Léontine Lippmann

Léontine Lippmann (14 June 1844 - 12 January 1910), better known by her married name of Madame Arman or Madame Arman de Caillavet, was the muse of Anatole France and the hostess of a highly fashionable literary salon during the French Third Republic.

[1] Born into a wealthy Jewish family as a banker's daughter, she married Albert Arman.

Beautiful in her youth, with clear blue eyes, black hair, and a mocking mouth, she was intelligent, cultivated and spoke four languages.

Sitting in a bergère to the right of the fireplace, with Anatole France standing in front of the fireplace, every Sunday she welcomed the French fashionable, intellectual and political elites, including writers, actors, lawyers and députés (but not musicians, since she and France did not like music).

Maurice Barrès, Louis Barthou, Tristan Bernard, Sarah Bernhardt, Prince and Princess Bibesco, Léon Blum, the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, Georg Brandes, Aristide Briand, Georges Clemenceau, Colette and her first husband Henry Gauthier-Villars (known as Willy), Michel Corday, Dr. Paul-Louis Couchoud, François Crucy, Marie and Pierre Curie, Jean-Élie, Duke Decazes, Gugliemo Ferrero, Robert de Flers, the dancer Loïe Fuller, Fernand Gregh, Paul de Grunebaum, the actor Lucien Guitry and his son Sacha Guitry, Gabriel Hanotaux, Jean Jaurès, Léopold Kaher, Jules Lemaitre, Count de Lisle, Pierre Loti, Charles Maurras, Pierre Mille, Robert de Montesquiou, the abbot and astronomer Théophile Moreux, abbé Mugnier, the painter Munkacsy, Anna de Noailles, Hugo Ogetti, Raymond Poincaré, Prof. Samuel-Jean Pozzi, Marcel Prévost, Count Giuseppe Primoli, Marcel Proust, Charles Rappoport, Joseph Reinach, the actress Réjane, Commandant Rivière, J.-H. Rosny the elder, Baron and Baroness Rothschild, Marcel Schwob, and Marcelle Tinayre.