to help establish a fashion house at the request of designer Pira Benenson did not assuage her disappointment. José remained indifferent when she told him of her plan and did not ask her to give it up. In New York she heard the young pianist Eddy Duchin and invited him to the kennel to give her jazz lessons. Eddy admired the way she played Gershwin as Franz Liszt had admired her playing Beethoven. Missia remained Missia.
But the blows continued to strike. When she received the news, the following spring, of the marriage of José and Rossi in the Spanish Church of Paris, as if she were a number on a list, there was no longer any room for doubt. Her presence was no longer welcome. Those who had sworn to her that they would never leave her… A visit to the couple’s magnificent apartment at 252 Rue de Rivoli, where she gazed upon their huge bed, adorned with statues, sealed the coffin of her hopes.
After her separation from José, Misia settled in a comfortable apartment at 3 rue de Constantine near the Invalides , finding solace in social and cultural activities, going out, concerts, theater, and shows. She also continued to look for more work for José.
Not that Seret suffered from failure, quite the opposite. He earned more and more, a fortune, so that he was not ashamed to be in the company of Rossi's brothers, the money and gold chasers, who used the millions of their American wives to live princely lives. With the money he earned from decorating Rockefeller Center in New York, José purchased in 1931 a mansion near Barcelona, “Mas Juny,” with a series of clear-water coves, and furnished it with such bold simplicity that it was said to be the most beautiful seaside villa in Europe.
Misia went to plays but was not always satisfied in theaters. In 1933, Alfred Savoir, who had been a guest at her cultural salon for many years, wrote a play, “Maria,” inspired by the Misia-Rossi-José triangle. Misia left the theater in a rage halfway through the performance.
In 1940, Jean Cocteau's play, "Sacred Monsters" (Les Monstres sacrés), on the same subject, treated Missia with more affection and understanding. Both playwrights, however, reached the same correct conclusion regarding the prominent place that love occupied in the heroine's life. Missia gave everything.
In February 1933, Misia performed in two concerts with Marcelle Meyer to promote the talented pianist who had not yet broken through. In the first, in the ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel, the two played Chopin preludes and musettes. In the second, in the bar of the Hotel de Carillon, Serge Lippard danced to Debussy's "The Afternoon of a Faun."
The success was enormous and Missia, with the sensitivity of her playing, overshadowed Marcel, despite being less talented than her. Paris saluted the woman who had contributed to its glory, who had done more for others than she had done for herself. Missia was inundated with offers of further performances but refused. She had fulfilled her duty to Marcel and was not interested in anything more.
Missia's goal was to promote Marcel Mayer, not herself, and it was only for her sake that she bothered to perform. Marcel Mayer (1897-1958) became, indeed, a first-rate pianist in the period between the two world wars and even more so. Musicologist Marc Vignal wrote of her that she was one of the only pianists of her generation whose recordings are considered works in their own right.
Missia undoubtedly remembered another public concert she had given forty-one years earlier, in 1892, at the La Bodinière theater, 18 rue Saint Lazare. The young Missia was then playing waltzes by the composer and poet Maurice Rollinat, and even after this first concert she had no interest in continuing to perform as a professional pianist.
Chanel proved once again that she knows how to repay a favor. Missia took her, as you may recall, years ago to Venice as a companion, and now things have turned around. Chanel took Missia as a companion on her glittering trip to Hollywood, where she dressed the stars and starlets, at the request of Samuel Goldwyn, who paid her a million dollars for the assignment.
Rossi's death, a difficult time, José's death
Rossi's brother, Alexei, to whom she was very close, was killed in a scandalous car accident in Spain in 1935. Next to him was the wife of the German industrialist, Baron Heinrich Thyssen, with whom he had been having a secret love affair that was discovered for all to see. His body was brought to José's estate and Rossi was overcome with grief. Shortly afterwards, another of Rossi's brothers was killed when he fell from a horse while playing polo. Rossi coughed more and more, smoked more and more, and was diagnosed with an advanced stage of tuberculosis.
A Russian film star, a year before her death, in a Chanel evening gown. Photo: François Kollar, Photo source: Website of the Fashion Museum – Palais Galliera
In the evenings, Rossi would call Missia and ask her to come over. Missia would tell her stories all night, making sure she didn't set the sheets on fire with the cigarettes she chain-smoked. In the morning, Rossi would fall asleep and Missia would return home. Rossi died on December 16, 1938, at the age of thirty-two, and Missia mourned her even more than José. The year before, her beloved brother Sipa had died at the age of sixty-one.
The hope of renewing a relationship with the free José, who devoted a lot of time to her, sparkled in her eyes, but he flatly refused. Misia became a friend and, a year before his death, he proposed marriage to another woman in the hope that she would divorce her husband, the German ambassador to Spain. José openly went out with Baroness Storer to social events, asking everyone not to tell Misia, who knew, after all, about his new romantic relationship with the diplomat's wife.
Missia's eyesight had deteriorated greatly, a severe heart attack threatened her life. Missia had risen from a bed of paralysis, but her health remained weak. This was the condition of the sixty-six-year-old Missia when World War II broke out.
