Jacques Bizet

Jacques Bizet (10 July 1872 – 3 November 1922) was a French physician and businessman best known for his long friendship with novelist Marcel Proust. He was the son of composer Georges Bizet, who died when the boy was three and before his works gained success. His mother was Geneviève Halévy, who became known as a of salons.

Biography Bizet was born in Paris to composer Georges Bizet and his wife Geneviève Halévy. He was named for his father's patron and his cousin and grandfather, Jacques-Fromental Halévy. He was of Portuguese-Jewish descent through his mother.

Georges Bizet died suddenly when the boy was three, and he became particularly close to his mother. About ten years later, she remarried in 1886. Her second husband was Émile Straus (1844–1929), a wealthy lawyer and passionate art collector.

Geneviève Straus ran a lively literary and arts salon, which helped to stave off the depression towards which she tended. Her son seemed to have inherited that tendency. While she was hosting the salon, Jacques came to know many of the Parisian artistic and literary celebrities of the day. Bizet's cousin and contemporary Daniel Halévy started at the same school at the same time: he was a large child and soon established himself as the school bully.

The relationship between the cousins and Proust was sustained by other, more positive ways. Proust seems to have been somewhat in awe of the cousins' family connections and social prominence. Daniel's father, Ludovic Halévy, was a versatile author and dramatist whose fame among Parisian intellectuals at the time would have been quite as great as that of composer Georges Bizet. As a teenager Proust may already have become aware of how he could make use of the physical, psychological and behavioural traits of his school contemporaries and their family members in his future novels. Leading members of the twentieth-century literary establishment were among the contributors, including Gaston Arman de Caillavet, Robert de Flers, Daniel Halévy and Marcel Proust. Another contributor, Léon Blum, later became Prime Minister of France. Jacques Bizet wrote a number of the articles. The sudden closure of Le Banquet after only a year came as a surprise. Bizet wrote several subsequently forgotten theatre pieces, influenced by the plays of Pierre de Marivaux and Oscar Wilde.

The heightened political and social polarisation provoked by the Dreyfus affair was followed by a decline in popularity for the salon of Émile Straus. People avoided being seen in the company of those who had taken an opposite position in the affair. A few years later, in 1902, Bizet was provoked into challenging dramaturge André Picard to a duel. A tragic denouement was narrowly avoided. Bizet joined the bandwagon, becoming a director of "Taximètres Unic de Monaco", a substantial taxi business that had been founded by the Rothschilds.

Bizet also worked with Paris automobile manufacturer Georges Richard, who was extensively funded by the Rothschilds. According to one source, Bizet ran a dealership selling cars for Richard. In 1905 the two men teamed up (with others) to launch Unic cars. Through Georges Richard, Bizet met industrialist .

In 1909 Salomon left to set up business independently of Richard: Bizet joined with him to establish the automobile manufacturer known as Le Zèbre. Salomon was the engineer-entrepreneur while Bizet was the principal source of funds for the enterprise.

Over the next few years Bizet became increasingly irascible. In 1912, he had a duel with Count Hubert de Pierredon after they had a violent confrontation, but neither caused the other lasting damage.

Two years later, after the outbreak of the Great War, Bizet served as a military physician at the Saint-Martin Hospital. Later during the war he managed a munitions factory.

Personal life On 1 June 1898 Jacques Bizet had married a distant cousin, Madeleine Camille Breguet, in Paris. She died on 15 October 1900 while undergoing an operation by surgeon-gynecologist Samuel Jean de Pozzi. (He was a former lover of Bizet's mother.)

Several years later Bizet married again in 1904, to Alice Franckel. She had also been married before. Born in Hamburg, at some time she moved to Paris. In 1919 the Bizet couple divorced without having children.