Summer reading: The day before yesterday, I found the first of four volumes of… in a ‘book box’ 📦

Summer reading: the day before yesterday, I found in a ‘book box’ 📦 the first of four volumes of the memoirs of Pauline de Broglie (1888–1972), known as the Countess Jean de Pange, published by @editionsgrasset in 1962.

A light, nostalgic read, with a slightly old-fashioned feel: the perfect combination for by the pool. 💦🐾 Here’s a short extract:

🖋️ “In “Swann's Way”, Proust described the social circle then known as ‘la curiosité’, and Swann himself – Mr Haas – was associated with Louis d’Armaillé. His frequent stays in England were to lead to a close friendship with Sir Richard Wallace. I have kept some very interesting letters dated from Sudbourne, at the Wallaces’ home, in which he describes the sumptuous castle life of the Victorian era, the Prince of Wales’s visits, the hunts, the horses and the myriad ways of whiling away one’s time. Louis d’Armaillé was a friend of Paul Dubois, de Falguière, Bonnat and Rosa Bonheur. His close friendship with Richard Wallace earned him the esteem of museum curators, and all the antique dealers prided themselves on contributing to the collection of which I had heard so much in my childhood. This taste for old furniture, second-hand goods and ‘curiosities’—taken to the extreme—was the attitude of rejection adopted by an elite determined henceforth to deny any creative power. This was the atmosphere of my first twenty-five years.”

#proustagram #MarcelProust #Broglie #PaulinedeBroglie #JeandePange #Staël #Ségur #Anjou #Normandie #Dieppe #Mémoires