The Food of Love

Though a gifted artist and musician, perhaps the Princesse's greatest talent was to recognize and cultivate genius in others. Between 1890 and 1940, her wealth helped support composers from Faurâe, Debussy, Satie and Ravel to Poulenc, Milhaud, Tailleferre and Kurt Weill, and also helped Diaghilev and Nadia Boulanger. She mixed happily with painters as varied as Sargent and Picasso, and writers including Cocteau, Valâery, Rosamond Lehmann and Virginia Woolf. She had a long and turbulent friendship with Proust, and a longer, more peaceful one with Colette. She also had a series of relationships with women such as Ethel Smyth, Olga de Meyer, Romaine Brooks, Violet Trefusis, and Clara Haskil.--From jacket copy.