April 23, 2021

Une jeune femme de 146 ans, aujourd’hui, chère duchesse Elisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre : vous êtes restée jeune, jeune à jamais, car vous aviez un don qui rend éternellement jeune : la curiosité. Oui, certes, vous étiez extrêmement intelligente, vous avez écrit des livres qui font référence encore aujourd’hui – notamment vos quatre tomes de Mémoires – mais ce qui vous distingue des autres génies de votre époque (ou peut-être vous lie à eux) c’est justement votre soif du savoir, votre soif de vivre, votre soif de la liberté. Pour résumer, vous aviez un besoin profond de connaissance : ce n’est pas pour rien qu’on disait que vous aviez inventé un sixième sens pour mieux comprendre la vie et le monde, celui du plaisir. Duchesse rouge, on vous surnommait, vous étiez marxiste sans être communiste, Allégresse vous appelaient vos amies car votre rire était contagieux et votre bonne humeur était connue et reconnue. My mate vous chuchotait la femme de votre vie, car dans votre vie – parfois rude, parfois injuste – vous étiez aussi une grande avant-gardiste. Non pas seulement parce que vous avez aimé les femmes sous la lumière du soleil, mais parce qu’en 1918 avec votre mate Natalie C. Barney vous aviez signé un contrat de mariage inédit. Et novateur.

Francesco Rapazzini

Author, Élisabeth de Gramont: avant-gardiste

You were not one for birthdays. You grew up without a mother. You were raised by your grandparents in a world that was fading with the gaslight. Your brave, feminist uncle Horace was a kindred spirit. You became a leftist like him and never looked back.

Your father remarried. You were lonely but you stood your ground. You took charge of your three younger siblings whom you loved. You would not sheathe your verbal weapons. You roamed the countryside for the belles choses de France.

You’d stop for refreshment or directions at homes where tenants would not allow you to remove your boots. In this you saw no contradiction. Your focus on them was too immediate. Your laughter, your intensity were immensely appealing. Your curiosity animated the friendships you were so gifted at making.

You read gluttonously. You needed to know. You kept scraps of poetry in your bag. You introduced Keats to the French. You gave yourself to music, to the sea. You did not abandon your country in wartime. In the theatres where you nursed amputees, you could not unhear their cries for pity.

You smoked opium with Colette. You threw parties for Proust at the Ritz so he could get material. But you disdained affected people. You were adamantine in your own views. Your mind was incisive, your wit was a rapier. You wrote, you sculpted. You were always becoming. Not easy for your two daughters. You gorged on the new. You embraced the taxi-auto, but you longed for the claire de lune. You were abused in your marriage, but still you found love.

You were rich, you were poor. To the end, you were never anything but proud. Many happy returns of this day, Madame. Your laughter is my string of pearls.

Suzanne Stroh

Co-translator, Élisabeth de Gramont: avant-gardiste