Claude Pompidou, the wife of the second President of the Fifth Republic, was a woman of contradictions. She was the longest-lived of France’s premières dames but the briefest and most reluctant (postwar) occupant of the Elys?e Palace.
She was regarded as the first modern First Lady of France but she was never recorded as expressing a political view. She loathed the spotlight but was at the heart of the cultural life of Paris for more than four decades. She was also the first First Lady to found a charity in her own name, the Claude Pompidou Foundation.
She was famed for her chic and was a perennial presence at Paris couture shows yet she professed no particular devotion to fashion. She claimed to have had no knowledge of it until she met her husband. But she became passionate about the arts and during a long and active widowhood she earned the title “godmother of French art”. She occupied no official role but was instrumental in the realisation of the Centre Pompidou, a symbol of contemporary culture and French innovation begun by her husband and completed in his memory.
Claude Jacqueline Cahour was born in Château-Gontier in the Pays de la Loire, one of two daughters of a country doctor. Her mother died when she was 3. In her first year studying law in Paris she met Georges Pompidou, then a teacher of French, Greek and Latin. They married in 1935.
Claude would say that she married a teacher and woke up with the President of France but, as she later admitted, it was not quite that swift. He continued teaching quietly through the war but soon after the Liberation joined the staff of Charles de Gaulle, remaining with him after he left office in 1946. He handled publication of the general’s memoirs and administered the foundation in memory of his daughter, Anne de Gaulle.
Advertisement
In 1953 he joined Rothschild Frères at the invitation of Guy de Rothschild, whose vivacious, social wife Marie-H?lène immediately took to Claude. She was at first dazzled by the vast wealth and stupendous entertainments of the Rothschilds at Château de Ferrières and later the Hôtel Lambert on Île-St-Louis, but she said that her upbringing, as the daughter of a doctor who treated everyone equally, kept her feet on the ground.
In 1962 Georges was plucked by de Gaulle from political obscurity to be Prime Minister. The Pompidous did not move to the Prime Minister’s headquarters, the elegant Hôtel de Matignon, but remained in their apartment in Quai de B?thune on Île-St-Louis, formerly part of the home of Helena Rubenstein. Here they entertained artists and writers – Françoise Sagan, Bernard Buffet, Jeanne Moreau, Pierre Boulez – surrounded by antiques, and abstract and contemporary art by Ernst, Braque, Soulages, Klein and de Sta?l that they had begun to acquire in the mid1950s.
In late 1968, when it was clear that Georges had presidential prospects, wild and unfounded allegations emerged, after the death of Stevan Markovic, a former associate of the actor, Alain Delon, of photographs of the Prime Minister’s wife in an orgy. No such photographs ever surfaced. While her husband suffered no harm, the affair left her with an abiding contempt for politics and the press.
She accepted stoically as “absolute destiny”, her husband’s election in June 1969 as President of France. The satirical Canard Enchaîn? proclaimed; “France has lost a king and gained a managing director.”
The new First Lady’s 5ft 9in frame, ash-blonde hair, olive skin and intense, china-blue gaze made her a designer’s dream. She immediately attracted attention for her Courrèges trousers and early bold Cardin dresses. The Pompidous daringly redecorated some of the apartments at the Elys?e with Op Art and Nouveau R?alisme. There were aluminium walls by Yaacov Agam, settees and armchairs by Pierre Paulin. Serge Poliakoff designed plates and the sculptor Etienne Hajdu made vases and soup tureens.
Advertisement
On their first state visit to the Nixon White House in March 1970, Time magazine reported: “The clothes are on loan, and Madame walks in glory, ogled by the public, photographed by the press and spreading the expensive news of the famous Paris fashion houses wherever she goes.” On a 1971 tour of francophone Africa in oppressive heat, Mme Pompidou sailed effortlessly through in summer outfits by Chanel, Cardin and Lanvin.
The Queen’s visit in May 1972 was a triumph. Although it rained throughout, both women glittered at functions at the Elys?e, the Petit Trianon and the British Embassy. The President attracted some controversy by taking the Queen’s arm as they ascended a staircase but his wife shrugged it off as she recalled a reception a few years earlier when a foreign minister (unnamed) put his hand on her knee, asked for her phone number and told her that as he was also called George she wouldn’t get his name wrong. On another state visit, President Brezhnev left the Elys?e beaming with a baguette under his arm, a gift from his hostess.
After the President’s death from cancer in April 1974, Claude returned to the flat on the Île-St-Louis. She thereafter regarded the Elys?e as a house of sadness and never returned to it.
By the early 1970s work had begun in the depressed district of Beaubourg, near Les Halles, to build a centre for contemporary art, letters and music, and Pompidou’s widow was discreetly but determinedly active in supporting its completion and future. The Pompidou Centre is perhaps their most dramatic and enduring legacy. She would visit it regularly, as a solace whenever she was out of sorts or sad.
In 1970 she had established the Claude Pompidou Foundation to aid the elderly and children with disabilities. For the next 37 years she visited patients, sought donations, and worked closely with its administrators. At the time of her death the foundation had 15 premises and a hospitality school for disadvantaged youth.
Advertisement
She eschewed politics but she remained close to the Chiracs, especially Mme Chirac. But she would not go to the Elys?e – they would visit her.
She found much to occupy her. She loved contemporary music and theatre, faithfully attending opening nights of works by Patrice Ch?reau, Antoine Vitez and Jean-Louis Barrault. She also frequented Paris Op?ra, was president of the Kandinsky Society and a director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
She remained a favourite of the fashion houses and for decades was accorded the place of honour in the front row of the haute couture shows of Ungaro, Lacroix, Ferr?, St Laurent, C?line, Cardin and Dior. In 1997 she published her memoirs, L’?lan du Coeur.
She is survived by her son.
Claude Pompidou, patron of the arts, philanthropist and wife of the 2nd President of the French 5th Republic, was born on November 13, 1912. She died on July 3, 2007, aged 94