| Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil | |
| Birth Name: | Suzanne Georgette Anna Déchevaux-Dumesnil' |
| Birth Date: | 7 January 1900 |
| Birth Place: | Argenteuil, France |
| Death Place: | Paris, France |
| Burial Place: | Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris |
| Known For: | lover and later wife of Samuel Beckett |
Suzanne Georgette Anna Déchevaux-Dumesnil (7 January 1900[1] – 17 July 1989)[2] [3] was a French pianist who was the lover and later wife of writer Samuel Beckett.
In the 1930s, Beckett chose Déchevaux-Dumesnil as his lover over the heiress Peggy Guggenheim. Six years older than Beckett, Déchevaux-Dumesnil was an austere woman known for avant-garde tastes and left-wing politics. She was a pianist.[4]
During the Second World War, Beckett joined the French Resistance. For over two years, he and Déchevaux-Dumesnil hid from the Germans in a village in the South of France.[5]
Beckett's Waiting for Godot has been called "a metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks... during the day and walked by night..."[6]
During the relationship between Beckett and Déchevaux-Dumesnil, which lasted more than 50 years, she maintained a private circle of friends and is credited with having influenced Beckett to produce more work.
During the late 1950s, Beckett often stayed in London, where he met Barbara Bray, a BBC script-editor, a widow in her 30s. James Knowlson writes of them: "Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted to her and she to him. 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."[7] Soon, their association became "a very intimate and personal one".[8] In a visit to Paris in January 1961, Bray told Beckett she had decided to move there.[9] His response was unusual. In March 1961, he married Déchevaux-Dumesnil in a civil ceremony in Folkestone. 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. He may also have wanted to affirm his loyalty to her.[9] In June 1961, Bray moved to Paris, and despite his recent marriage, Beckett spent much of his time with her.[10] This side of his life was not well known, as Beckett's reserve was "allied to his fear of giving offence to Suzanne".[11] Beckett's play Play (1963) may have been inspired by these events.
Déchevaux-Dumesnil died at age 89 in July 1989, five months before Beckett. They were interred together in the cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.[3]