Twilight of the Belle Epoque by Mary McAuliffe

Author:Mary McAuliffe [McAuliffe, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Between Heaven and Hell

(1911)

Early in the year, Proust wrote Lucien Daudet that he was living “suspended between caffeine, aspirin, asthma, angina pectoris, and in . . . six days out of seven,” between “life and death.” He continued to work on his book, but “God knows if I shall ever finish it.”1

In July, Alfred Edwards’s latest wife, twenty-four-year-old Geneviève Lantelme, drowned in the Rhine—after having fallen from Misia’s beloved yacht, the Aimée. Lantelme’s death was ruled accidental, but the yellow press screamed that Edwards had murdered her to buy his freedom. Edwards sued, and the trial went on for months before he was awarded damages of one franc.

Debussy, in the meantime, had spent months composing music for Gabriele d’Annunzio’s verse-play, The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. After working almost unceasingly on it from January until its premiere at the Théâtre du Châtelet in May, Debussy was exhausted. According to stories, Léon Bakst, who designed the sets, argued long and hard with him over the appearance of Paradise in Act 5. “You’ve been to Paradise then, have you?” Bakst demanded. To which Debussy replied, “Yes, but I never discuss it with strangers.”2

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