Baron Yaqub Levi de Menasce
Baron Félix de Menasce with his daughters Claire and Denise and his son Jean.
Siegfried Sassoon, Lord David Cecil and Jean de Menasce in a snapshot taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell. ln 1922 he made the French translation of a book by the philosopher Bertrand Russel, whom he knew as a fellow member of Lady Ottoline Morrell's salon at Oxford.
Here too Félix de Menasce’s younger son Jean (1902–1973) would stay with his family on his returns from Europe where he would speak of his friendships with a wide variety of literary figures. Among them was Constantine Cavafy, whose work he promoted while he was at Oxford, publishing four translations in Oxford Outlook in 1924, and also T. S. Eliot, a friend, who called him ‘my best translator’: Jean did The Waste Land and later Ash Wednesday, East Coker and other of Eliot’s works into French. Jean was born in Alexandria on 24 December 1902. After the local Lycée Français, Jean de Menasce remained in Cairo studying at its French School of Law. Thereafter he continued his education at Oxford University, then went to the Sorbonne to study oriental languages. A cousin of Jean de Menasce was the writer and diplomat Georges Cattaui.
A second cousin was the composer and pianist Jacques de Menasce.
Claire de Menasce in costume for a 1931 review.
Claire Vincendon, standing centre, with her husband Jacques at a Finney carnival party in Alexandria. This is a detail of a photograph in Michael Haag's book Vintage Alexandria.
Félix and his wife Rosette's two daughters lived in the house as well, Denise until she married a barrister and Claire for several years after her marriage to Jacques Vincendon, who was made secretary general of the Land Bank of Egypt by Félix who was director. Claire Vincendon's passion was the theatre, which was how most other people got to know her; she acted in and designed costumes for the entertainments she staged for guests at the great rambling house on the corner of the Rue Rassafa and the Rue Menasce, where her daughter Claude was born in 1925.
Princess Toussoun whose father-in-law Omar Toussoun was known as the Prince of Alexandria; Mrs Aly Yehia Pasha, wife of the wealthiest Egyptian cotton broker and financier; Gina Bachauer, the famous Greek concert pianist and friend of the Menasces; and Baroness Rosette de Menasce in Alexandria 1948.
The wedding of Jimmy Mawas’s parents, Denise de Menasce and Alfred Mawas, 1931. Left to right Miss Polly O’Mara, the bride, Baroness Rosette de Menasce, the groom, Claire Vincendon (the sister of the bride).
Rose Larriba, aka Baroness Rosette de Menasce (1875 -1949) was born on 9 February 1875 in Paris. Rosette had arrived in Alexandria in the 1890s, and had married a financier and one of the city’s wealthiest men, Baron Félix de Menasce on 17 October 1903. They lived in his palatial residence at Moharrem Bey neighborhood, then a posh suburb of Alexandria. It was named after Mohamed Ali’s son in law, who was the Admiral of the Egyptian fleet, and it was every Alexandrian’s dream to have a house there. Rosette's father is Cyprien Larriba (1845), a chauffeur, and her mother is Claudine de Bustos (1853), a boot stitcher.
A ball at the Cecil Hotel, Alexandria, c. 1950
Rose de Menasce (not to be mistaken for Rosette de Menasce) at the Sporting Club, 1914. She was married to Baron Edmund de Menasce, a cousin of Baron Félix de Menasce.
Rose de Menasce (not to be mistaken for Rosette de Menasce) at the Sporting Club, 1914. She was married to Baron Edmund de Menasce, a cousin of Baron Félix de Menasce.
References and credits: Voices from Cosmopolitan Alexandria, 2006, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Michael Haag and Geneanet.