Madeleine Masson
Encyclopedia
Madeleine Masson was a South Africa
n-born English-language author of plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs and biographies.
to a French banker, Emile Levy, and Lili, "a ravishingly beautiful creature with Viennese antecedents". On a trip to Paris
with her parents, 18-year-old Madeleine met 40-year-old Baron Renaud Marie de la Minaudière. As she put it in her autobiography, I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, "I was a small-town South African who was being offered Prince Charming on a platter, decked with yachts, châteaux, sable coats, jewels, townhouses and a coat-of-arms equal to that of the Valois."
Madeleine took her surname
"Masson" from one of the Baron's subsidiary titles. While pregnant with her first child, she was informed by the Baron's mistress — from whom she had mistakenly supposed he had parted — that not only were they still linked, but it was her fortune that paid for the Baron's elegant lifestyle. Any disturbance to their relations, it was made clear, would result in withdrawal of her support.
The shock of this revelation caused Masson to miscarry. She abandoned the aristocratic life and embraced Paris' bohemia
, studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne
, art at Munich
, wrote for the literary magazine, Les Nouvelles Littéraires. She had an affair with a South African, became the lover of the Swiss painter Géa Augsbourg, got to know Pablo Picasso
and André Breton
, and met writers Colette
and André Gide
.
When World War II
came, the Jewish-descended Masson left Géa Augsbourg, intending to return to South Africa. On the train to Bordeaux
, she was persuaded to join the French Resistance
. She later recalled this period, during which she carried messages and helped escapees, as a time of "total horror". In later years, she helped Tim Buckmaster, son of Maurice Buckmaster
, head of SOE
's F (French) Section, prepare a biography of his father.
During a trip to visit Napoleon's tomb on Saint Helena
, Masson met Captain John Rayner. After a courtship, they contracted a marriage that was to last 32 years.
While running the family home in Bosham
, West Sussex
, England
, Masson started an early public relations
firm. All the while, she wrote plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs, biographies. The most famous were her autobiography and her biographies of Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
, and of the celebrated SOE
agent Krystyna Skarbek
(aka Christine Granville).
As late as spring 2007, Masson was busy revising an earlier novel about the German massacre on 10 June 1944 of the villagers of Oradour
, near Limoges
, France
, and working on a biography of Baroness Emma Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel
.
Madeleine Masson died on 23 August 2007, aged 95.
, during a voyage on the Winchester Castle in May–June 1952 from Cape Town
, South Africa
, to England to be reunited with her sea-captain future husband. She was intrigued by her stewardess, who "was polite, efficient and distant.... No warning bell rang... to tell me that twenty years later, waking and sleeping, I should try to recall every word, every intonation and every gesture of this woman." Nevertheless, landing at Southampton
on 13 June, Masson inquired about the full name of her stewardess and was told that it was Christine Granville. A few days later, Masson was shocked to read in her morning paper that, on the night of 15 June, Christine Granville had been murdered in a London hotel. Subsequent days brought sensational stories about Krystyna Skarbek
's (aka Christine Granville's) legendary wartime exploits and courage.
In subsequent years, as Masson sought to learn the fates of her prewar friends and wartime Resistance comrades-in-arms, she fortuitously met people who had known Skarbek and her partner Andrzej Kowerski
("Andrew Kennedy").
Masson's life story showed similarities to that of her biographee Skarbek. Both were descended from banker's families, had Jewish heritage and a bankrupt aristocrat
in the family (Skarbek's father; Masson's first husband), and had worked during World War II
with the French Resistance
—Skarbek, under SOE
sponsorship. This created a natural basis for the author's empathy with her subject. Masson sought out anyone who had known Skarbek and found her most complete informant in Kowerski. Her account of the information that she obtained from him is so detailed that it reads like a verbatim transcript of their conversations. To be sure, inaccuracies occasionally creep in, as when the author of the beautiful pastel sketch of Skarbek is identified as "Pavli Kowska"—presumably it would have been Polish poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
, of the famous Kossak
family of painters. But the essential accuracy of Masson's text is attested by collateral sources. Additionally, she sometimes faithfully presents information that she does not fully understand, including some Polish
idiom
s that Skarbek (or Kowerski) translated metaphrastically — literally
— into English.
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n-born English-language author of plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs and biographies.
Life
Madeleine Masson was born Madeleine Levy in 1912 in JohannesburgJohannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
to a French banker, Emile Levy, and Lili, "a ravishingly beautiful creature with Viennese antecedents". On a trip to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
with her parents, 18-year-old Madeleine met 40-year-old Baron Renaud Marie de la Minaudière. As she put it in her autobiography, I Never Kissed Paris Goodbye, "I was a small-town South African who was being offered Prince Charming on a platter, decked with yachts, châteaux, sable coats, jewels, townhouses and a coat-of-arms equal to that of the Valois."
Madeleine took her surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
"Masson" from one of the Baron's subsidiary titles. While pregnant with her first child, she was informed by the Baron's mistress — from whom she had mistakenly supposed he had parted — that not only were they still linked, but it was her fortune that paid for the Baron's elegant lifestyle. Any disturbance to their relations, it was made clear, would result in withdrawal of her support.
