7. Ravel to Jean Marnold, 4 April 1916, in Ravel Reader, 162–63.
8. Samson Delpech quoted in Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 39. Delpech added that, while crouching in his trench, he “had to make a little hole in the ground with the front of my helmet to protect my head from splinters of every kind; so did my comrades” (Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 39–40.
9. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 38.
10. Kessler, 7 August 1915, in Journey to the Abyss, 692–93.
11. Ravel to the Committee of the National League for the Defense of French Music, 7 June 1916, in Ravel Reader, 169.
12. Ravel to Jean Marnold, 24 June 1916, in Ravel Reader, 173.
13. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:216.
14. Myers, Erik Satie, 32.
15. Cocteau in Myers, Erik Satie, 48.
16. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 146.
17. Gillmor, Erik Satie, 195.
18. Satie in Steegmuller, Cocteau, 147.
19. Cocteau in Klüver, Day with Picasso, 5.
20. Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 388.
21. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 149.
22. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 157.
23. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 159.
24. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 162.
25. Debussy to Robert Godet, 4 February 1916, in Debussy Letters, 314.
26. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 86–87.
27. Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic, 44.
28. Klüver, A Day with Picasso, 65. From Salmon’s column, “Nos Echos,” in the 16 July 1916 L’Intransigeant.
29. Afterward, with the exception of Paul Guillaume’s Picasso-Matisse exhibit in early 1918, where Abbé Mugnier would describe it as “undecipherable” (Journal, 7 February 1918, 329), Demoiselles disappeared from public view for many years. In 1924, Picasso sold it to the couturier Jacques Doucet, whose art collection (recently upended to focus on modern art) was far more impressive than Paul Poiret’s. After Doucet’s death, Demoiselles made its way to New York and to the Museum of Modern Art, where it has remained.
30. Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 172.
31. Jane Bathori quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 175. Barthori served as the wartime director of the Théâtre du Vieux-Coumbier, where she helped popularize the works of Satie and the Nouveaux Jeunes.
32. Kurth, Isadora, 352. Of this episode, Duncan simply says that “the audiences were cold, heavy, unappreciative” (My Life, 291).
33. Irma Duncan, Duncan Dancer, 163.
34. Kurth, Isadora, 359.
35. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 42.
36. Monet to Gustave Geffroy, 11 September 1916, in Monet by Himself, 250.
37. Wharton, A Backward Glance, 356.
38. Blaise Cendrars quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 96.
39. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 321.
40. Gottlieb, Sarah, 175.
41. Lysiane Sarah Bernhardt and Marion Dix, Sarah Bernhardt, My Grandmother, 222.
42. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 325.
43. Ravel to Madame Fernand Dreyfus, 29 September 1916, in Ravel Reader, 176.
44. Ravel to Jean Marnold, 7 October 1916, in Ravel Reader, 177–78n7.
45. Ravel to Jean Marnold, 24 July 1916, in Ravel Reader, 174.
46. See chapter 13.
47. Debussy to Robert Godet, 4 September 1916, in Debussy Letters, 318.
48. Debussy to Robert Godet, 4 February 1916, in Debussy Letters, 314. According to Roger Nichols, “when the doctors operated on 7 December [1915], it was clear to them that the cancer they found had gone too far to be cured. For the remaining two and a quarter years of his life Debussy used a colostomy” (Nichols, Life of Debussy, 156).
49. Debussy to Victor Segalen, 5 June 1916, in Debussy Letters, 315.
50. Debussy to Robert Godet, 4 September and 11 December 1916, in Debussy Letters, 317 and 320.
51. Butler, Rodin, 504.
52. Champigneulle, Rodin, 268.
53. Butler, Rodin, 507.
54. Voisin, Men, Women and 10,000 Kites, 191.
55. Credited to General Robert Nivelle, who took General Pétain’s place as commander of the French Second Army at Verdun when Pétain was promoted in May. Nivelle would later replace Joffre as commander-in-chief.
56. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 159.
57. Debussy to Emma, 24 December 1916, in Debussy Letters, 322.
19 Dark Days (1917)
Selected sources for this chapter: Debussy, Debussy Letters; Adam, Paris Sees It Through; Wharton, Letters of Edith Wharton; Butler, Rodin; Champigneulle, Rodin; Ravel, Ravel Reader; Orenstein, Ravel; Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic; Isadora Duncan, My Life; Kurth, Isadora; Journas, Alfred Dreyfus; Burns, Dreyfus; Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel; Williams, Last Great Frenchman; Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring; Stravinsky, Autobiography; Scheijen, Diaghilev; Chagall, My Life; Wullschläger, Chagall; Spurling, Matisse the Master; Reynolds, André Citroën; Picardie, Coco Chanel; Barillé, Coty; Sicard-Picchiottino, François Coty; Rhodes, Louis Renault; André Langevin, Paul Langevin, mon père; Walter, Radiation and Modern Life; Steegmuller, Cocteau; Myers, Erik Satie; Gillmor, Erik Satie; Orledge, Satie Remembered; Cossart, Food of Love; John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 (New York: Knopf, 2007); Gold and Fizdale, Misia; Ross, The Rest Is Noise; Lockspeiser, Debussy, vol. 2; Nichols, Life of Debussy; Carl B. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc (Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2001); Klüver, A Day with Picasso; Carter, Marcel Proust; Marcel Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 4, ed. Philip Kolb, trans. Joanna Kilmartin (London: HarperCollins, 2000); Albaret, Monsieur Proust; Mugnier, Journal; Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Bessy and Duca, Georges Méliès; Secrest, Modigliani; Flanner, Men and Monuments; Ambroise Vollard, Renoir: An Intimate Record, trans. Harold L. Van Doren and Randolf T. Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1925); Watson, Georges Clemenceau; Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic.
