Proust would have known another case of "reconquest" by photography, that of the lovely Lady Evelyne Buchan, nicknamed "the Pocket Venus" by London society because of her diminutive stature. Like Misia, the Pocket Venus had been abandoned by her husband, Lord Mayne[sic], alias Walter Guinness, the Irish brewer, for the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who in 1910 was performing in Diaghilev's production of the ballet Sheherezade. Under transparent veils, loaded with jewels like the goddesses in Gustave Moreau's paintings, she appeared on stage virtually naked. Her slender and elegant silhouette, more that of a boy than of a voluptuous woman, attracted the attention of the great couturiers and also of certain millionaires. Walter Guinness spent a fortune on this woman: a sumptuous mansion in the Place des États-Unis in Paris, ruinous tours, ballets underwritten at the Opéra, including five evenings of Salomé, which alone cost him two million francs, without scoting much of a success.

Proust in the Power of Photography—Brassaï

It's a fantastic little volume on the pervasiveness of photographic thinking throughout Proust's work, the obsessiveness of Proust when it came to collecting photographs, and the relationship between Proust's conception of memory and the latent image on a sheet of undeveloped film. Although he spent most of his life in Paris and is famous for his photographs of the city, Brassaï was Hungarian. He moved to Paris in his mid-twenties and taught himself French by reading Proust—or so legend would have us believe.

Along with insightful readings of many sections of the la recherche, Brassaï's book is rich in passages like the one above, which are rabbit holes for the curious mind. Once you start to casually investigate a name, you may as well call it a day and hang on for the ride. Take for instance, Walter Guinness. Although a director at the brewery and heir to the Guinness fortune, the 1st Baron Moyne should not be confused with his great, great grandfather Arthur Guinness who started the Guinness Brewery with £100 bequeathed by his Godfather, Arthur Price, Archbishop in the Church of Ireland. (Incidentally, Arthur's Day, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the brewery is coming up: Sept 24, 2009). Referring to Baron Moyne simply as the Irish Brewer is a bit of an understatement. He was a member of the House of Commons, later Leader of the House of Lords, Colonial Secretary and then his good friend, Winston Churchill, appointed him to the post of Resident Minister to the Middle East, the post he held when he was gunned down in Cairo by members of the zionist group Lehi. Vicki Woolf's book on Ida Rubinstein, Dancing in the Vortex, suggests he was also a photographer:

A early as 1902 he had gone on the first of many big game hunting expeditions, but a great man before his time in many ways, he soon gave up shooting hid prey to photograph them instead…

Among the three children Guinness had with the 'Pocket Venus,' Lady Evelyn Stuart Erskine, was Bryan Walter Guinness who married one of the eminent Mitford Sister, Diana Mitford. They were the talk of society. Evelyn Waugh dedicated his second novel, Vile Bodies, to them. (In 2003 Stephen Fry turned the novel into the film Bright Young Things.) Dianna eventually left Bryan Walter for Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. They were married in the home of Joseph Goebbels with Aldolf Hitler in attendance. Sir Mosley was named 'Worst Briton' of the 20th century by the BBC History Poll. He follows Jack the Riper who took honors for the 19th century. Walter Guinness was instrumental in ensuring that the Lady Mosley was interned at Holloway prison for most of the war. In fact, in 2002 MI5 created a stir by releasing documents suggesting that those surrounding the Mosleys, including Walter Guinness and Diana's own sister, thought Diana "far cleverer and more dangerous than her husband" and recommended interning them both.

The real personality in this excerpt from Brassaï's book, of course, is Ida Rubinstein, one of Diaghilev's stars who along with Nijinski and Anna Pavlova turned the Paris art scene upside down in the first decades of the twentieth century. Proust describes the Russian dance troupe in 'The Captive' saying it "infected Paris…with a fever of curiosity less burning, more purely aesthetic, but quite as intense perhaps as that aroused by the Dreyfus case." He had seen her in Scheherazade with his close friend, composer Reynaldo Hahn (who was likely the model for Vinteuil in Proust's novel). That performance was described as "an orgy never before witnessed." Jean Cocteau described Rubinstein as, "penetratingly beautiful, like the pungent perfume of some exotic essence."

The affair between her and Walter Guinness continued until his death. They travelled extensively together and he continued to put her up at the Place des États-Unis in Paris while he kept a place nearby in the Faubourg Saint Germain, so prominently featured in Proust's work. Since Ida was Jewish, Walter convinced her to come to England before the Germans reached Paris and he arranged her accommodations in the Ritz Hotel for the remainder of his life. During the war her Paris house at No. 7 Place des États-Unis was destroyed and most of Ida's belongings were looted, a tragedy for her, but also a tragedy for us since the house was designed and decorated by the great stage-designer and painter Léon Bakst, who painted the scenes and designed the costumes for many Ballets Russes productions including the Scheherazade production mentioned by Brassaï and seen in the photo above. Ida was also married to one Vladimir Horwitz (not to be confused with Vladimir Horowitz, the pianist, who was married to Toscanini's daughter, Wanda). Although compliant, her affair with Walter and her romantic involvement with the painter Romaine Brooks (not a stranger to high profile affairs, herself), eventually led Vladimir to ask for a divorce, which for some reason Ida refused. The estranged husband unsuccessfully tried to prove adultery, but while the affair was well known in society circles, the private detective he hired was never able to come up with the goods—perhaps between Ida's charm and Walter's money the detective found a better deal. These were different times.