hirondelle02

DE LUXE ROOMS

Let yourself be transported in the Belle Epoque decor of a De Luxe room. In a subtle and refined harmony of precious tapestries and bespoke patterned fabrics that pick up colour schemes inspired by their paintings, these rooms create an atmosphere typical of the late 19th century, enhanced with all the comforts of today.

FITTINGS

  • Elegant 20 m² room
  • Double bed
  • Desk area
  • Bathroom with a bathtub or a walk-in shower
  • Private access to the Salon d’Eau and its swimming pool, steam bath, and treatment area
  • Welcome gifts scented with Maison Proust fragrances, orange blossom water and almond milk
  • Adjoins a Junior Suite and an Executive Suite for stays with family or friends

AMELIA

OF NAPLES

Previous slide
Next slide

A romantic figure, Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily was known as a real modern heroine for her rebellious free spirit. The press of her time even compared her with her younger sister, the famous Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Her courage in battle inspired Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas, and Marcel Proust, who portrayed her as a “soldier queen” in an episode of the Remembrance. She famously said, “I have not met this Mr Proust, but he must know me: I would have acted just as he described me in his book.”

Story

Maria Sophia takes one last look at the painting she has just hung above her bed. She is moved by the elegant woman who seems to be waiting for her lover, reminding her of happy times… In a few moments, she will be reunited with her darling daughter, Daisy. She need only cross the Seine to meet with the one she refers to as “My young friend.” Despite the rumours, no one ever discovered that her clandestine love with the handsome Emmanuel de Lavaÿsse, a French officer she knew during her first exile to Rome, had borne any fruit. She was forgiven by her boring husband, and she even managed to entrust the child to her father, instead of leaving her in an orphanage. Since 1870, a new exile in Paris has brought her closer to Daisy. She can now see her as she often as she wishes, so long as it is always in the utmost secrecy

HélÈne Standish

THE ICON OF HER DAY
Previous slide
Next slide

She is not “the most distinguished of all Parisians, she is distinction itself,” wrote a reporter. Upon meeting her at a dress rehearsal, Marcel Proust found her “stunningly elegant, steeped in artful simplicity.” The Standish salon was amongst the most popular in the capital, frequented by luminaries such as King Edward VII. Hélène Standish inspired Marcel Proust for his character, the Duchess of Guermantes.

Story

A note has been delivered. Countess Greffulhe has invited Madame Standish to the dress rehearsal of Sumurum, a pantomime based on oriental tales produced in 1912 by Max Reinhardt. In good spirits after an afternoon focusing on her charitable works, where donors have been generous, Hélène cannot make up her mind about what she will wear that evening. She preferred pre-war fashion to today’s looser outfits, with its overabundant plumes and jewels. In the end, she picks a black dress with white bows and a pearl necklace. She has heard that the writer Marcel Proust will also be there.

ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU

A MAGNIFICENT DANDY

Previous slide
Next slide

A homosexual aesthete and dandy par excellence, Robert de Montesquiou was an artist, a poet, and a man of letters. Intimately linked to the life of Marcel Proust, the cousin of Countess Greffulhe introduced him to Parisian high society. Marcel Proust put his friend’s words in the mouth of his character, the Baron de Charlus, and also gave him his taste.  “Make it more in the tone of Montesquiou,” he wrote in the margins of a notebook…

Story

“I am the sovereign of transient things”: Robert de Montesquiou has jotted these lines on the back of a photograph for Marcel Proust. They are the first of a poem published in Les Chauves-Souris, his first book of poetry. Marcel’s romantic relationships often featured the gift of a photograph. The Count barely let eight days slip by in June of 1893 before sending him a portrait where he is pictured holding his forehead. The two men immediately struck a genuine friendship. Alone facing a mirror that reflects the newly acquired, superb portrait of a young dandy, Robert is thinking about the delightful “Brutus” to whom Marcel compared himself. He hopes to have finally met the fervent disciple and sensitive youth for whom he had been yearning.

COMTESSE  POTOCKA

SPIRIT AND GRACE

Previous slide
Next slide

Emmanuela Potocka was excessive, a spendthrift, an aesthete, and in love with love, ever alternating between terrible and charming tempers. In a constant stream of bacchanalia-like, pleasure-seeking festivities, her salon was frequented by many Parisian personalities, such as Robert de Montesquiou, Guy de Maupassant, Jean Béraud, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Henri Gervex, and Charles Ephrussi. Marcel Proust wrote that she was “quite attractive, with her ancient beauty, Roman majesty, Florentine grace, French politeness, and Parisian spirit.”

