Priscilla Bibesco

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Washington, D.C., 1925. "Princess Bibesco of Rumania." Priscilla Bibesco(1920-2004) led an interesting andperipatetic life. Marcel Proust and Queen Alexandra were her godparents; her father was the Romanianambassador to Washington. When World War 2 began, she hitchhiked to Beirut to become a spy; after theCommunists took over in Eastern Europe, she made her home in Paris. National Photo Company Collection glasnegative.GheorgheDimitrieBibesco,

vovode deValachie

1802-1873

ZoeMavrocordato 1805-

1892

JosephDixon

Asquith1825-1860

EmilyWillans

1828-1888

CharlesClow,

baronetTennant

1823-1906

EmmaWinslo1895

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Alexandru Bibesco1842-1911

HlneCostaki-Epureanu

1902

Herbert Henry Asquith, earl deOxford et Asquith1852-1928

Emma Alice Margaret Tennan1864-1945

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| |Antoine Bibesco1878-1951 Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy Asquith 1897-1945

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|Priscilla Hlne Alexandra Bibesco1920-2004
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Prince Antoine Bibesco with his daughter Princess Priscilla Bibesco and Mother-in-Law Margot Asquith.

by Marcus Adams

bromide print, 9 December 1932


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Princess Priscilla Bibesco (Mrs Michael Padev, later Mrs Simon Hodgson)


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by Howard Coster

half-plate film negative, 1937


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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/priscilla-bibesco-6157130.html

Priscilla Bibesco

Goddaughter of Proust and granddaughter of Asquith who was lampooned bySimon Raven
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/priscilla-bibesco-6157130.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/priscilla-bibesco-6157130.html


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Saturday 27 November 2004

Priscilla Bibesco was Marcel Proust's goddaughter. Her father, Prince Antoine Bibesco, was one of the writer's dearestfriends - a model for Saint-Loup. She was born in 1920, two years before the death at 51 of Proust, who said, "It is inthis little girl that all that we know now continues."

Priscilla Helen Alexandra Bibesco: born London 5 June 1920; married 1944 Mikhail Padev (marriage dissolved 1946)1958 Simon Hodgson (died 1992); died Paris 13 October 2004.

Priscilla Bibesco was Marcel Proust's goddaughter. Her father, Prince Antoine Bibesco, was one of the writer's dearestfriends - a model for Saint-Loup. She was born in 1920, two years before the death at 51 of Proust, who said, "It is inthis little girl that all that we know now continues."

But Priscilla was to grow up fiercely independent and she never mentioned the Proust connection. The reason was thashe disliked her father. Antoine, a good-looking Romanian aristocrat, who was to become Minister at Washington, waalso rather heartless. Priscilla never forgave him for reading out her private diaries to a group of diners in his Parishouse.

She was to be closer to her mother, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of the prime minister Henry Asquith and hissecond wife, Margot Tennant. But that was not an easy relationship either. Extremely intelligent, Elizabeth was an

addictive drinker, and Priscilla had to face being brought out as a debutante by a mother who, taking Priscilla todances, would fall down drunk at her feet.

Rebecca West recalled knowing Priscilla's mother in Bucharest before the Second World War when the Bibescos stillheld large properties there. "You know, I think Elizabeth was immensely gifted," said West:

I think she knew what was happening in Eastern Europe. I remember she used to sit in this caf, and just face the wallAnd it wasn't coffee she was drinking.

Elizabeth was to publish several books of short stories and novels, but, as a lifelong friend of Priscilla's said, "Antoinemade her write. He liked making people perform." Priscilla used this talent she had inherited all too rarely, her life

being taken up by other adventures.

When war broke out in 1939, Priscilla was in Romania. Leaving her mother behind and determined to escape the pro-German country, Priscilla hitch-hiked her way through Europe to Lebanon. The writer Anita Leslie, in her 1983 volumof memoirsA Story Half Told, recalls:

Priscilla was 23 when she arrived in Beirut and various Secret Service departments immediately sought to employher. I was ordered to give her a cover job on theEastern Times. This I did, cunningly thinking up a column called"Events of the Week". Any intelligent girl could write it out in half an hour. The trouble with Priscilla was that notonly was she intelligent but also exceedingly attractive. Apart from supplying information to her office and gigglingly

writing out the weekly column with me she also collected a string of admirers. And these consisted of ratherimportant colonels of fighting regiments. When they went off to the Western Desert she was prone to disappear alsoand the Secret Service became rather cross.

