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Biographies GeneralFrench History
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Publisher: Ward Library
Pages: 164
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD
I
n bygone days I was often told that I had two mothers, and, as a matter
of fact, I did have two-the mother who gave me life and my maternal
great-aunt, CharlotteMasson. The latter came from an old family of lawyers
named Gayard and this relationship makes me a descendant of General Del-
cambre, one of the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His granddaughter
married Count Durrieu of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
My great-aunt was born in the provinces in 1781, but she was adopted by a
childless aunt and uncle who made their home in Paris. He was a wealthy
lawyer and they lived magnificently.
My great-aunt was a precocious child-she walked at nine months-and she
became a woman of keen intellect and brilliant attainments. She remem-
bered perfectly the customs of the Ancien Regime, and she enjoyed telling
about them, as well as about the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the
times that followed. Her family was ruined by the Revolution and the slight,
frail, young girl undertook to earn her living by giving lessons in French, on
the pianoforte-the instrument was a novelty then-in singing, painting, em-
3 CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
broidery, in fact in everything she knew and in much that she did not. If she
did not know, she learned then and there so that she could teach. After-
wards, she married one of her cousins. As she had no children of her own,
she brought one of her nieces from Champagne and adopted her. This niece
was my mother, Clemence Collin. The Massons were about to retire from
business with a comfortable fortune, when they lost practically everything
within two weeks, in a panic, saving just enough to live decently. Shortly af-
ter this my mother married my father, a minor official in the Department of
the Interior. My great-uncle died of a broken heart some months before my
birth on October 9, 1835. My father died of consumption on the thirty-first
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