DISAPPEARANCE – one who presided the Académie Goncourt after receiving the award for Forget Palermo has died last night at the age of 95.
She did not write his memoirs or tell his life. Because talking about her, it was first talk of his family. It was take in marrying the renowned and causes. Because before being “Edmonde”, the president of the Prix Goncourt was miss Charles-Roux, the daughter of a long line of illustrious Marseille: oils, if we dare write. Jules Charles-Roux, descendant of the first soap maker in the city of Marseille was MP and chairman of the Suez Canal Company. It was authorized in 1909 to bear the name of Charles-Roux. His son François Charles-Roux (1879-1961) was Ambassador of France in Prague and the Vatican, and a great friend of Pius XII. He was the father of Edmonde. His mother dressed in Vionnet and Schiaparelli Madeleine. She was beautiful and cold and left his children the responsibility of nurses. The little girl will suffer.
The literature bathed his childhood, such as the Mediterranean. His grandfather, a member of Félibrige, had used his prestige to get the Nobel Prize Mistral. Her parents prénommèrent Edmonde, in homage to the famous neighbor Rostand, a friend of her grandmother. In Charles-Roux, diplomacy, political and beautiful letters go together.
War as ambulance
Francois and Sabine Charles-Roux had three children. Born in 1920, is the last Edmonde. The elders are called Jean-Marie and Cyprienne. The first will be a priest ministering in London, St. Etheldreda the heart of the City. This royalist, wearing a cassock, his life will be the advocate of the cause of beatification of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth. Cyprienne marry Prince Marcello Del Drago, chief of staff of Count Ciano, the foreign minister of Mussolini. So that’s saying that Edmonde Charles-Roux lived – if not against (she frequently saw his own) – at least break with his family. But in its way, Edmonde, it was also the clan of Charles-Roux.
In May 1940, his father was appointed Secretary General of the Quai d’Orsay by Paul Reynaud. He spent a few months in Vichy, suspected of Gaullism, incurring the ridicule of Drieu in his diary. He resigned the day after Montoire preferring “to withdraw to his tent.” In this case to take the paternal chair at the (very Gaullist) Suez Canal Company.
Some time earlier, Edmonde left his family moved to Rome to win Marseille. She began studying nursing and rather than good society of Marseille, frequents artists refugees in the south. At the Pastré countess, who will be the founder of the Aix festival, it crosses the decorator Christian Bérard, Louis Jouvet, Pablo Casals, the dancer Serge Lifar. A world is revealed to her. Nor that of the Marseille bourgeoisie, nor the diplomacy. An environment that owes nothing to his parents. His own. It makes war as ambulance, caregiver Italian and Czech legionnaires, she knows the language, she grew up in Prague and studied at the Lycée Chateaubriand in Rome. It is itself wounded, decorated with the Croix de Guerre and cited the order of the Corps. She made the front of Paris Soir and, she later recounted Match, attracts his grandfather remarked: “This is good, but winning the war is better”. She will spend the Occupation in Marseille affected in clandestine clinic in the Resistance. The daughter of Ambassador Charles-Roux serves in the ranks FTP.
“You live like a man”
In the aftermath of the French landing in Provence, General de Lattre de Tassigny called to his side and assigns it to his Staff. She is the campaign of France, is wounded a second time in Austria, decorated again. In her nursing kit, book, War and Peace reads and rereads it. Returned to civilian life, she does not intend to fall into line. “You live like a man,” reproached her father. It mainly lives as they wish.
It has its tray, like the studies, reading and writing. It becomes columnist for France-Soir , the Pierre Lazareff then log it. In favor of an article on the Toscanini back in Italy, she knows Rome inside out, manages to be presented to him in his dressing room. She earns his stripes as a journalist, rose to the level of large “baroness” of the press: Hélène Lazareff and Françoise Giroud. To become a true Parisian, she takes advice from Coco Chanel. Soon it will Vogue where she returns with “Baby” Christian Berard and lead this magazine for sixteen years. She opens it to culture, with all its entries. In an interview with Orson Welles, she gets help from Jeff Kessel and Philippe Soupault before linking intimately Citizen Kane to accompany her on tour, settling even in London when he replaces Laurence Oliver in Shakespeare. It publishes unpublished Colette, Saint-John Perse and Louise de Vilmorin. With Eluard, she met the painter André Derain and agrees to pose for him. The painter compromised by a trip to Germany, she entrusts the sets of the Aix Festival. For some, she would call fashionable. Through him, she attended Balthus and Giacometti became friends with St. Lawrence sees and protects the accursed poet Jean Genet.
