Sibylle Riquetti de Mirabeau

Sibylle Riquetti de Mirabeau
Portrait of Gyp. Atelier Nadar
Born	(1849-08-16)16 August 1849 Plumergat, France
Died	Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Resting place	Neuilly-sur-Seine Old Communal Cemetery
Signature

Sibylle Marie-Antoinette Gabrielle Riquetti de Mirabeau, comtesse de Martel de Janville (16 August 1849 – 28 June 1932), better known by the pen name of Gyp, was a French playwright, novelist and salonière.

Biography

She was born at the château de Coëtsal near Plumergat, in the Morbihan département of Brittany, the daughter of Joseph-Arundel de Riquetti (1820–1860), a Zouave who fell at the Battle of Mentana, and Marie Le Harivel de Gonneville (1827–1914), also a writer, who contributed to Le Figaro.

Her father was the great-grandson of Victor de Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau (Mirabeau Père), noted 18th-century economist, and grandnephew of Honoré Mirabeau, the revolutionary orator. In view of her later opinions, it is interesting to remember that Sibylle was actually descended from Mirabeau's royalist younger brother, André-Boniface-Louis de Riquetti, vicomte de Mirabeau, (1754–1792) known as Mirabeau-Tonneau because of his notorious embonpoint, who famously broke his sword in front of France's Revolutionary Assembly (where he represented the nobility of the Limousin) while bitterly crying out: "now that The King is giving up his kingdom, a nobleman no longer needs a sword to fight for him!"

Although, in her memoirs, Gyp stated that she had been born on August 15, which happens to have been Napoleon Bonaparte's birthday, her birth certificate reads "morning of August 16, 1849", according to her biographer, W. Z. Silvermann. At her father's request, the name on her birth certificate was revised to read "Sibylle Aimée Marie Antoinette Gabrielle".

The little girl grew up constantly reproaching herself for not having been a boy who could have continued this illustrious line. When she was still a child, her parents separated and she followed her mother who moved to Nancy to live with her parents in the family building on Place de la Carrière. Her maternal grandfather Victor Claude Dymas de Riquetti de Mirabeau (1789–1831), a legitimist despite his brilliant feats of arms during the Empire, and a former officer in the Grande Armée, was responsible for most of her education. She learned fencing, horse riding and ballet. Her father, himself a legitimist, took her to Frohsdorf, to stay with the Count of Chambord.

On the death of her father in 1860, she became estranged from her mother, who indulged in society life and literature, publishing in various periodicals under several pseudonyms.

She married Count Roger de Martel de Janville in Nancy on 2 December 1867 — the anniversary of Napoleon's coronation — and they had three children. The young couple moved to Paris, where she posed for Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and then to Nancy. During the 1870 war, Roger de Martel was in Le Havre and became friends with Félix Faure, the future President of the Republic. In 1879, the Martels settled permanently in Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the corner of Chézy street and boulevard Bineau.

The Comtesse de Martel began by publishing a few texts in La Vie parisienne in February 1877, then in the Revue des deux Mondes. From 1880 onwards, she began publishing volumes under the pseudonym Gyp, writing every night. In all, she wrote more than 120 books, many of which highly successful: Petit Bob, récit type de l'enfant terrible (1882), Une élection à Tigre-sur-mer (1890, based on Gyp's experience supporting a Boulangist candidate), Mariage civil (1892), Le Mariage de Chiffon (1894, a novel made popular by Claude Autant-Lara's 1942 film) etc.

Large-format portrait of Gyp (from a painting by Albert Aublet in the Museum of Lorraine) reproduced in the Arc Héré in 2017

Her work shows a definite sense of dialogue, a biting wit, humour and a great capacity for observation. Gyp happily mocks the good society of which she is a part. She created characters who remain archetypes: the spoilt child, the precocious schoolgirl, the young wife. An attempt to bring her best-seller Autour du mariage to the stage failed. Mademoiselle Ève (1895) was more successful.

Gyp entertained guests every Sunday from midday until dinner at her home in Neuilly. She made her salon a very popular venue in Paris. Many of the leading figures in the social and artistic life of the time were to be found there: Robert de Montesquiou, Marcel Proust, Edgar Degas, Maurice Barrès, Anatole France, Paul Valéry, Alphonse Daudet, Jean-Louis Forain, Auguste Vimar, Lucien Corpechot and Edgar Demange.

Gyp also tried her hand at painting, mainly religious subjects. In 1893, she exhibited a painting at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars entitled Je vous salue, Marie!.

Henry James says in his 1908 preface to the New York edition of The Awkward Age that he had Gyp consciously in mind as a model when he was writing his novel as a serial in Harper's Weekly (1898–1899). As Marcia Jacobson writes, "the dialogue novel in English probably owes its initial impetus to ‘Gyp,’ although her novels were not available in translation until the mid-nineties and the form had appeared earlier in England".

