Misfits in France

Wild(e) about Dieppe
  • Julian Barnes
  • Hermione Lee

Abstract

Julian Barnes: There were two great historic moments at the Dieppe docks, in the nineteenth century, both of them, strangely, involving pseudonyms. The first was in 1848, when the last King of France, Louis Philippe, and his wife were taken off in secret, by a British steamer and the King travelled under the pseudonym of ‘William Smith’. And, fifty years later, another pseudonym arrived, this one being ‘Sebastian Melmoth’, a.k.a. Oscar Wilde.

Keywords

Great Admirer French Writer Respectable Life Young American Woman Tertiary Syphilis 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    Jacques-Emile Blanche played a pivotal part in bringing together British and French writers, musicians, sculptors and painters during the final two decades of the nineteenth century. As Anna Gruetzner Robins explains in The Dieppe Connection: The Town and Its Artists from Turner to Braque (1992): ‘Over the years Blanche was host to many French artists — Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, Helleu, Puvis de Chavannes (there in 1895), and it was their meetings with them, and writers, critics and poets which were so fruitful for the British’ (Robins, 1992, pp. 33–43).Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Julian Barnes
  • Hermione Lee

There are no affiliations available

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