On the boat back to England at the end of the war, Priscilla met Mikhail (or Michael) Padev, a dark-haired Bulgarianwhom she married. Romanians, it is known, do not get on with Bulgarians and Antoine Bibesco remarked sarcasticall"He's the most charming Bulgarian." Padev worked for the BBC but the marriage did not last. "I think I did love him foa while," Priscilla later said. But saddest for Priscilla was the death of her mother in Romania at the age of 48. She hadso looked forward to seeing her again and then, three months later, in July 1945, her grandmother Margot died, broke

by the death of Elizabeth. In spite of all this, Priscilla remained a private person, and not one openly to display grief.

Antoine Bibesco - whom the playwright Enid Bagnold was famously in love with - died in 1951. From her father,Priscilla inherited an 18th-century house in Paris of eye-catching beauty. Forty-five Quai Bourbon stood like the prowof a ship - facing the rear of Notre Dame - at one end of the Ile St Louis. Priscilla made the magnificent first-floorapartment her home, letting off the various other apartments, except one which her cousin Princess Marthe Bibescohad for her life. "J'aime le double luxe," Marthe said when one of her books became a best-seller and she moved intothe Paris Ritz whilst still keeping Quai Bourbon.


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Priscilla was generous to her relations although in the post-war years the Romanian properties had been confiscated.She fell on relatively hard times but continued a series of romantic liaisons. Even her close friends did not know exact

who the people were - apart from Arthur Koestler, which became widely known amongst her circle. Then, in 1958,Priscilla married a fair-haired Englishman 11 years younger than herself - fair hair being Priscilla's preference.

Simon Hodgson was the son of a company director who lived in Derbyshire. However, Hodgson was a myth-maker antold himself that he came from a long line of distinguished ancestors which included Byron's sister. He was unreliable

with money and Priscilla had to endure a year when Hodgson was given a prison sentence for obtaining credit as anundischarged bankrupt. They were friendly with the writer Simon Raven until he lampooned them in his 1964 novelThe Rich Pay Late, as the Con and the Contessa.

Priscilla showed immense courage and dignity in sticking by her wayward husband and put up with his inventions evewhen they involved her own family, like, "Proust tore out the last page of Ala Recherche and handed it to Antoine."There were occasions, though, when she was driven to utter, "Oh, shut up, Simon."

Later, Hodgson became more stable and both lived in the apartment on Quai Bourbon. Priscilla's Paris friends includeOswald Mosley and his wife Diana. Repartee was Priscilla's forte, as over lunch when Diana, indulging her loves ofHitler and his entourage, said, "Goebbels had the most beautiful blue eyes", to which Priscilla responded, "Such a pitythen, he had to murder all those children."

In spite of their different ages, it was Priscilla who became the widow, Hodgson dying 12 years before her of cancer.Throughout her life she never used her title of Princess and never dropped a connection. Few knew that her godparen

were Marcel Proust and Queen Alexandra. Only in recent years did she write an article (inRevue des Deux Mondes) o

her outspoken grandmother Margot Asquith.

Towards the end, Priscilla had strokes and became absent-minded. She lost money through carelessness - drawing oularge sums of cash and walking home with her handbag open. The pity is that she never got round to writing hermemoirs, which she keenly wanted to do in her last years: whether she would have revealed as much as her godfatherdid of his friends, we shall never know.

Simon Blow

Mum-sa:Elizabeth Bibesco

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This article relies largely or entirely upon asingle source. Relevant discussion may be found onthetalk page. Please helpimprove this article by introducing citations to additional sources. (April2012)
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Elizabeth Bibesco, circa 1919

Elizabeth, Princess Bibesco (ne Asquith; 26 February 1897 7 April 1945) was an English writer active

between 1921 and 1940. A final posthumous collection of her stories, poems and aphorisms was publishedunder the titleHaven in 1951, with a preface by Elizabeth Bowen.

Contents

[hide]

1 Childhood and youth 2 Marriage and Paris 3 Writings 4 Final years 5 Bibliography

6 External links

[edit] Childhood and youth

Elizabeth Charlotte Lucy was the first child ofHerbert Henry Asquith (British Prime Minister, 19081916)and his second wife, Margot Tennant. As candidly recorded in her mother's 1920 autobiography, she was aprecocious child of uncertain temper.[1] Life as the Prime Minister's daughter thrust her into the public eye aan early age and she developed a quick wit and a social presence beyond her years. When she was justfourteen years old, The Times (reporting on her recovery from pneumonia) stated that "many members of thHouse have made the acquaintance of Miss Asquith and in expressing their concern for her health, havereferred to her charm of manner and to the interest which she has begun already to show in political matters.