She was plagued by constant financial worries, which her abundant literary output was partly intended to alleviate. In spite of this, in 1895 she bought back the family Château de Mirabeau, which she was forced to sell in 1907 to Barrès.

Gyp, self-styled "last of the Mirabeaus", died in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the age of 82. She was buried in the Old Communal Cemetery.

Political life

Gyp in 1904. Photo by Otto Wegener

A noted contributor to La Libre Parole from 1899 to 1901, Gyp saw the Jews as the destroyers of a dream organisation and imagined that "the annihilation of Jewish power would bring back all the glories, all the greatness, all the vanished beauties of France". Many of her novels are marked by the "notorious anti-Semitism common in good society at the time".

Although a close friend of Anatole France, the Comtesse de Martel was a Boulangiste, antidreyfusard and passionate nationalist, in the context of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. This nationalism led her to publish a series of anti-Jewish caricatures in the magazine La Patrie illustrée. From March 1897 to May 1898, she also published in La Vie parisienne the fictitious diary of Ludovic Trarieux, the former Keeper of the Seals, founder of the Human Rights League and instigator of the review of Captain Alfred Dreyfus's trial, portraying him as a renegade who had converted to Protestantism in order to make an advantageous marriage. In 1902, at the height of his political involvement, Gyp joined Jules Guérin's La Tribune française, a newspaper that described itself as "anti-Jewish and nationalist".

Because of her political opinions, Gyp was the victim of several attempts on her life as well as of a sensational kidnapping.

Private life

In 1869, Sibylle married Marie François Roger, comte de Martel de Janville (1848–1920), by whom she had three children:

• Aymard de Martel de Janville (1873–1900)
• Thierry de Martel de Janville (1875–1940)
• Nicole Renée Marie de Martel de Janville (1877–1968)

Legacy

A Venusian crater, Mirabeau, was named in her honour.

Works

Novels

• La Vertu de la baronne (1882)
• Petit Bob (1882)
• Ce que femme veut (1883)
• Un homme délicat (1884)
• Le Monde à côté (1884)
• Plume et Poil (1884)
• Elle et lui, Calmann-Lévy, 1885
• Sans voiles! (1885)
• Le Druide, roman parisien (1885)
• Le Plus heureux de tous (1885)
• Autour du divorce (1886)
• Dans l'train (1886)
• Joies conjugales (1887)
• Pour ne pas l'être? (1887)
• Les Chasseurs (1887)
• Mademoiselle Loulou (1888)
• Petit Bleu (1888)
• Bob au salon (1888)
• Pauvres petites femmes (1888)
• Les Séducteurs (1888)
• Bob à l'exposition (1889)
• Ohé, les psychologues! (1889)
• Mademoiselle Ève (1889)
• Une élection à Tigre-sur-Mer, racontée par Bob (1890)
• L'Éducation d'un prince (1890)
• Ô province! (1890)
• Ohé, la grande vie! (1891)
• Un raté (1891)
• Une passionnette (1891)
• Monsieur Fred (1891)
• Mariage civil (1892)
• Tante Joujou (1892)
• Monsieur le duc (1892)
• Madame la duchesse (1893)
• Pas jalouse (1893)
• Le Treizième (1894)
• Du haut en bas (1894)
• Le Journal d'un philosophe (1894)
• Le Mariage de Chiffon (1894)
• Professional Lover (1894)
• Le Cœur d'Ariane (1895)
• Ces bons Normands (1895)
• Leurs âmes (1895)
• Les Gens chics (1895)
• Bijou (1896)
• Ohé, les dirigeants! (1896)
• Le Bonheur de Ginette (1896)
• Eux et elle (1896)
• Le Baron Sinaï (1897)
• La Fée Surprise (1897)
• En balade: images coloriées du petit Bob (1897)
• Joie d'amour (1897)
• Totote : roman inédit (1897; with photo by Paul Sescau)
• Ces bons docteurs! (1898)
• Israël (1898)
• Miquette (1898)
• Journal d'un grinchu (1898)
• Sportmanomanie (1898)
• Lune de miel (1898)
• Les Femmes du colonel (1899)
• Les Izolâtres (1899)
• Les Cayenne de Rio (1899)
• L'Entrevue (1899)
• Monsieur de Folleuil (1899)
• Balancez vos dames (1900)
• Trop de chic! (1900)
• Journal d'une qui s'en fiche (1900)
• Martinette (1900)
• Jacquette et Zouzou (1901)
• Friquet (1901)
• Un mariage chic (1902)
• La Fée (1902)
• L'Âge du mufle (1902)
• Les Amoureux (1902)
• Les Chapons (1902)
• Sœurette (1902)
• Les Chéris (1903)
• Les Petits Amis (1903)
• Un ménage dernier cri (1903)
• Cloclo (1904)
• Pervenche (1904)
• Les Poires (1904)
• Les Froussards (1904)
• Maman (1904)
• Geneviève (1905)
• Le Cœur de Pierrette (1905)
• Journal d'un casserolé (1905)
• Le Cricri (1907)
• L'Âge du toc (1907)
• La Bonne Galette (1907)
• Doudou (1907)
• La Paix des champs (1908)
• La Bassinoire (1908)
• La Chasse de Blanche, nouvelles (1909)
• Entre la poire et le fromage (1909)
• L’Amoureux de Line (1910)
• Les Petits Joyeux (1911)
• Totote (1911)
• L’Affaire Débrouillard-Delatamize (1911)
• La Bonne Fortune de Toto (1911)
• La Ginguette (1911)
• La Meilleure Amie (1912)
• Fraîcheur (1912)
• Napoléonette (1913)
• La Dame de Saint-Leu (1914)
• La Petite Pintade bleue (1914)
• Les Flanchards (1917)
• Les Profitards (1918)
• L’Amour aux champs (1920)
• Souricette (1922)
• Le Coup du lapin (1929)
• Du temps des cheveux et des chevaux (1929)
• Celui qu'on aime (1931)
• Le Chambard (1931)
• Doudou (1931)
• La Joyeuse Enfance de la III^e République (1931)

