Robert de Montesquiou: The Ultimate Bon Vivant

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Robert de Montesquiou: The Ultimate Bon Vivant
The stylishly eccentric Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac was a royalist, social snob, drawing-room liberal, literary dilettante and Symbolist poet. With aplomb and cavalier elegance, he assumed a lofty position in both the fashionable and literary circles of the Parisian Belle-Epoque. Lean and graceful as an Abyssinian cat, he was incredibly handsome, with dark, wavy hair and a signature mustache that accentuated his striking Roman nose. Montesquiou and his family were direct descendants of the illustrious dukes of Gascony who could trace their lineage back to Merovingian kings, as well as the 16th century writer, Blaise de Monluc, and Charles de Batz de Castelmore d’Artagnan, the fourth Musketeer. Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac was born in Paris on March 7th, 1855 to Thierry Montesquiou-Fézensac and Pauline Duroux. His paternal grandfather, Anatole, was an aide-de-camp to the Emperor Napoléon and a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Thierry was a very successful stockbroker who left a substantial fortune to his four children, of whom Robert was the last. In fact, Robert luxuriated in such immense wealth that his lifestyle became legendary. As a young child, he was moved from chateau to chateau in the care of his grandmothers, who traveled with an assemblage of servants. As was the custom of the very wealthy, he was educated by the best tutors in a rarified milieu, but grew up lacking familial bonds. In 1875, Montesquiou was invited to a ball given by a family friend, the Baroness de Pouilly, during which he was introduced to the poets and writers he earnestly admired: Barbey d’Aurevilly, Francois Coppée, José-Maria de Heredia, Catulle Mendès and Stephane Mallarmé. Within months he was invited into the salons where the intellectual youth of Paris gathered. They all noted his keen intellect, jocular nature, and the sincere respect he displayed for the literary profession. He became known as something of a consummate dandy. In the estimation of most people he had a silver-tongued devil’s wit and a proclivity towards homosexuality, which distinguished him early on as the French Oscar Wilde. He made amusing and often times lacerating remarks, and was by his own admission, “Addicted to the aristocratic pleasure of offending.” His meticulous attention to his personal appearance was captured In a charming book of memoirs by Elisabeth de Gramont, the Duchess de Clermont-Tonnerre: “Leaning on the railing of my upper balcony one bright spring morning, gazing down onto the Avenue I was suddenly struck by the appearance of a tall, elegant personage in mouse-gray, waving a well-gloved hand in my direction as he emerged swiftly from the green shadow of the chestnut trees into the yellow sunlight of the sidewalk. He must have been in an unusually conservative frame of mind that day to have appeared in mouse-gray. He might, likely as not, have turned up in sky-blue, or in his famous almond-green outfit with a white velvet waistcoat. He selected his costume to tone with his moods and his moods were as varied as the iridescent silk which lined some of his jackets.” Montesquiou also had a constantly shifting set of mannerisms. At the beginning of any conversation, he’d remove one glove and launch a series of gesticulations, raising his hands towards the sky, lowering them to touch the tip of one perfectly buffed shoe, or waving them as though conducting an orchestra. His conversations were usually long monologues filled with exotic anecdotes, mysterious allusions and obscure classical quotations, all told with a rich vocabulary. Quite often amused by himself, Montesquiou would burst into the shrill laughter of an hysterical woman, then just as suddenly clap his hand over his mouth to quiet himself. Most likely the reason for this abrupt gesture was that for all his disarming handsomeness, that his teeth were small and black. When he was 28, he enjoyed his first marked success in the attic of his parent’s mansion on the Quai d’Orsay. He transformed his suite into a dandy’s heaven reached by climbing a dimly-lit spiral staircase. Visitors entered through a tapestry-carpeted tunnel. Each room was decorated to fit a mood: one painted in shades of red, another in a muted symphony of gray. The windows, with panes of pale blue crackle-glass or gilded bottle-punts, cast a soft light upon the elaborate interior decoration and were framed by curtains made out of old ecclesiastical robes, the gold threads of which sparkled against the red material. Tiger skins and blue fox furs covered the floors throughout, surrounding an enormous, 15th century money-changer’s table, deep-seated wing-armchairs and old church pews. The chimney-piece was covered by a sumptuous, Florentine silk fabric and flanked by two Byzantine monstrances of gilded copper. Antique musical instruments hung from the ceilings. Parisians marveled. As a young bon vivant, Montesquiou encapsulated the romantic, literary and aesthetic excesses of his predecessors – Lord Byron, Charles Baudelaire, and Beau Brummell – while adding his own unique style. Baudelaire had decorated his rooms at the Hotel Lauzun in an unconventional and capricious manner, while the English dandy, Beau Brummell, had been lionized in print by the author Barbey d’Aurevilly. As careful in his pursuit of art as Lord Byron was careless in his pursuit of life, Montesquiou’s oeuvre was refracted through many lenses ultimately becoming the model anti-hero of the decadent movement portrayed in Joris-Karl Huysmans’ book, À Rebours, Against the Grain. The highly controversial novel catalogued the eclectic tastes and inner life of Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric antihero who eschews 19th-century bourgeois society and retreats into an artistic world of his own creation. Not content to remain the living image of Huysmans’ creation, Montesquiou moved from his famous d’Orsay quarters to the Rue Franklin, leaving most of his furnishings behind, while taking his growing collections: a bird-cage owned by…
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Lead photo credit : Painting by Jacques-Émile Blanche in 1887

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Sue Aran lives in the Gers department of southwest France. She is the owner of French Country Adventures, which provides private, personally-guided, small-group food & wine adventures into Gascony, the Pays Basque and Provence. She writes a monthly blog about her life in France and is a contributor to Bonjour Paris and France Today magazines.

Comments

  • Kimberley Cameron
    2017-05-04 13:53:49
    Kimberley Cameron
    What an interesting character! There should be a book...

    REPLY