A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire

by Lee Langley

Collector, adventurer and artist, Vivant Denon was a youthful courtier at Versailles; he lived through the French Revolution, and galloped across Egypt with Bonaparte. A skilled survivor, he knew everyone - Marie Antoinette, Voltaire, Robespierre, Catherine the Great, the artists of the day, Boucher and David. He found world fame without seeking it, risking his life and happiness in an endless quest, a love affair with art. Taking a real historical figure, his extraordinary life, his passions, his friendship with Napoleon, the Venetian contessa who was his great love, Lee Langley has created a vast, rich canvas that captures the dying grandeur of Venice, the battle of the Nile, a dazzling liaison dangereuse , bringing to life the sweep of the period alongside a tender and intimate story. Remaining true to Denon's biography, she has with verve, wit and imaginative invention, constructed a parallel existence for a vulnerable, guarded man in a laughing mask. And there is Baptiste, the valet, living in his shadow, observing the antics of the court and the turbulence of the Terror, and his master, ever closer to Napoleon, cramming the Louvre with the looted treasures of the enemies of France. The private life, too, is open to the observant eye of the valet. He is the confidant , the recipient of secrets. Servant and master, the provider of comforts and the privileged - a relationship as close as marriage. And what of the valet himself? He too has hopes. And heartbreak.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Award-winning novelist and travel-writer, Lee Langley was born in Calcutta in the late 1930s, of Scottish parents, and she spent most of her early childhood there. Her parents separated when she was 4, and she spent the next 6 years travelling through India with her mother, where she got caught up in the Indian independence riots. Her family returned to the UK as feelings rose higher against the British. Lee Langley has since written of a sense of loss and exile from a place that she had loved as a child. She won the Writers’ Guild Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Lee Langley has also written film scripts and has adapted novels for TV. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is also an active committee member of the P.E.N., the writers’ organization that campaigns for freedom of speech internationally. Lee Langley is married to the novelist Theo Richmond, and lives in Richmond in London.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel immensely and although I thought it fine I couldn't help thinking a French writer would have taken the plot-line that Ms. Langley has created and run with it in a much more interesting ways (I must admit I am thinking of Stephane Audeguy who in 'The Only Son' wrote a novel about Francois Rousseau the older brother of Jean-Jacques of whom virtually nothing is known and also the French Revolution - see my review at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) because while she largely sticks to the known facts of his life Ms. Langley tells them through the eyes of an invented character Baptiste who had been responsible for Denon since they were boys together.

Although Ms. Langley has created a very convincing novel there is an emptiness at its core - Denon despite his glittering career, adventures, affairs never quite comes alive. It is Baptiste who began as a child sleeping on the floor outside Denon's bedroom door to keep the ghosts away from the sleeping boy to the final days standing by the bedside watching Denon die who fascinates. In the following years he is servant, valet, majordomo, the man who organises Denon's travels and luggage, manages his money, buys and pays for his food and artworks, delivers billet doux to Denon's mistresses and, on their travels everywhere from Sicily to Egypt is still there protecting his master.

Neither Denon nor Baptiste marry or have children they have only each other - seventy years - as master and servant - that is a relationship worth exploring - I am not suggesting that Denon was gay (aside from the absurdity of using such a term for a man born in 1747) - nor am I regretting the lack of a sentimental attachment between masters and servant as propagated in the rose tinted tales of the 'Downtown Abbey' or 'Upstairs Downstairs' school of historical fiction. Ms. Langley is very good at conjuring up the reality of the master servant relationship in its unthinking selfishness but, having created a lifetime together she ends up creating such a compelling fictional character in Baptiste that the real Denon whose life she keeps strictly to the known facts is thrust into the shade.

Still a fine and very readable novel - I think I may read more of her books - my one real complaint is that when Denon and Baptiste return to Paris from Italy in the closing months of The Terror Ms. Langley paints a picture of life in Paris were you couldn't step outside your door or look out a window without being confronted by a mob with a head on a pike. That is the gran guignol of old films of 'A Tale of Two Cities' not a historical reality.

[Patty Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rather slow moving book about a painter who is also a diplomat but is really VERY interested in the art he'll encounter on his diplomatic missions. He is drawn to beautiful women as well, He has a valet who has been his trusted servant since childhood, in Venice the valet meets a chambermaid, they fall in love and marry (which they didn't tell their master and mistress about, that was illegal in those days). The book lurches from one era to another so I'm sorry Lee Langley I for one didn't enjoy your book

[Zane Louw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about the french society during Napoleon era.