As a teenager, duringWorld War I, she was given opportunities to do "good works", organizing andperforming in "matinees" for the servicemen. Her first known literary effort was a short duologue called "Oand On" which she performed with Nelson Keys in 1916 at the Palace Theatre. In the same year sheorganized a large show of portraits by John Singer Sargentat the Grafton Galleries to aid the Art Fund and a"Poets' Reading" in aid of the Star and Garter Fund. In 1918 she played small roles in two silent war moviesby D.W. Griffith, "Hearts of the World" and "The Great Love"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibescohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Childhood_and_youthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Marriage_and_Parishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Writingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Final_yearshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Bibliographyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#External_linkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Henry_Asquithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Asquithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Asquithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.W._Griffithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Bibesco.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Bibesco.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibescohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Childhood_and_youthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Marriage_and_Parishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Writingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Final_yearshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#Bibliographyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#External_linkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Henry_Asquithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Asquithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.W._Griffith


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[edit] Marriage and Paris

Antoine and Elizabeth Bibesco

In 1919 she married Prince Antoine Bibesco, a Romanian diplomat stationed in London, a man 22 years hersenior. It was the society wedding of the year, attended by everyone from the QueentoGeorge BernardShaw. The wedding was filmed by the newly formed British Moving Picture News organization. After themarriage, Prince and Princess Bibesco lived in Paris at the Bibesco townhouse at 45, Quai Bourbon at the tipof the Ile St Louis looking up the river toward Notre Dame cathedral. The walls of the apartment weredecorated with huge canvases by Vuillard. "They weren't pictures. They were gardens into which you walkethrough a frame," wroteEnid Bagnold.[2]

Antoine Bibesco was a lifelong friend ofMarcel Proust and after his marriage to Elizabeth she too became afavorite of the reclusive writer. At the time of her marriage Proust wrote that she "was probably unsurpassedin intelligence by any of her contemporaries," and added that "she looked like a lovely figure in an Italian

fresco".[3]

He would leave his house late at night to visit them, to discuss Shakespeare with Elizabeth or togossip with Antoine until dawn. Elizabeth wrote a moving obituary for Proust in the November 1922 NewStatesman. "Gently, deliberately, he drew me into that magic circle of his personality with the ultimatesureness of a look that needs no touch to seal it. Insensibly you were drawn into that intricate cobweb ofiridescent steel, his mind, which, interlacing with yours, spread patterns of light and shade over your mostintimate thoughts." [4]

[edit] Writings

Between 1921 and 1940 Elizabeth published three collections of short stories, four novels, two plays and abook of poetry. All of these works have a "continental" sensibility. They deal almost entirely with a kind of

love in which the heroines ponder the least gesture of a man until it takes on the proportions of an emotionalevent with lasting implications, while the heroes spend their time in mute surrender at the feet of remote anddisdainful women. "One young poet had described her soul as a fluttering, desperate bird, beating its wingson the bars of her marvellous loveliness," is a sample of her prose style (from the short story "Pilgrimage",1921).

Her novels and stories, which by 1940 were considered merely fashionable, flimsy stuff with no lastingsignificance, can now be seen as the illumination of a class of people who were made irrelevant by the FirstWorld War but who refused to accept their irrelevance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Bibescohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Teckhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Teckhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Vuillardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bagnoldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bagnoldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Prousthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-4http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antoine_%26_Elizabeth_Bibesco.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antoine_%26_Elizabeth_Bibesco.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Bibescohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Teckhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Vuillardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bagnoldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Prousthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bibesco#cite_note-4http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elizabeth_Bibesco&action=edit&section=3


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Elizabeth Bibesco was connected (especially in the mind of the media) with Virginia Woolfand KatherineMansfield, neither of whom treated her well in their letters and diaries, especially after a liaison betweenElizabeth and Mansfield's husband, John Middleton Murry. Woolf wrote, "She is pasty and podgy, with theeyes of a currant bun." [5]

[edit] Final years

Elizabeth Bibesco, by Augustus John, 1924

She travelled with her husband in his capacity as Romanian ambassador, first to Washington (19201926)and then to Madrid (19271931). She was in Romania during World War IIand died there ofpneumonia in1945 at the age of 48. She was buried in the Bibesco family vault on the grounds ofMogosoaia Palaceoutside Bucharest. Her epitaph reads, "My soul has gained the freedom of the night" the last line of thelast poem in her 1927 collection.[6]

The tombstone of Elizabeth Bibesco, in the Mogooaia Palace park, outside of Bucharest

Elizabeth's death was the final sorrow for her mother, Margot, who died within months of her daughter'sdeath. Prince Antoine, forced out of Romania after the war, never returned to his homeland. He died in 1951and was buried in Paris. Priscilla Hodgson, the only child of Prince and Princess Bibesco, continued to live a45, Quai Bourbon until her death in 2004.