Nouvelle

After so many years since the day of their first meeting in 1882, he has finally revealed his feelings! The countess continues reading her letter: “No woman has ever appealed to me at first glance, as you did.”  He adds that if she does not believe him, “then the Pope isn’t a Catholic.” Maupassant, a devoted member of the “Club des Macchabées,” the Friday evening literary salon in which she would ask her guests to mimic the torments of love, is begging her for a date. In the countryside? It was too cold in January. At her place? Although she had been separated from her husband for two years, it would have been inappropriate. At his place, then. A mischievous smile illuminates her face, which needs neither rouge nor powder to fascinate her many suitors. It was time to get ready. A few drops of Shore’s Caprice , a perfume created especially for her by Guerlain, a touch of pink on her childlike pout, and a row of pearls as her only jewel, and she was ready. One last glance at the Indian-inspired tapestry which had just been hung on her bedroom walls. Emmanuela Potocka was off to join her court.

GENEVIÈVE STRAUS

A SPIRITED MUSIC LOVER

Previous slide
Next slide

Geneviève Straus, the widow of composer Georges Bizet, and who had just married Emile Straus, a solicitor, was flooded with flowers and love letters from Marcel Proust. He was smitten with the knowledgeable music lover, whose salon was the hub of Dreyfusism and one of the most famous in Paris. In The Remembrance, this spirited woman was a key inspiration for the Duchess of Guermantes and her salon.

Story

The painting by Jules-Elie Delaunay which represents her is prominently displayed in her vast rotunda sitting room on Boulevard Haussmann. This “portrait of a soul” is so striking that it was the highlight of the Salon that year (1878). She has just decided that this Sunday, she will donate it to the Louvre Museum. She thinks of Gustave Moreau, of Auguste Toulmouche and Giovanni Boldini, who have also painted her. Geneviève doesn’t hide her pleasure, she knows how charismatic she is with her distinguished appearance, her witty repartees, and her sociability that contribute a unique charm to her brilliant evenings. She remembers the note that still amuses her. For her second marriage with the austere Emile Straus, her close friends had protested. She had answered, “What do you want, I had no other way of getting rid of him.”

CHARLES HAAS

A MAN OF THE WORLD

Previous slide
Next slide

“Marvellously intuitive, sophisticated, and intelligent,” according to his friend Boni de Castellane, Charles Haas, the fortunate son of a rich family, was a typically ultra-sophisticated, worldly pleasure seeker who attended Belle Epoque salons. Although Marcel Proust did not actually overlap with him much, he was fascinated by this handsome man, whom he turned into a major character in The Remembrance: as soon as Swann’s Way was published, the whole of Paris knew that Charles Haas was indeed Charles Swann.

Story

“Marvellously intuitive, sophisticated, and intelligent,” according to his friend Boni de Castellane, Charles Haas, the fortunate son of a rich family, was a typically ultra-sophisticated, worldly pleasure seeker who attended Belle Epoque salons. Although Marcel Proust did not actually overlap with him much, he was fascinated by this handsome man, whom he turned into a major character in The Remembrance: as soon as Swann’s Way was published, the whole of Paris knew that Charles Haas was indeed Charles Swann.

PAUL CÉSAR HELLEU

IMPRESSIONIST TALENT

Describing Paul Hésar Helleu, Marcel Proust said that “he has the highly simple nature of true artists.” This Impressionist painter was also a remarkable portraitist.  “He was undoubtedly the most talented of us, Manet, Monet, Renoir all believed so as we did…” said Jacques-Emile Blanchet when he died. Helleu was one of Elstir’s models, the painter in The Remembrance, and the voice of a Proustian approach to art, in which reality revolves around sensations and memories rather than a theme.

Nouvelle

An “exquisite arrangement,” exclaimed Marcel Proust upon viewing the works that Paul César had covered in a Japanese-like fabric, a very popular inspiration of the times amongst a group of painters he frequented, and which was indeed called, “The Japanese.” Returning from Cabourg after a five-hour train ride, Paul César was tired. He thought about the friend from whom he had just parted and about their unexpected meeting, several years earlier, in the park of Versailles Palace. Marcel, in casual attire, had fortuitously asked his chauffeur Odilon to stop just in front of him. He had been painting there with his daughter, Paulette. They had chatted for a long while. Shortly after their meeting, he had sent him the painting as a gift. It had been sent back to him, with a letter: “I am stunned by your extraordinary generosity. I would be unhappy with such a beautiful gift. But if you allowed me to pay the ransom of its captivity, never the slave to such marvellous beauty will have received more respect and adoration.” Paul César remembers his idea with amusement. He had dedicated the canvas to him, writing, “For my friend, Marcel Proust.” Taking it at face value, Proust had no other choice but to keep the painting.

CLAUDE MONET

A LEADING IMPRESSIONIST

Previous slide
Next slide

The painter of the famous Water Lilies, of train stations, bridges, cathedrals, and the full breadth of modern times, Claude Monet is still one of the most famous 19th-century painters in France and worldwide.  Although Marcel Proust never crossed paths with him, he particularly admired the Impressionist canvases that marked his work. The author wanted to transfer the Impressionist style into writing, using a similar suggestive subtlety.

