Henry Greffulhe

The count Henry Jules Charles Emmanuel Greffulhe , born the December 25th 1848 and died in 1932, was one of the models of Marcel Proust for the duke of Guermantes in With the research of time lost .

Wire of the count Charles Greffulhe and the countess, born Félicie of Rochefoucauld d' Estissac, Henry Greffulhe is resulting from a family from financial and landowners, whose fortune, colossal, goes up only with the French revolution but which knew to be incorporated at the high society. Large, broad of shoulders, with a superb fair beard, its majestic pace is contradicted by abrupt manners and a certain vulgarity of expression and character. According to Proust, one called it “ thundering Jupiter ”.

In 1878, it marries Elisabeth de Riquet de Caraman (1860 - 1952). They will have a girl, Élaine (1882 - 1958), which will marry Armand de Gramont.

Á Paris, Greffulhe live a private mansion 8 Rue of Astorg, in the middle of a vast complex of hotels and investment properties pertaining to the family, that the Parisian ones call “the Vatican”. From September to January, they spend most clearly time in their Château of Wood-Boudran, close to Melun (Seine-et-Marne), where the count devotes himself to the hunt.

Elected official appointed in 1889 on a list of union, it does not represent himself with the elections of 1893.

Henry Greffulhe behaves as a domestic, demanding tyrant of his wife that it always returned before midnight, not tolerating that his wife and the sister of this one (Genevieve de Caraman-Chimay, Mrs. Charley Pochet the Barber of Tinan), is late for the lunch: “ It lunched at midday , brings back Jean Cocteau. If the two women returned late, it shouted with the servants: " Do not be used anything for these bitches! That they burst! " They were to cook remainders on a stove, in their room. " My wife, said Greffulhe, it to me is Venus de Mélo." ” ( Preterite , Paris, Gallimard, 1983, p. 301)

Ladies' man, it misleads his wife before to have even married it. On the end of its life, it will be largely stripped by its mistress, the countess of Béraudière, who will even claim, but without success, to put the hand on its heritage.

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