D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure de Sade de Chevigné, and Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus. Their personalities, backgrounds, and presence in the gratin of Paris of that time are portrayed in details as compelling as gossip, and as impressive as distinguished history. The author has a natural way of talking to you the reader. She ignores no truths no matter how revolting or slovenly they might be. And the wit and the melodrama is practically everywhere too. It’s like listening to a neighbor go into rich details about the lives of the couple next door who always keep their curtains drawn. Furthermore, the author is so personally
knowledgeable thanks to her unerring research of everything ever written down or painted about these lives, including thousands of personal letters (people made copies and saved them in those days in those hôtels particuliers). Women in those days, and even at that level of the social scale, had no rights. They had the rights of children. None. They were the Little Woman. There were talented ones who gained access via their skill or physical attributes. They could be alluring (to the “right” man) if they came from families of grand and/or ancient titles. But they were not free nor even considered worthy. They were there to produce an heir
(it was hoped). These three main characters in Caroline’s brilliant biography were some of the few exceptions. They found a way to put themselves “out there” to become salonnieres who entertained the swells and the world of authors and artists of prominence. They were, in essence, women on the road to liberation, another aspect of the feminist revolution that was just beginning in our modern culture. Their stories are told by this author who has the intimate touch of the personal in writing to her reader. She also has the knowledge of an expert, and the talent of a very good grade school teacher and grad-
uate school professor who can mesmerize her students with the story. I have been one of those students reading Proust’s Duchess and the experience is awesome. It will be a while before I’ve digested this extraordinary story of these three women who were Marcel Proust’s inspiration in creating his character of the Duchess de Guermantes in his immortal masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past). It is so involving that I am at times left thinking: this is genius. Where there was a will, there was a way, and it was theirs: the kind of women that men feel compelled to
A N N U A L LY I N G - I N L U N C H E O N F O R N E W YO R K - P R E S B Y T E R I A N ’ S W E I L L C O R N E L L M E D I C A L C E N T E R AT C I P R I A N I 4 2 N D
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