Story

He has just heard an article from L’Opinion, dated 24 January 1920. A questionnaire by Vaudoyer about the Louvre was sent to several personalities, asking them which eight French paintings to hang in a special gallery. Marcel Proust’s reply had invoked a work by Chardin and two others from a choice of two Watteau, two Corot, Manet’s Olympia, Millet’s Spring at Barbizon, a Renoir without giving a title, and The Cliffs at Etretat by Monet. The famous Impressionist never read or met the author who received the Goncourt prize in 1919 for In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Yet in their own mediums, both artists shared undeniable similarities: their attraction for Normandy, their endless study of nature, whether through painting or through writing, the same Impressionist style, and the huge place occupied by colour in their works, from Vermeer’s “yellow patch of yellow wall” to Tiepolo pink.

ANNA DE NOAILLES

DREAMS AND LOVE

Previous slide
Next slide

A brilliant, sophisticated, romantic heiress from a wealthy Romanian family, she was also a poetess and a novelist. Marcel and Anna met in 1893. A strong friendship developed between the two extremely sensitive and talented people. They maintained a flamboyant epistolary conversation for twenty-one years. Marcel Proust worshipped Anna’s poetry: her creativity stimulated him, inspiring the themes that would feed The Remembrance. She would tell him, “You amplify the most intimate details,” while he would confess, “There is no author whom I admire more than her.”

Story

She must reply to Marcel, who has flooded her with letters. She will not have time tonight, as she is expected at a party. Her wonderful family is coming together around her mother, a remarkable pianist, and her writerly sister – a Romanian diaspora firmly committed to the arts. She is thinking about her strange friendship with the author: unless she is mistaken, they have not met more than three times in fifteen years! Yet what a correspondence! Because she self-censors, writes fewer, shorter letters than him, her friend’s letters are rather like long monologues. But how could this imbalance possibly matter? She always reads his extremely detailed analyses about her poetry with great care, knowing how lucky she is. She tells herself that one day, she will be compelled to have their correspondence published in a single volume. She can already imagine its preface: “Without Marcel Proust and his morning hymns or his evening angelus // Never would I have written the poems demanded by Marcel Proust’s preferences. His dazzling friendship both influenced and changed me…”

ÉMILE ZOLA

A COMMITTED WRITER

Previous slide
Next slide

Émile Zola did not attend Belle Epoque salons, which were aimed at academic writers. The works of this leader of Naturalism speak in the language of the people. Very engaged politically, the novelist ended up at the centre of the Dreyfus affair, openly taking his side and writing his famous open letter, “J’Accuse…!” Taken by his courage and determination, Marcel Proust collected signatures in his favour. The Dreyfus affair is alluded to in The Guermantes Way.

A passage from Nana, by Emile Zola.

“He looked up. Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic self-contemplation. She was bending her neck and looking attentively in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right haunch, touching it with the tip of her finger. By dint of bending backward, she was making it stand out more clearly than ever. Situated where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and pretty. After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child. The sight of herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised and ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty. Slowly, slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value to her figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus. She bent herself this way and that and examined herself before and behind, stooping to look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping contours of her thighs. And she ended with a strange amusement which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees apart and her body swaying from the waist with the perpetual jogging, twitching movements peculiar to an oriental dancer in the danse du ventre.”

MARCEL PROUST

CHILDHOOD

Previous slide
Next slide

As a child, he played in the avenues of the Champs-Élysées and recited poetry to little girls. Aged eleven, our young poet entered Lycée Condorcet. A quiet schoolboy, he already had a passion for reading and for sending letters when he took the cure for his asthma. What he hated most was being “separated from Mamma…” He was not as attached to his father, a medical authority who was bewildered by the dreams of his son. The future writer’s mixed background, on his father’s side, modest and provincial, and on his mother’s side, the rich Jewish bourgeoisie, gave him an insatiable curiosity on the different groups which made up his period and opening to the world.

A passage from The Remembrance, by Marcel Proust

“I never took my eyes off my mother. I knew that when they were at table I should not be permitted to stay there for the whole of dinnertime, and that Mamma, for fear of annoying my father, would not allow me to give her in public the series of kisses that we would have had in my room. And so I promised myself that in the dining room, as they began to eat and drink and as I felt the hour approach, I would put beforehand into this kiss, which was bound to be so brief and stealthy in execution, everything that my own efforts could put into it: would look out very carefully for the exact spot on her cheek where I would imprint it, preparing my thoughts that I might be able, through these mental preliminaries, to consecrate the whole of the minute Mamma would allow me to feeling her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can only have his subject for short sittings prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter’s absence.”