Suzanne Georgette Anna Déchevaux-Dumesnil (7 January 1900[1] – 17 July 1989)[2][3] was a French pianist who was the wife of writer Samuel Beckett.
Six years older than Beckett, Déchevaux-Dumesnil was an austere woman known for avant-garde tastes and left-wing politics.
During the late 1950s, Beckett often stayed in London, where he met Barbara Bray, a BBC script-editor, a widow in her 30s.
Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with Suzanne, for the rest of his life.
On the face of it, this was to make sure that, if he died before her, Déchevaux-Dumesnil would inherit the rights to his work because there was no common-law marriage under French law.