Marriage and Paris
In 1919 she married Prince Antoine Bibesco, a Romanian diplomat stationed in London, a man 22 years her senior. It was the society wedding of the year, attended by everyone from the Queen to George Bernard Shaw. The wedding was filmed by the newly formed British Moving Picture News organization. After the marriage, Prince and Princess Bibesco lived in Paris at the Bibesco townhouse at 45, Quai Bourbon at the tip of the Ile St Louis looking up the river toward Notre Dame cathedral. The walls of the apartment were decorated with huge canvases by Vuillard. "They weren't pictures. They were gardens into which you walked through a frame," wrote Enid Bagnold.
Antoine Bibesco was a lifelong friend of Marcel Proust and after his marriage to Elizabeth she too became a favorite of the reclusive writer. At the time of her marriage Proust wrote that she "was probably unsurpassed in intelligence by any of her contemporaries," and added that "she looked like a lovely figure in an Italian fresco". He would leave his house late at night to visit them, to discuss Shakespeare with Elizabeth or to gossip with Antoine until dawn. Elizabeth wrote a moving obituary for Proust in the November 1922 New Statesman. "Gently, deliberately, he drew me into that magic circle of his personality with the ultimate sureness of a look that needs no touch to seal it. Insensibly you were drawn into that intricate cobweb of iridescent steel, his mind, which, interlacing with yours, spread patterns of light and shade over your most intimate thoughts."
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Bibesco
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and, marriage and/or paris:
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)