The Velvet Hours (32 page)

In 2014, my dear friend Kara Mendelsohn sent me an article that would become the inspiration for this novel. It described the recent discovery of a mysterious apartment in Paris that had been shut for nearly seventy years, ever since the start of World War II. The heirs to the apartment had no idea it even existed until it was first mentioned in the last will and testament of their recently deceased grandmother. When the apartment was finally opened after all that time, it served as a time capsule, as its sumptuous Belle Époque–era furniture, Chinese porcelains, and other fine works from the nineteenth century filled the rooms. But the most intriguing item was a painting of a beautiful woman set in a magnificent gilded frame. It was of the heirs' great-grandmother, the original owner of the apartment, who was a courtesan by the name of Marthe de Florian.

The painting of a young Madame de Florian in her silk gown, its billowing, gauzy sleeves slipping off her bare shoulders, displayed a woman of obvious sensual charms. The auctioneer who was eventually called in to appraise the apartment's antiques and valuable works of art, a Monsieur Choppin-Janvry, suggested the portrait was done by the nineteenth-century artist Giovanni Boldini, who was renowned for his portraits of famous socialites like Consuelo Vanderbilt and
Marchesa Luisa Casati. The auctioneer later confirmed his suspicion that Boldini had painted the portrait after he found love letters from Boldini, tied in satin ribbon, in Marthe's bedroom vanity. The painting of Marthe de Florian would later be sold at auction for 2.1 million euros, a record price for a Boldini painting.

As many of my readers already know, all my novels are inspired by questions to which I do not know the answers. Reading about this mysterious apartment, my mind was filled with them. Who was Marthe de Florian, and how did she come to be painted by the acclaimed painter Giovanni Boldini? How did a woman born Mathilde Beaugiron, the daughter of an impoverished laundress, become a “kept woman” of cultivated luxury and pleasure, living in such a wondrous apartment in the bustling ninth arrondissement? And most important, why did her granddaughter, Solange Beaugiron, who some historians believe was the writer Solange Beaugiron-Beldo, close up her grandmother's apartment just as the Germans were approaching Paris, and never return to it again?

There were few published facts to go on at the time I began writing the novel. Little was known about Marthe de Florian except her original birth name, Mathilde Beaugiron. In 1888, a census listed “seamstress” as Mathilde Beaugiron's occupation. Records also indicate that Mathilde gave birth to two boys, both of whom were named Henri. One died shortly after birth and the second, Henri Beaugiron, was said to have grown up to become a pharmacist. Henri's paternity was not revealed on his birth certificate.

The exact date that Boldini painted the portrait of Marthe de Florian is also surrounded by conflicting reports. A 2010 newspaper article in the
Independent
, a UK newspaper, stated it was painted in 1898, but other sources suggest it was painted in 1888 when Marthe would have been around twenty-four. After studying Boldini' s paintings, I believe the portrait to have been painted closer to 1898, when Marthe was thirty-four years of age, not twenty-four. I don't believe
the image depicted of the woman in the portrait is one of an ingénue, but rather, of a mature woman who was in full command of her beauty and charms. And so I have written the novel using that date. Neither I, nor my reseach associates in Europe, were able to locate an official death certificate in France for Madame de Florian. In recent months a letter has surfaced written in Henri Beaugiron's hand, which states her death to be August 30, 1939. For the purposes of the novel, I have made her death eight months later in order to coincide with Solange's departure from Paris just prior to the German Occupation.

Solange Beaugiron remains as equally mysterious as her grandmother. I was lucky enough to have my dear friend and art historian, Costanza Bertolotti, discover a 1938 article from the French newspaper
L'Humanité
that references a Solange Beaugiron. According to the article, Solange was the daughter of a pharmacist and by the age of seventeen had already become an aspiring playwright. Her first fully written play was entitled
Miss Mary
, and Solange sent it to the theater Danou in the hope it would be performed. The article further states that, unfortunately, the theater put on a play eerily similar to hers that was attributed to another writer, André Birabeau. Solange publicly accused the director of the theater of first sending her play to Birabeau. I have used this morsel of information by making Solange a budding writer in the novel.

But that is all I could determine about the true facts of Marthe's and Solange's life, and so I have had to largely imagine the rest. In the end, we will never know the exact reason that this beautiful apartment was sealed for seventy years, nor why Marthe's granddaughter continued to pay the maintenance on it until her death but never actually returned there. Just like Marthe and Solange, the apartment maintains its secrets and seduces us to enter into a world that defies time and exalts art and
beauty.

