The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet: A Novel

by Maureen Gibbon

Genres: Historical Fiction; Alternative History sci-fi

Synopsis

Set in the richly drawn art world of nineteenth-century Paris, this stunning historical novel imagines Édouard Manet's last days in an indelible snapshot of genius, illness, and the dying embers of passion.

Suffering from the complications of syphilis toward the end of his life, Édouard Manet begins to jot down his daily impressions, reflections, and memories in a notebook. He travels for healing respites in the French countryside and finds inspiration in nature—a cloud of dragonflies, peonies blanketed by the morning dew. Back in Paris, the artist holds court in his studio and meets a mysterious muse, Suzon. Entranced by Suzon's cool blue eyes, he decides to paint his final masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, life-sized—and wagers his health to complete it. In a sensual portrait of Manet's last years, illustrated with his own sketches, Maureen Gibbon offers a vibrant testament to the endurance of the artistic spirit.

Release date: September 7, 2021

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Print pages: 393

Sample

Bellevue 11 May 1880

WE HAVE COME TO our rented house with our pots and pans and everyone in tow: Suzanne, my mother, Léon, and me. Even S’s black kitten made the journey. He traveled in a basket, the lid woven shut with ribbon.

The first thing Léon did was wrestle an extra table and small bed into this back room overlooking the garden, which is to be my retreat—my library, my studio. So here I sit like a pasha, watching the unpacking, weighing in. But when Léon asked where I wanted the crates of painting supplies and the easel, I lifted my chin to the corner of the room. That is as much interest as I have in any of it right now.

How much simpler if I were staying in an apartment on the clinic grounds as I did last year! But things are different now, as everyone from Sireday on down has told me. As if I did not know—

As I write, S’s new kitten sits inside the doorway. He watches all the activity, but if anything alarms him, he runs back to hide beneath my chair. I find it comical. Until today he was afraid of me. But in a new place with so much going on, he has decided I am not so bad. I can see him making his calculations as he dashes back. At least the monster with the stiff walk is familiar, he tells himself.

Bellevue12 May 1880

“ARE YOU READY FOR the waterfall, m’sieur?” M. Victor asked this morning when I showed up in the tiled room, as if he had seen me just the day before instead of six months ago. But that is his joke, at least one of them. All the attendants have such comments, and each man employs his repertoire variably.

Last fall the familiarity offended me, but now I see it is necessary. If the treatment were once-and-done, that would be one thing, but day in and day out, and for the second time in under a year? There is no chance at pretense. You cannot come slapping into the room, strip down, and then have a man shoot cold water at your legs, alternating it with massage and slaps and jiggling, and not become familiar.

“Let us hope I don’t drown in today’s waterfall,” I said as I sat myself on his spartan metal chair.

“No, no. It is a fine day, m’sieur. Just sit here and enjoy my chaise longue.”

He had turned on the water by then and began to point the hose at my feet and ankles. Then there was no need to talk. Once the hydropathic treatment begins, the water speaks for us.

What none of the attendants ever ask is how I am. I think the powers in charge must tell them not to. If I volunteer the information, M. Victor greets it with enthusiasm or commiseration, whatever is fitting, but he never inquires. Because of course the truth is all too clear: if we felt at all well, we would none of us patients be here. Instead we limp and slap our way into waterfalls and sylvan pools, where we meet with water sprites and mermaids, joking all the while.

Dr. Materne has me on a three-times-a-day regimen. Water hose and pummeling in the morning and evening, swimming in the afternoon. And while M. Victor and the other attendants are all fine people, all fine men, they are nothing like the women in Dr. Béni-Barde’s clinic in Paris. When M. Victor and the others lay their hands on me, I can pretend no illusion of a pleasurable massage as I did with the Béni-Bardeuses—the muscles of my legs and back are pinched and slapped and then rubbed vigorously between rough palms. It is a kind of torture, but it is a torture I signed up for, that I show up for each day, and where I greet my torturers by name.

When I am not receiving hydropathy, I take short walks, eat, rest, seek the sun when it shines. I live like a mollusk. But it will all be worth it to be healthy again.