Madame Émile Straus (1849–1926)
Mme Straus, née Louise Arman de Caillavet, was a society beauty and salon hostess best remembered as a trusted friend of Marcel Proust. In 1886, Louise married the lawyer and patron Émile Straus, a wealthy Jewish businessman who, among other things, served as legal counsel to the prominent Rothschild family.
The marriage was childless, but Louise built around herself a brilliant salon circle that attracted some of the most renowned writers, artists, and statesmen of the Belle Époque. Madame Straus’s salon on the boulevard Haussmann was not only one of the most elegant of its time but also one of the most significant liberal and Dreyfusard meeting places. She herself was of Jewish background and well connected in the worlds of music, politics, and literature. Her guest list included figures such as Princesse Mathilde, Prince d’Arenberg, as well as leading republican intellectuals and artists.
Louise was a close friend of Robert de Montesquiou and of the Reinach family, and through her Proust gained access to many of the Faubourg Saint-Germain circles that later inspired characters in the Recherche. She befriended Sarah Bernhardt and Anatole France, and had a close relationship with her cousin Gaston Arman de Caillavet’s wife, Jeanne, who was both the lover and muse of Anatole France.
Marcel Proust at Madame Straus’s in Clos des Mûriers in Trouville around 1893. Seated (from left to right): Marcel Proust, Étienne Ganderax (journalist, literary editor of the Revue de Paris and theatre critic) and Geneviève Straus (née Halévy), one of the role models of the Duchesse of Guermantes. Standing (from left to right): Unidentified friend, Georges de Porto-Riche (playwright and novelist) and Louis de la Salle, poet and writer, friend and fellow student of Proust. Photographer unknown. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Madame Straus was known for her sharp wit, refinement, and social instinct, but also for a certain limiting conservatism that some of her friends found stifling. Her relationship with Proust was marked by a kind of maternal protectiveness. She supported him in many ways, yet did not hesitate to express disappointment in his behaviour. With the Dreyfus Affair, her salon became increasingly politicized and lost some of its former luster, but it remained an important refuge for Proust, especially after the death of his mother.
Sources:
Corr., IV, pp.411 (227), 421 (233); XIV, p.342 (168).
Lettres, pp.30,92,131,461 (250),1205,1288-1289.
Bischoff, C., Geneviève Straus 1849-1926: Trilogie d’une égérie. Paris: Balland, 1992.
Painter 1971, Vol. I, pp.92,94,99,228,230-233,248.
Tadié 2000, pp.75-76,109-110,133,142-143,148,320.
White 1999, p.27.