A character of all Paris
She not yet published book, but a guide to etiquette, a collection of articles about the company appeared in The Practice. But she wrote for her in his spare time. And Maurice Druon, in this workshop where come the Accursed Kings and another Alexander the Great. With Druon, then they are a couple of fashion, to the city and to the literary scene. Mathieu Galey noted in his diary: “It is beautiful, sun, she is sober, simmering, seductive: a novel torque”
The one he described as “a little teacher” glasses, bun. severe, also knows how to be elegant. Many men are crazy. “A Medici”, writes Galey. The title is not usurped: refinement, enlightened taste, wealth and cruelty. Some sneer, call Chiffon because of her outfits frilled, bubbled or black collar strawberries. If it is rumored that perhaps Chazot thought about it by creating the character of Marie-Chantal, what is certain is that in his dictionary of snobbery, Philippe Jullian portrayed in the guise of “Charlotte Gray-Edmond “.
It is undoubtedly at this time a character in the whole of Paris. Though.
In May 1966, it is returned to Vogue. She will say, “Because I had dared to cover a black mannequin.” In reality, for its relations “communists” that worry the US publisher of the magazine, Condé Nast-: Edmonde or last victim of McCarthyism
The triumph of Forget Palermo <. /> h2>
At 46, she is free, some even idle. She goes out of her drawer the manuscript of a novel in progress, completes and shows his friend François Nourissier who passes Bernard Privat. It is entitled Forget Palermo. If Edmonde is novice in literature, it is not an unknown. In the Goncourt jury for example, it knows Armand Salacrou that binds to the love of the mountain (it was part of the second ski team) and Gérard Bauer with whom she pioneered in the Pastré countess. She won the prize in 1966. Jean-Claude and Yves Berger Fasquelle, it embodies the small slam the year: This year, under the yellow blanket, Kléber Haedens raflera the Interallié, Nourissier the Grand Prix of the novel, Marie Blais -Claire the Medici. She became a writer: it appears in 1971. Adrienne Paul Morand gives documentation for Chanel’s biography to be published in 1974
She receives in her house in the Rue des Saints-Peres.. It crosses Visconti, General Oufkir. She sees many Nourissier and friends, Maurice Rheims, François Régis Bastide. Louis Aragon loves her. He reads his books, praised in French Literature, the walk to the festival of Huma. She has the heart to the left and head in all stars. Morand exclaims. “! When we think she is the sister of Cyprienne Del Drago”
In 1983, she was elected member of the Académie Goncourt, in 2002 and then president until 2014, where she sells her position at Bernard Pivot. After she pricks the game, reading a lot, battling for those she loves. Andrei Makine in particular owes its Goncourt in 1996.
“The first prize Goncourt Marseille”
The year of his consecration, this militant single one that will meet the man of his life, Gaston Deferre. The chronicle tells that the legendary mayor of Marseille wanted to decorate the medal of the city “the first prize Goncourt Marseilles.” She confided that Gaston knew since the resistance but did not dare approach the daughter of a diplomat classified as “Vichy”. They first see clandestinely in Bandol or Normandy. Sometimes Mitterrand serves as their chaperone. In 1973, she became Mrs. Deferre, wife of a romantic and sour character: the last politician to have fought a duel. After the fashion and literature, politics. In its way, Edmonde continues the great tradition Charles-Roux. In 1974 Deferre was scheduled to become the first minister Mitterrand. In 1981, he became interior minister. It is an influential figure in the political life (she reigns over the local press, argues Bernard Tapie). She tongues wagging by embodying the wedding – not so familiar at the time – money and left: it ensures, for a word, one can love money and those who lack it. She also disconcerting, barring those in Marseille failed to Defferre in 2002 and chairing the support committee of Chevènement for president. She chairs until 2011 the Society of Friends of the newspaper l’Humanité
Personality of the Republic of Letters, widely respected, she was particularly proud of a separate distinction. It was made of corporal honor of the Foreign Legion and never missed the annual ceremony of Camerone, every April 30 in Aubagne
No wonder. She was the image of this institution: charming, mysterious and wildly romantic .
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