Private Life
Desgrange had a wife - they divorced - and a daughter. Little is known of either. He spent most of his life with the avant-garde artist Jeanne (Jane) Deley but never married her.
Deley was born on 28 July 1878, in Creusot, Saône-et-Loire. She is listed in Le dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains by Edouard Joseph. She and Desgrange met some time after the 1914-1918 war. They were a contrast, Desgrange rather formal and preoccupied by publishing and physical activity, Deley a party-giver who liked to entertain at the home she shared with Desgrange. Among her guests were the former racing star Charles Pélissier, a favourite of Desgrange's and who Jacques Goddet hints in his biography may have been romantically involved with Deley; Henry Decoin, a theatre director; Robert Perrier, a writer at L'Auto, Jeff Dickson, an American who promoted spectaculars at the Vélodrome d'Hiver; and a Serbian artist called Millovi Uzelac.
Jeanne Deley signed her work "Jane Deley" and showed it at the Salon des Indépendants as early as 1924, and at other salons later. At her insistence, the couple bought a château near St-Maxime, on the Mediterranean. Deley died on 13 July 1949.
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