1. Debussy to Robert Godet, 7 May 1917, in Debussy Letters, 325.
2. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 89.
3. Wharton to Berenson, 4 February [1917], in Wharton, Letters of Edith Wharton, 389.
4. Ravel to Mme Dreyfus, 9 February 1917, in Ravel Reader, 180.
5. These included Jean Dreyfus, Madame Dreyfus’s son, in addition to Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, two brothers killed by the same shell.
6. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 299.
7. Mugnier, 29 November 1917, in Journal, 321.
8. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 94.
9. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 93.
10. Dreyfus to the Marquise Arconati-Visconti, 27 February 1917, in Journas, Alfred Dreyfus, 69.
11. Dreyfus, 15, 16, 17, and 18 April [1917], in Journas, Alfred Dreyfus, 77, 79.
12. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 50. Despite the punishment’s stipulation of “no writing materials,” de Gaulle evidently had access to the pen and paper with which he wrote his parents.
13. Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring, 275.
14. Stravinsky, Autobiography, 70.
15. Chagall, My Life, 136, 137.
16. Chagall, My Life, 137.
17. Spurling, Matisse the Master, 202.
18. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 99.
19. Chanel quoted in Picardie, Coco Chanel, 79.
20. Marie Curie’s ashes entered the Panthéon in 1995. She was the first woman to be included among the Panthéon’s luminaries on her own merits, although it took more than fifty years for this to happen (she died in 1934).
21. Gold and Fizdale, Misia, 195.
22. Amid his praise for Satie, Picasso, and Massine, Apollinaire failed to mention Cocteau’s role as originator of P
arade—an omission that seems to have been deliberate and was indicative of the lack of regard in which Cocteau still was widely held.
23. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 183.
24. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 83. The Abbé Mugnier slyly noted, though, that “Jean Cocteau is swollen with pride in imagining that [Parade] is the equivalent of the première of [Hugo’s] Hernani!” (Mugnier, 5 June 1917, Journal, 312).
25. Honegger letter quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 172.
26. Laloy quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 98–99.
27. See Orledge, Satie Remembered, 99 and 99n.
28. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, 55.
29. Klüver, A Day with Picasso, 80.
30. Myers, Erik Satie, 51.
31. Debussy to Gabriel Fauré, 29 April 1917, in Debussy Letters, 324.
32. Debussy to Robert Godet, 11 December 1916, in Debussy Letters, 321.
33. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 67.
34. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 335–37.
35. Carter, Marcel Proust, 629.
36. Proust to Abbé Mugnier, 14 February 1918, in Proust, Selected Letters, 4:22.
37. Mugnier, 12 January 1914, in Journal, 4:259.
38. Mugnier, 23 April 1917, in Journal, 309–10. See also 5 June 1917, 312–13.
39. Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret and the Martin Scorsese film Hugo are fictional stories based on Méliès’s life.
40. Vollard, Renoir, 51–52.
41. Adding to their friendship, both men had sons named Jean and Pierre who were serving in, or about to join, the army. Jean Renoir had fought in the infantry until wounded and then served as a reconnaissance pilot. Jean’s older brother, Pierre, “had his arm shattered by a bullet” and was invalided out of the army (Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father, 4). Matisse’s older son, Jean, was still operating as a airplane mechanic, and his younger son, Pierre, was scheduled in the autumn of 1918 to be posted to the front as a driver in an artillery regiment (Spurling, Matisse the Master, 214).
42. Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic, 59.
20 Finale (1918)
Selected sources for this chapter: Adam, Paris Sees It Through; Henry W. Miller, The Paris Gun: The Bombardment of Paris by the German Long Range Guns and the Great German Offensives of 1918 (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1930); Bernard and Dubief, Decline of the Third Republic; Watson, Georges Clemenceau; Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998); Nichols, Life of Debussy; Lockspeiser, Debussy, vol. 2; Debussy, Debussy Letters; Potter, Nadia and Lili Boulanger; Rosenstiel, Life and Works of Lili Boulanger; Orledge, Satie Remembered; Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Albaret, Monsieur Proust; Proust, Selected Letters, vol. 4; Steegmuller, Cocteau; Gillmor, Erik Satie; Myers, Erik Satie; Peters, Jean Cocteau and André Gide; Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel; Williams, Last Great Frenchman; Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years; Wharton, A Backward Glance; Flanner, Men and Monuments; Klüver, Day with Picasso; Scheijen, Diaghilev; Roland Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries; Shattuck, Banquet Years; Secrest, Modigliani; Ravel, Ravel Reader; Walsh: Stravinsky: A Creative Spring; Spurling, Matisse the Master; Journas, Alfred Dreyfus; Burns, Dreyfus; Isadora Duncan, My Life; Kurth, Isadora; Lysiane Sarah Bernhardt and Marion Dix, Sarah Bernhardt, My Grandmother; Gold and Fizdale, Misia; Monet, Monet by Himself; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Georges Clemenceau, Claude Monet: The Water Lilies, trans. George Boas (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1930); Bertaut, Paris, 1870–1935.
1. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 146.
2. A memorial chapel in the rebuilt church commemorates this catastrophe.
3. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 222.
4. From the war diary of Romain Rolland, in Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:222.
5. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 198.
6. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 226, 227, 229.
7. Laloy quoted in Nichols, Life of Debussy, 160.
8. Chouchou to Raoul Bardac, 8 April 1918, in Debussy, Debussy Letters, 335.
9. Laloy quoted in Lockspeiser, Debussy, 2:224–25.
10. Chouchou to Raoul Bardac, 8 April 1918, in Debussy, Debussy Letters, 335.
11. She died the following year, at the age of thirteen, after receiving the wrong treatment for diphtheria.
12. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 93–94.
13. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 93–94.
14. Proust to Madame Soutzo, 9 April 1918, in Selected Letters, 4:37.
15. Blaise Cendrars’ memories of Satie, quoted in Orledge, Satie Remembered, 78.
16. Cocteau quoted in Myers, Erik Satie, 53.
17. Gillmor, Erik Satie, 210. Bayreuth was the home of Wagner, and continues to be the home of the Wagner Festival, known as the Bayreuth Festival.
18. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 207.
19. Steegmuller, Cocteau, 197.
20. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 50.
21. The 26th Infantry Division (nicknamed the Yankee Division) of National Guardsmen from New England was among the first to arrive in France. Early in 1918, it served at Chemin des Dames, which then was a quiet sector. In April, the 26th left Chemin des Dames, and in July it was sent into action at Château-Thierry. I was privileged to visit the underground quarters at Chemin des Dames (an extensive former quarry) where members of the 26th Division lived and rested when not in the trenches. Their wall carvings are extraordinary, ranging from humorous (an imaginary Red Sox–Yankees score, with the Red Sox clobbering the Yankees) to deeply moving tributes to loved ones back home.
22. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 236, 238.
23. From France’s national anthem, the Marseillaise (Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 240).
24. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 240, 241.
25. Wharton, A Backward Glance, 358–59.
26. Flanner, Men and Monuments, 214. Khokhlova reportedly refused to sleep with Picasso before marriage (Scheijen, Diaghilev, 335; Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 5), although she appears to have capitulated by the time he brought her to Barcelona to introduce her to his mother (Richardson, Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 60). Picasso had gone to Rome to join Diaghilev, Massine, and the Ballets Russes. Cocteau, and eventually Stravinsky, joined them. Satie did not come.
27. Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 170.
28. Secrest, Modiligiani, 259–60, 276.
29. Debussy to Jacques Durand, 8 July 1910, in Debussy Letters, 220. See chapter 12.
30. Ravel to Madame Alfredo Casella, 19 January 1919, in Ravel Reader, 185.
31. Although by the war’s end, Eugenia Errázuriz was supplying him, like Picasso, with a thousand francs a month.
32. Walsh, Stravinsky, 290.
33. Spurling, Matisse the Master, 208–9.
34. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 310; Kurth, Isadora, 379.
35. He died in October, killed in action.
36. Watson, Georges Clemenceau, 302.
37. Watson, Georges Clemenceau, 314.
38. Dreyfus to the Marquise Arconati-Viscoti, 20 July 1917, in Journas, Alfred Dreyfus, 88.
39. Journas, Alfred Dreyfus, 123. Alfred Dreyfus’s son, Pierre, an engineer, had served at the front since the war’s outset, first at Mulhouse, then at the Marne, at Verdun, and the Somme, for which he received citations and the Croix de Guerre.
40. Adam, Paris Sees It Through, 246, 250.
41. Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Rebel, 53.
42. Watson, Georges Clemenceau, 326.
43. Wharton, A Backward Glance, 359.
44. Lysiane Sarah Bernhardt and Marion Dix, Sarah Bernhardt, My Grandmother, 222.
45. Ad
am, Paris Sees It Through, 253. By “thoroughfare,” Adam probably was referring to the Champs-Elysées, although she simply may have omitted an “s” from a more general reference to “thoroughfares.”
46. Bertaut, Paris, 1870–1935, 270.
47. Isadora Duncan, My Life, 313.
48. Monet to Clemenceau, 12 November 1918, in Monet by Himself, 252. Monet originally proposed that these be placed in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
49. Watson, Georges Clemenceau, 327.
50. Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 176.
51. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 155.
52. Albaret, Monsieur Proust, 159.
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