Many people helped me with the research for this novel. Costanza Bertolotti, who assisted with locating and translating the resource material and also provided a wonderful sounding board as I fleshed out what details and facts we could discover. Kathy Abbot, an amazing costume historian, who assisted me on the research for all of the underpinnings and other details of the clothes worn in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I was fortunate enough to visit her at Towson College and look at the costume archives there, to see up close the capes, gowns, and corsets worn during the nineteenth century, so I could accurately bring Marthe's wardrobe to life.

To Lisa Leff, an author and professor at American University, I send a special thank-you for assisting me with the historical research of the novel and going over the manuscript with me. Your wealth of knowledge in French Jewish history proved invaluable. Thank you also to Gail Shirazi at the Library of Congress for sharing your wonderful contacts with me, and to Anne Brener for introducing me to the beautiful
Zemirot Yisrael
. And to Diane Afoumado of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who also helped as a sounding board early on as I tried to draft a workable plot for the novel. I am also indebted to Doris Hamburg for sharing her incredible knowledge of
manuscript conservation work with me. Author and dear friend, M. J. Rose, has cheered me on with this book since its conception and has kept me anchored through the process.

Martin Fletcher, journalist and author extraordinaire, who generously agreed to write the newspaper “article” that appears at the end of the novel. Pieralvise Zorzi, who chivalrously escorted me to Caffè Florian in Venice as well as beautiful Ferrara, Italy. Charlotte Gordon, who showed me the images of the sumptuous Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC, that became the seeds for Marthe's love of Asian ceramics. And of course, my cherished early readers, Nikki Koklanaris, Kathy Johnson, Victoria Leventhal, Robbin Siegel, Tina Spitz, and, my mother, Ellen Richman. A special thank-you for Gus Kasper for being a wonderful intern, Shauna D. Jones for helping verify my French inheritance laws, and Jardine Libare, my dear kimono sister, I'm lucky you're only a phone call away.

To my wonderful and supportive agent, Sally Wofford-Girand, who has nurtured each of my six novels with great care and always keeps me reaching higher and higher with each book. To my editor, Kate Seaver, and publisher, Leslie Gelbman, at Berkley Books, thank you for providing my novels with a wonderful home and support as they are ushered into the world.

Lastly, the biggest thank-you of all to my husband, Stephen Gordon, who is always on hand to both solve a pesky plot issue or to provide legal expertise. You will forever be the dark-haired green-eyed boy in all of my novels.

1. The author references shadow and light in the novel. Discuss the aspects of shadow and light in Marthe de Florian's life, as well as in Solange's. Do you think both women come to terms with their pasts at the end of their lives? Or is there an element of regret?
   
2. Charles gives Marthe the gift of the pearls partly as a gift of beauty, but also as a gift of financial security. Do you think Marthe does the right thing when she sells the necklace?
   
3. Marthe is not educated, yet she is immensely curious. How would you describe her self-education? Do you think her material possessions reflect her pursuit of knowledge?
   
4. Marthe belongs to the demimonde, the world of secret pleasure. What do you think of Marthe being a kept woman? Do you think it enabled her to be more liberated than married women in French society, or was her life more restricted?
   
5. Discuss the essential role the Barcelona Haggadah played in the novel. For example, it enables Solange to learn more about her ancestry, it brings her into the Armels' bookstore and also, in the end, enables Solange and the Armels to gain safe passage. What else did the Haggadah bring to the overall story?
   
6. Above all, Marthe loves art and beauty. The author describes the sumptuous furnishings in the apartment, the butterfly- and bird-painted china, the fresh flowers, the rose-scented baths, and the gold-embossed stationery. Do we have these rituals of beauty in the twenty-first century? Are there any of these lost rituals that you'd like to bring back into your daily life?
   
7. Solange and Marthe forge an unlikely friendship. What do you think they each teach each other through their friendship?
   
8. Solange says: “What I realized at that moment was that my grandmother believed that as long as the apartment remained the way she had created it—her portrait above the mantel, her collection of porcelains, and the other pieces of art she had hand selected—she was convinced her memory would also not be extinguished.” Do you think that heirlooms help us maintain a memory of our loved ones, or are our shared stories what help connect us to the past? Are the two linked? How? Is one more important than the other? Do you own something that is linked with a story, and does it connect you with the past?
   

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