Suzanne: Fragments of Memories

Little has been written about Suzanne Beckett, née Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900–1989). In biographies of Samuel Beckett, and in the even more numerous memoirs and commentaries discussing Beckett’s life, Suzanne disappears quickly – sometimes as soon as she is evoked – and she has rarely been acknowledged as someone who led a rich and interesting life in her own right. Her maiden name, Déchevaux-Dumesnil, has been widely and persistently misspelt as ‘Deschevaux-Dumesnil’ or ‘Déschevaux-Dumesnil’, although it appears just above Beckett’s own name on their tombstone at the Montparnasse Cemetery – a tombstone visited by so many, and photographed so often. The most caricatural portrayals render her as someone who complains when he receives the Nobel Prize, squanders his money and hinders his aspiration to have a good time. Overall, based on some accounts, it can be difficult to understand how a writer like Beckett would have wanted to spend his life with her and why their relationship lasted over fifty years. This biographical essay written by Michèle Tholozan-Warluzel, Suzanne’s great-niece, and translated by Emilie Morin, gives us a fuller view of this remarkable person. Suzanne, Michèle Tholozan-Warluzel tells us, had no time for sentimentality; she inhabited the here and now; she believed that women should be liberated from the weight of conventions; she held the institution of marriage in profound contempt; she felt passionately about the preservation of human and animal life; she frequented concert halls, museums and theatres assiduously throughout her life and loved Paris deeply. She was much loved by her family and friends. This biographical essay brings to life a strikingly modern woman, who seems in some ways better suited to our time than hers.