Así viví 1900

Great-great-granddaughter of Madame de Staël and niece of the Countess of Ségur, Pauline de Pange—née de Broglie—was born on the day construction began on the Eiffel Tower and experienced a world closer to the 18th century than to our own. It was an era and environment brimming with happiness and privilege: winters in Paris in grand mansions; games, horse-drawn carriages, sumptuous evenings; endless summers in Dieppe, country houses, picnics, balls… Indeed, in this memoir, De Pange portrays the aristocratic society of the Belle Époque with great humor and subtlety, and it is simply captivating. She also reveals her own journey as a woman of a time when, generally speaking, few women learned to write. It could even be said that his account is a cornerstone of history and an indispensable complement to reading Proust, an irreplaceable testimony to an aristocratic intimacy that he, a brilliant upstart, could only intuit. De Pange also witnessed the birth of the automobile, as well as the surprise, fascination, or rejection it generated among his contemporaries. Likewise, he witnessed the beginnings of cinema and the telephone, and how these new technologies entered the daily lives of high society, revolutionizing so many customs. Sharing his cherished memories, he describes domestic service, food and table rituals, clothing, social codes, education, sea bathing, schooling, the Dreyfus Affair… Thanks to his precise and pleasing writing, his intelligence, sensitivity, and exquisite prose, that now-vanished world comes alive before our eyes. With a tender, ironic, and yet knowing look, the girl from that era extends her hand to us and exclaims: "Yes, that world existed, that world of yesterday is still ours, and what a joy to immerse ourselves in it!" It was 1900.