Translated into English

• Chiffon's marriage (1895)
• A professional lover (1896)
• Ginette's happiness (1896)
• Those good Normans (1896)
• Bijou's courtships, a study in pink (1896)

References

Bonnefont, Gaston (1897). Nos Grandes dames: Mme la comtesse de Mirabeau-Martel. Mme la duchesse d'Azès. Paris: Ernest Flammarion.

Bourcet, Marguerite (1932). "Deux Cycles de Romans: Paul Bourget et Gyp," Études, Vol. CCXII, pp. 525–47.

Brabois, Olivier de (2003). Gyp: Comtesse de Mirabeau-Martel. 1849-1932. pasionaria nationaliste, homme de lettres et femme du monde. Paris: Publibook.

Brisson, Adolphe (1904). Portraits intimes, Vol. 2. Paris: Armand Colin.

Calvet, Jean (1930). L'enfant dans la littérature française. Paris: F. Lanore.

Charles-Brun, Jean (1910). Le Roman social en France au XIX siecle. Paris: V. Giard et E. Briere.

Corpechot, Lucien (1942). Souvenirs d'un journaliste. Paris: Plon.

Drault, Jean (1935). Drumont, la France juive et la Libre-parole. Paris: Société française d'éditions littéraires et techniques.

Énault, Louis (1893). Paris-Salon 1893, Vol. 2. Paris: E. Bernard.

Ferlin, Patricia (1999). Gyp, portrait fin de siècle. Paris: Indigo & Côté-femmes éditions.

Finch, Alison (2000). Women's Writing in Nineteenth-century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koëlla, Charles E. (1936). "Gyp: En Défense de la Personnalité," The French Review, Vol. X, No. 1, pp. 35–47.

Larnac, Jean (1929). Histoire de la litterature feminine en France. Paris: Kra.

Méchoulan, Henry (2016). Le juif dans le roman français au XIXe siècle. Paris: Berg International.

Mesch, Rachel (2006). The Hysteric's Revenge: French Women Writers at the Fin de Siecle. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Millstone, Amy (1987). "Gyp and the Reconstruction of (Self-)Consciousness," Biography, Vol. X, No. 3, pp. 189–207.

Missoffe, Michel (1932). Gyp et ses amis. Paris: E. Flammarion.

Nelly, Sanchez (2011). "Trois autobiographies féminines dans l'entre-deux-guerres", Inverses, No. 11, pp. 121–32.

Pouquet, Jeanne Maurice (1926). Le Salon de Madame Arman de Caillavet. Paris: Librairie Hachette.

Randall, Earle Stanley (1941). The Jewish Character in the French Novel, 1870-1914. Menasha, Wis.: George Banta.

Roberts, Mary Louise (2002). Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in fin-de-siècle France. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Sadoun-Édouard, Clara (2018). Le Roman de La Vie parisienne: presse, genre, littérature et mondanité (1863–1914). Paris: Honoré Champion.

Silvermann, Willa Z. (1995) The Notorious Life of Gyp - Right-Wing Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle France. Oxford University Press.

Silverman, Willa Z. (2000). "Gyp and Flammarion: A Marriage of Love or Convenience?," The French Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 5, pp. 910–20.

Silverman, Willa Z. (2000). "Two Generations of Bas-bleus: The Comtesse de Mirabeau and her Daughter, Gyp," Women in French Studies, Vol. VIII, pp. 138–53.

Further reading

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External links

• Works by Gyp at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Gyp at Gallica
• Works by Gyp at JSTOR
• Works by Gyp at Hathi Trust
• Gyp at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by Sibylle Riqueti de Mirabeau at Faded Page (Canada)