Robert de Montesquiou

The only full biography, published in 1967 by Secker and Warburg, of the remarkable Parisian saloniste, poet and friend to Marcel Proust, who was featured in the very first issue of The Chap as a sterling example of an aesthete. Robert de Montesquiou was also the inspiration for the character of Des Esseintes in Au Rebours (Against Nature) by JK Huysmans. This detailed look at Montesquiou’s life includes bawdy tales of his outrageous parties, at which he would always appear in flamboyant costumes, his Argentinian live-in ‘personal secretary’, d’Yturri and his Japanese gardener Hata, who helped turn the Montesquiou manse into one of the most celebrated homes in fin-de-siecle Paris, where luminaries such as Marcel Proust, Gabriel Faure and Claude Debussy would be in attendance, hanging on Montesquiou’s every word. This edition is in good condition, with a plastic cover protecting the dustjacket and a few marks on the endpapers.