Elizabeth's portrait was painted twice by Augustus John, in 1919 and again in 1924. The first painting (titled"Elizabeth Asquith") shows her as a vivacious debutante in a feather stole over bare shoulders. This picture in the Laing Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. In the second portrait, seen here (titled "Princess
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Antoine Bibesco"), Elizabeth appears slightly weary and melancholic, her eyes averted just enough tosuggest a break in her former self-confidence. She wears a mantilla given to her father by the Queen ofPortugal [7] and holds in her hand one of her own books. When shown at the Royal Academy summer show 1924, Mary Chamot, writing in Country Life, wrote of this painting that it "has the force to make every othepicture in the room look insipid, so dazzling is the contrast between the mysterious darkness of her eyes andhair and the shimmering brilliance of the white lace she wears over her head."

[edit] Bibliography

I Have Only Myself to Blame, 1921 - Short Stories Balloons, 1922 - Short Stories The Fir and the Palm, 1924 - Novel The Whole Story, 1925 - Short Stories The Painted Swan, 1926 - Play There is No Return, 1927 - Novel Points of View, 1927 - Play Poems, 1927 - Poetry Portrait of Caroline, 1931 - Novel The Romantic, 1940 - Novel

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:Elizabeth Bibesco

Works by Elizabeth Bibesco at Project Gutenberg

NOTES

1. ^ Asquith, Margot, An Autobiography, Doran, 1922,Vol. III, pg 53

2. ^ Bagnold, Enid, Autobiography, Heinemann, 19693. ^ Bibesco, Antoine, Letters of Marcel Proust to Antoine Bibesco, Thames & Hudson, 1953, pg 394. ^ Bibesco, Elizabeth, Marcel Proust, New Statesman, 1922, pg 2355. ^ Boddy, Gillian, Katherine Mansfield, Penguin, 1988, pg 846. ^ Bibesco, Marthe, In Memoriam, Les Oeuvres Libres, 1946, pg 927. ^ Asquith, Herbert, H.H.A. : Letters to a Friend, Bles,1933, vol. 2, pg. 176

Ttne-su:

Antoine BibescoFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

Antoine Bibesco
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Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of

Romania in the United States

In office

February 25, 1921 February 24, 1926

Prime Minister

Alexandru Averescu

Take Ionescu

Ion I. C. Brtianu

Preceded by N. H. Lahovary

Succeeded by F. Nano

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of

Romania in Spain

In office

19271931

Prime Minister

Vintil Brtianu

Iuliu Maniu

Gheorghe Mironescu

Personal details

BornJuly 19, 1878

Paris
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influence on her daughter. "What a gentleman he is. None of my family are gentlemen like that; no breedingyou know," she wrote.

Prince and Princess Bibesco, 1919

The marriage took place at St. Margaret's, Westminsteron April 29, 1919. It was the society event of theyear, attended by everyone from Queen Alexandra to George Bernard Shaw. Their only child, Priscilla, wasborn in 1920 (and died in 2004).

Apparently marriage did not change Antoine's womanizing ways. Rebecca West (with whom he had a shoraffair in 1927) called him "a boudoir athlete". While attending a party at the French embassy in Londonand looking around the room, West realized that every woman in attendance had been his mistress at onetime or another.

Antoine continued his diplomatic career in Washington, D.C.(19201926) as Minister of the Romanian

Legation (the present Embassy of Romania in Washington, D.C.was first used as such during his tenure) anin Madrid (19271931). In 1936, after Romanian Prime MinisterGheorghe Ttrescu removedNicolaeTitulescu as Foreign Minister and recalled nearly all Romania's diplomats, Prince Bibesco had the unenviabresponsibility of reassuring England and France that Romania was not slipping into the grip offascism. TheWorld War II years were spent in Romania where his wife died (in 1945) and when, after the war, his estatewere confiscated by the communistshe left his country, never to return. Enid Bagnold, in her autobiographytells of unwittingly smuggling silver across the English Channel for him after the war. He died in 1951 andwas buried in Paris.

"He had three tombs in his heart," Enid Bagnold wrote in herTimes obituary, "which I think he could neverfinally close - of his mother, his brother Emmanuel and his wife."

[edit] External links

Prince Antoine Bibesco (1878-1951)
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