Patrick Buisson, author of 1940–1945: Années érotiques, wrote about l’Exode: ‘Most of them left in a great hurry and panic, feverishly shutting bags and suitcases. Others prepared methodically as if invited to a weekend house party in the country or an afternoon tea party as depicted by the impressionist painters.’ He cites Geneviève de Séréville, fourth wife of the actor Sacha Guitry, who packed dozens of bottles of nail varnish, face cream and perfume because she had at her disposal a Cadillac with a vast boot. Irène Némirovsky likewise writes of Florence, the fictional mistress of a writer struggling over how to pack his manuscripts and her make-up case. If she took both she could not close the suitcase. ‘She moved the jewellery box, tried again. No, something definitely had to go. But what? Everything was essential. She pressed her knee against the case, pushed down, tried to lock it and failed. She was getting annoyed … For a second Florence hesitated between her make-up case and the manuscripts, chose the make-up and closed the suitcase.’
Sir Edward Spears, Winston Churchill’s personal representative to the French government, was also scathing about the behaviour of those he saw fleeing, men and women. ‘In most of the convoys I saw there were also cars in which sat ladies whose ample proportions and commanding looks proclaimed them to be wives of senior officers.’ Every town and village he passed through appeared to be full of aircrews on the ground with their planes on enormous floats ‘or gaping, idle soldiers. They were not in formations, just individuals in uniform, hanging about’, wondering what to do or where to go, while the Luftwaffe, swarming overhead, was strafing those on the roads with their pathetic pramloads of possessions. Spears, observing what he called the paralysis of the French people, was deeply critical of Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister following the resignation of Edouard Daladier; concerned only to please his mistress, Reynaud allowed insults from the whole cabinet to pass without reprimand. As everyone was trying to reach Bordeaux, Spears believed that the machinery of the French army had completely broken down – a view shared by many French women who felt increasingly betrayed by the impotence of their men. One young woman* spoke for many when she said: ‘The invasion was like rape. To this day when I read about a rape trial I am reminded of the Occupation. This was really violation – violation of my country. It was impossible to remain passive.’ Once at Bordeaux, as Spears commented tartly, there were plenty of kept women among the stream of new political arrivals: ‘the mistresses of ministers who boasted of such attachments, and most of them apparently did, were here au grand complet’. And at the head of the stream was Georges Mandel, the brilliant Interior Minister with whom Churchill had hoped to work should the French government continue the fight from exile, also with a woman not his wife.
But Mandel’s ‘lady’, Béatrice Bretty, was in a different category from those mistresses scorned by Spears. Bretty, approaching forty-seven in 1940,? was one of the most senior actresses at the Comédie-Fran?aise and extremely popular with audiences. Born Béatrice Anne-Marie Bolchesi into a middle-class family, she decided aged fifteen to become an actress after watching Sarah Bernhardt. She took the name Bretty from soubrette, a nickname she was given to describe her type of light soprano voice when she joined the well-known theatrical troupe at around the age of twenty, by then already married to Clément Dangel. It was to be a brief marriage as Dangel was killed at Verdun in 1916, and she never remarried. After almost twenty years of widowhood, in 1935 she met Mandel through his work as head of the French Radio and Television Company and the pair almost immediately became inseparable. Both keen gourmets, they were widely sought after at fashionable dinners in Paris and were often seen together in the finest restaurants. Until Bretty entered his life, Mandel, a widower, had been regarded as a clever loner, dubbed ‘the monk of politics’. But, benefiting from Bretty’s warmth, he seemed to expand. She became Mandel’s regular companion on holidays in Europe as well as at official dinners and public functions. In addition, Bretty took charge of raising his six-year-old motherless daughter, Claude, ‘of whose existence almost no one had been aware until that time’.
From the moment of the armistice, Bretty had refused to stay in a theatre whose independence she felt would sooner or later be compromised. She did not hesitate to follow her lover out of Paris, not only putting herself in considerable danger but risking the loss of her valuable pension as a sociétaire, or full member of the Comédie-Fran?aise. From August 1940 she repeatedly asked for leave of absence rather than retirement, insisting that she was not asking for money because for the moment she did not need it. But at the same time, she believed she had no choice but to leave the state theatre since, once the Nazis were in control, it was impossible for her to live in Paris with a Jewish partner.
Spears, knowing of the couple’s deep attachment, assured Mandel that if he flew to England with him the next day, or went in the waiting destroyer, there would be two places. ‘There must be an authorised French voice, not pledged to surrender, to guide the French Empire,’ he urged. Mandel was torn, fully aware of the consequences for him, a Jew, if he remained in German-occupied France, and yet convinced he must remain precisely because he was Jewish. He believed that if he left France he would be accused of cowardice, of running away, of not being a ‘true’ Frenchman. But there was little time to debate the issue.