Having Fun With The 19th Century French Aristocracy

It is a rare event that an impeccably researched historical tome is also a juicy and highly readable account of cultural reportage. For all the scintillating social detail, “Proust’s Duchess” is, above all, a meaningful investigation of socio-historical and literary criticism.  It is also a fun, punchy and relatively quick read at 570 pages. 

Caroline Weber, a resident of Washington, Conn., is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. A student of 18th century French literature, fashion and culture, Weber has also taught at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. She has two other titles concerning the French Revolution to her credit, “Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution” (2008), and “Terror and its Discontents: Suspect Words in Revolutionary France” (2003).

In exploration of the identity of the muse who inspired Marcel Proust’s Duchesse de Guermantes in the seminal “In Search of Lost Time” (1913), the author has created a composite biography of three Parisian Belle Èpoque society ladies: Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, Vicomtesse Greffulhe. Apart from Weber’s painstaking, loving unearthing of these intriguing, charismatic femmes du monde, we likely would not know them individually; their composite identity is folded seamlessly into Proust’s ode to the epitome of beauty, fashion, and stylish expression that is the iconic and fictional Oriane, Duchesse de Guermantes. In “In Search of Lost Time,” the Duchesse is the ultimate “It Girl” of that time’s celebrity world and of-the-moment international high society: unattainably gorgeous, impeccably air-brushed, breathlessly tuned in; lovely, perfect, remote, in a word, superhuman.

Weber illustrates for us, in words and images, the ultra luxurious, and somewhat desperate, world in which these aristocratic doyennes lived. The fact that most society ladies of the epoch (1880s and 90s Belle Monde) changed their ensembles seven to eight times a day in order to maximize the impact of their style and carriage is astonishing, even by today’s standards of excess. Of Oriane, the Duchesse, Proust writes, “Each of her dresses seemed like … the projection of a particular aspect of her soul.” To be sure, this description is an example of seemingly slavish deification, but it is also a loving and indulgent expression of poetic ideal. Weber cleverly understands and develops Proust’s imaginative idealization and delves into the where, why and how so that we can better flesh out the depth and complexity of their characters. Why were they so interesting and significant, despite the very frenzied social swirl they inhabited, the largely unhappy and desultory lives they lead, and the very superficial ideals of the society they headlined? 

Weber does an excellent job of developing and explaining the color, the texture and the material of this intriguing world, which at once seems so remote to us, and also so very close. We might at first believe that French aristocratic fin-de-siècle excess is alien and puzzling, but then after consideration we realize just how closely we have doubled back on certain historic ideals, redefined and reinterpreted. As the time honored French expression goes, “… plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

“Proust’s Duchess” is published by Knopf.