Misia and José were both anti-Nazis and watched the occupation of Paris with dismay. But José, under Franco's patronage, was appointed Spanish ambassador to the Vatican and cynically cultivated good relations with the occupier, which allowed him to live comfortably in the dying city and eat caviar while most of its inhabitants suffered from deprivation. His friends, led by Misia, also enjoyed good material conditions thanks to him.
And even more. Thanks to José's intervention, Colette's Jewish husband, who was released at the last minute, was saved from the clutches of the Nazis. Misia and José saved other people from being sent to the death camps. However, they were not always successful. When Misia received a desperate letter from Max Jacob, who was a very close friend of hers, she immediately asked José to intervene, but the urgent request for his release came too late. Max Jacob perished in Drancy before his planned deportation to Auschwitz.
On November 27, 1945, José Sert died suddenly, at the age of seventy, and was buried in the Vic Cathedral, which he had worked to decorate until the very end, his entire life. Misia, who was on her way to join him in Spain, found herself attending his funeral. “With his disappearance, I lost the taste for life,” she said.
Jacques-Émile Blanche, Portrait of José Sert, 1903. Image source: Wikimedia
José had left her the apartment at 252 Rue de Rivoli, with its expensive furniture and the wealth of charm it contained. One look was enough for her to understand that she would only have to sell a piece of furniture, an object or a picture if she needed money and thus be guaranteed against want for the rest of her life. José and Rossi had previously lived in this apartment. Misia had moved in, but she did not sleep in the couple's bed, but in a back room that she had decorated to her own taste.
the last years
Along with the apartment, Misia also inherited José's young secretary, Paul Ristelhueber, known as Boulos. Boulos admired her, kept her company, and wrote her memoirs, which were published two years after her death under the title “Misia by Misia” (Misia Sert, Misia par Misia, Gallimard, 1952).
Bolos inherited all of Misia's property, including the apartment where he lived until his death in 1972. Bolos' relationship with Misia was subject to criticism from the latter's circle of friends. Did Bolos exploit her? Isolated her? Harmed her? It's hard to say. Misia could not live alone and Bolos provided a constant presence.
At teatime, Missia's old friends came to visit her. Missia had grown old, had become very thin, had almost gone blind, and was consuming more and more morphine, which was initially supplied to her by Bolus, who was also a consumer. Missia became addicted and had a difficult experience when the police detained her for twenty-four hours in a filthy cell where she spent time with prostitutes and vagrants. High-ranking friends worked to get her released, but Missia was always afraid of being arrested again.
In 1947 she traveled to Venice, a city she had visited frequently, but for the last time. Fifty years earlier she had visited the city for the first time, with her first husband Theda Nathanson, and was thrilled beyond expectation. Eight days of ecstasy. Misia had no idea such beauty was possible.
In a photo by the famous fashion photographer Horst P. Horst, Misia, aged seventy-five, three years before her death, elegant and frail, with her dog, against the backdrop of the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, on that farewell visit to the city. Misia knew she would never return to the beloved city she knew so well.
In 1949, she lost her niece Mimi, Sifa's daughter, in a car accident. Their relationship was not always good, but it was another blow to Missia, which plunged her into increasing loneliness. Missia had previously criticized Mimi for her relationship with the journalist Pierre Brisson. This did not go unnoticed and she published a seminal novel called "The Ivy" (Pierre Brisson, Le Lierre, Gallimard, 1935)
In it, a couple named Jacques and Jacqueline play José and Misia. The woman suffocates her partner with an overly intense love that causes them to separate. The portrait of Misia, as drawn in the novel, is unflattering.
On the night of October 15, 1950, at the age of seventy-eight, Missia died in her bed. Chanel arrived and removed everyone present from the room. She then moved Missia's body to the four-poster bed of Serta, applied makeup, put on her jewelry, dressed her in white, and adorned her chest with a pink ribbon decorated with a rose. At that moment, friends entered and admired her beauty.
After a ceremony in the Polish church on rue Cambon, Missia was buried next to her niece Mimi, not far from Stéphane Mallarmé, in the cemetery at Samoreau, near their country houses in Valvins. Fifty years earlier, Missia had wept bitterly over the freshly laid grave of her good friend Stéphane Mallarmé. Every year, on October 15, an unknown person would place a rose on Missia's grave until the ceremony suddenly stopped.
Missia's memory is preserved, however, in articles, books, treatises, films, and exhibitions. From June to September 2012, an exhibition entitled "Missia, Queen of Paris" was held at the Musée d'Orsay, which brought together paintings, photographs, and letters that document the unique trajectory of this remarkable woman. A look at the exhibition page will take us back to the beginning of Missia's journey and soothe the sting of the finality of her death.
This concludes Part Four of the article.
This article is the fourth and final in a series of four articles about Misia Sert.
To return to the introduction and read all the articles, click on this link.
In the introduction you will also find the Missia route in Paris.
More on the subject
A beautiful and touching story that you wrote wonderfully.
Thank you very much, Pnina, for the moving response. Congratulations!
Frida Liberman
As always, the fourth episode is as fascinating as the previous ones and takes us to other worlds, especially to the special world of Messia Sart, whose part in Western culture is intertwined.
Throughout her life, her contribution to the world of art is immense.
Thank you Orna
Noa Mill
I enjoyed every word! Thank you!!!