Excerpts :
Princess Marthe Bibesco
Ana Blandiana
Smaranda Braescu
Madelene “Madi” Cancicov
Nina Cassian
Elena Ceausescu
Ioana Celibidache
Queen Elisabeth of Romania
Princess Gregoire Ghica
Princess Ileana of Romania
Dora D’Istria
Monica Lovinescu
Ileana Malancioiu
Queen Marie of Romania
Dr. Agnes Kelly Murgoci
Mabel Nandris
Countess Anna de Noailles
Ana Novac
Oana Orlea
Ana Pauker
Marta Petreu
Elisabeta Rizea of Nucsoara
Sanda Stolojan
Leontina Vaduva
Anca Visdei
Sabina Wurmbrand
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Princess Marthe Bibesco , née
Lahovary
(1885, Bucharest, Romania - Paris, France,1973),
Writer, Hostess, Socialite
53. British:
“The British and the French who cry over the fate that
befell Austria remind me of myself as a child, when I tore out
the petals of a daisy one by one and then wept because the stem
looked so ugly.”
68. Chanel, Coco:
“A woman who governs without parliament, for much longer
than a minister. A woman who must take 400 decisions a year,
whose jurisdiction enforces the law, beyond the frontiers of
our country.”
134. Education:
“The education of little Catherine was started by women
who had no education.”
153. Eyes:
“I have not got eyes to look, but to be looked at.”
163. Fashion:
“Fashion is what clothes reality and offers dreams.”
184. George VI:
“The King has just broken into my reverie with a message
of good will but I refuse to be disturbed.”
205. Hitler, Adolf:
“He looks like a bottle of mustard with a black label.”
272. MacDonald, Ramsey:
“It is a little bit late. I ought to have met him much
earlier, when he was going to prison for his opinions, at the
time of his persecution. Now that he is Prime Minister all London
hostesses compete for his presence.”
277. Marriage:
“She was surprised to have nothing to do: marriage was
a misfortune, but not an occupation.”
281. Memoirs:
“I am writing my life, let’s not forget it. So we
must make it appear beautiful and curious.”
308. Mussolini, Benito:
“His skin is pale, alabaster. He sizes one up from the
corner of the eye, while throwing his head backward all the
time. He is small, very small…. and quite square, but the
head is magnificent, animal-like with a huge mouth and prominent
upper lip. The hand he tendered me was small, soft and warm;
he kept mine in his for a moment and kissed it twice.”
381. Power:
“The use of absolute power weighs on the soul, well into
the tenth generation and beyond.”
394. Proust, Marcel:
“He reminded me of a fantastic figure in a Hoffman fairy
tale of my childhood: the night owl whose apparition in the
grandfather clock terrifies little Clara... I sensed something
supernatural about him, as if he possessed the keys to a world
into which I refused to follow that evening.”
(“Au Bal avec Marcel Proust”)
411. Romania (during World War II):
“One is trapped. We are like mice cohabiting with two hungry
cats.”
(Referring to Russia and Germany)
425. Russian friendship (risks of):
“Do not forget Ambassador, that you are in the house of
a Prince who, together with his four sons, was beheaded by the
Turks for pursuing policies friendly to Russia. That’s
where it got him.”
(addressing in 1945, at her palace of Mogosoaia, her guest –
the Soviet Ambassador, who was extolling the benefits of a Russian-Romanian
friendship).
499. Truth:
“To me you have to tell the truth, because I believe everything.”
519. Wilson, Woodrow (American President):
“…like a Presbyterian minister, with a three-piece
suit, firmly buttoned up, silver-rimmed pince-nez and a ready-made
toothy smile.”
522. Women:
“All unfortunate young women are lyrical poets, even those
who do not write verse.”
Biography
Marthe Lucie Lahovary was married to Prince Georges Valentin
Bibesco and remained known to posterity as Princess Marthe Bibesco.
She was in her own right a member of the Académie Royale
de Langue et de Littérature Française de Belgique.
A titled, beautiful lady of precocious literary talent, graced
with intelligence and vivacity were all the necessary ingredients
to be lionized in the turn-of-the-century Paris. Exoticism,
for she came from a “far away” country, added to the
attraction which, opened the doors to the corridors of power
and silenced the critics who might have belittled her achievements
based on her aristocratic pretensions. The French Academy awarded
her a Literary Prize in 1903 for “Huit Paradis” the
novel which drew on the magic of Romanian folk legends and social
landscape. Barrès and Montesquiou hailed the young writer
as a great talent and the French Press followed suit. Fame was
already at her feet at the age of 18 when she took Paris by
storm and put Romania on the map.
She used her attributes to her advantage to impress, cultivate,
charm or manipulate, all in turn, her eminent contemporaries
in the world of letters and politics – great aesthetes
and literary lions, or political tigers – she placed them
all in her collection, like a systematic entomologist who pins
down his prized coleopterans - George V and Clemenceau, Ramsey
MacDonald and Mussolini, Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel and
Marcel Proust.
After WWII, in Romania of Ana Pauker and Elena Ceausescu, the
aristocratic origins and the place of exile in a Western Democracy
of Marthe Bibesco meant that her literary, social and political
contribution to Romanian culture were ignored in schools and
were completely absent in libraries and in bookshops : in the
Romanian Encyclopaedic Dictionary of 1972, Bibesco is dispatched
in 24 words, whilst in the definitive “History of Romanian
Literature”, by Calinescu, published by Unesco in 1987
she is completely left out even in the minute section dealing
with “Foreign-language Romanian writers”.
Bibliography:
- Bibesco, Marthe, “Huit Paradis, Paris, 1903
- Bibesco, Marthe, “Isvor”
- Bibesco, Marthe, “Au Bal avec Marcel Proust”
- Bibesco, Marthe, “Nymphe Europe”
- de Diesbach, Ghislain: “La Princesse Bibesco”, Perrin,
Paris,1986
- Kretzulesco, E.: “Souvenirs de Marthe Princesse Bibesco”,
Ecrits de Paris, Paris,1983
- Christine Sutherland: “The Enchantress – Marthe
Bibesco and her World”, John Murray, London, 1997
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