The shock of this revelation caused Masson to miscarry. She abandoned the aristocratic life and embraced Paris' bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, art at Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, wrote for the literary magazine, Les Nouvelles Littéraires. She had an affair with a South African, became the lover of the Swiss painter Géa Augsbourg, got to know Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, and met writers Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
and André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
.
When World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
came, the Jewish-descended Masson left Géa Augsbourg, intending to return to South Africa. On the train to Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, she was persuaded to join the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. She later recalled this period, during which she carried messages and helped escapees, as a time of "total horror". In later years, she helped Tim Buckmaster, son of Maurice Buckmaster
Maurice Buckmaster
Colonel Maurice James Buckmaster OBE was the leader of the French section of Special Operations Executive and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was a corporate manager with the French branch of the Ford Motor Company, in the postwar years serving in Dagenham...
, head of SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
's F (French) Section, prepare a biography of his father.
During a trip to visit Napoleon's tomb on Saint Helena
Saint Helena
Saint Helena , named after St Helena of Constantinople, is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which also includes Ascension Island and the islands of Tristan da Cunha...
, Masson met Captain John Rayner. After a courtship, they contracted a marriage that was to last 32 years.
While running the family home in Bosham
Bosham
Bosham is a small coastal village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, about ) west of Chichester on an inlet of Chichester Harbour....
, West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Masson started an early public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
firm. All the while, she wrote plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs, biographies. The most famous were her autobiography and her biographies of Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
Edwina Cynthia Annette Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma,, GBE, DCVO, CI, DStJ was an English heiress, socialite, relief-worker, wife of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and last Vicereine of India.- Lineage and wealth :Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma...
, and of the celebrated SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
agent Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek, GM, OBE, Croix de guerre was a Polish Special Operations Executive agent. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France....
(aka Christine Granville).
As late as spring 2007, Masson was busy revising an earlier novel about the German massacre on 10 June 1944 of the villagers of Oradour
Oradour-sur-Glane
Oradour-sur-Glane is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in west-central France.The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company...
, near Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and working on a biography of Baroness Emma Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
.
Madeleine Masson died on 23 August 2007, aged 95.
Skarbek
Masson encountered one of her biographees, Krystyna SkarbekKrystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek, GM, OBE, Croix de guerre was a Polish Special Operations Executive agent. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France....
, during a voyage on the Winchester Castle in May–June 1952 from Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, to England to be reunited with her sea-captain future husband. She was intrigued by her stewardess, who "was polite, efficient and distant.... No warning bell rang... to tell me that twenty years later, waking and sleeping, I should try to recall every word, every intonation and every gesture of this woman." Nevertheless, landing at Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
on 13 June, Masson inquired about the full name of her stewardess and was told that it was Christine Granville. A few days later, Masson was shocked to read in her morning paper that, on the night of 15 June, Christine Granville had been murdered in a London hotel. Subsequent days brought sensational stories about Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek, GM, OBE, Croix de guerre was a Polish Special Operations Executive agent. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France....
's (aka Christine Granville's) legendary wartime exploits and courage.
In subsequent years, as Masson sought to learn the fates of her prewar friends and wartime Resistance comrades-in-arms, she fortuitously met people who had known Skarbek and her partner Andrzej Kowerski
Andrzej Kowerski
Andrzej Kowerski was a Polish Army officer and SOE agent in World War II. From 1941 he used the nom de guerre "Andrew Kennedy."-Life:During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Lieutenant Kowerski fought gallantly as a member of Poland's 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Col...
("Andrew Kennedy").
Masson's life story showed similarities to that of her biographee Skarbek. Both were descended from banker's families, had Jewish heritage and a bankrupt aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
in the family (Skarbek's father; Masson's first husband), and had worked during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
with the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
—Skarbek, under SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
sponsorship. This created a natural basis for the author's empathy with her subject. Masson sought out anyone who had known Skarbek and found her most complete informant in Kowerski. Her account of the information that she obtained from him is so detailed that it reads like a verbatim transcript of their conversations. To be sure, inaccuracies occasionally creep in, as when the author of the beautiful pastel sketch of Skarbek is identified as "Pavli Kowska"—presumably it would have been Polish poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, née Kossak , was a Polish poet known as the Polish Sappho and "queen of lyrical poetry" of Poland's interwar period...
, of the famous Kossak
Kossak
Kossak is the surname of the 4 generations of notable Polish painters, writers and poets, descending from the historical painter Juliusz Kossak. The family includes:* Progenitor, Juliusz Kossak , Polish painter from the partitions period...
family of painters. But the essential accuracy of Masson's text is attested by collateral sources. Additionally, she sometimes faithfully presents information that she does not fully understand, including some Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
s that Skarbek (or Kowerski) translated metaphrastically — literally
Literal translation
Literal translation, or direct translation, is the rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-word" rather than conveying the sense of the original...
— into English.