Marie Nordlinger (1876–1961)

The daughter of a cotton industrialist in Manchester, Marie Nordlinger met Marcel Proust in Paris through her cousin the Venezuelan composer Reynaldo Hahn. It was there that a friendship with the French novelist began and soon blossomed thanks to the help she gave him to translate two of John Ruskin’s works into French. This talented, multilingual artist and sculptor, the “Parisienne from Manchester”, went on to lead a remarkable life in the art world. She sculpted in Hamburg and in Belle Époque Paris; she negotiated contracts in America for the Paris-based art dealer and disseminator of Japonisme Siegfried Bing; she helped catalogue in Detroit the precious art collections of the industrialist Charles Lang Freer; back in Paris, she opened her own antique shop. With great stoicism, Marie overcame personal tragedies: her marriage to the German art historian Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl ended in divorce; during the Great War her belongings were confiscated; and in the Second World War her beloved son was killed in a flying accident. After the publication of her correspondence from Proust, Lettres à une amie, in 1942, she became a celebrity, her Manchester home the center of pilgrimage for Proustians from all over the world. Her later years she spent promoting the memory of Proust and that of her cousin Reynaldo, with whom she had been in love