BOOK - THE MAN IN THE RED COAT by JULIAN BARNES

I recently bought a book because of the cover. It is The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes, published by Jonathan Cape,  October 2019. It is about a French Surgeon, Soldier and Socialite, Dr Samuel-Jean Pozzi (1846 - 1918).

The Man in the Red Coat is published by Jonathan Cape

It's a great read as William Doyle in the TLS states "Barnes is steeped in French literature"  and the full TLS article is here.

The Painting:  Barnes talks about how he first came across this painting and for all that he knew a lot about French artists and writers he had never come across this man, Dr Pozzi, who was based in Paris.

He starts out telling about the story of the painting.  

The original painting by John Singer Sargent, Dr. Pozzi at Home, 1881

In 1881 John Singer Sargent, then 25 and based in Paris, submitted his first portrait to the Royal Academy. Entitled Dr Pozzi at Home, it was a full-length study of a young, bearded man in a long crimson robe in front of a set of luxuriant burgundy velvet curtains. The sensual, sanguinary colour scheme seemed made for the subject. 

The Man:  

He enjoyed great celebrity in the Parisian belle epoque, was a society surgeon, a world-renowned pioneer of gynaecology, and an equally notorious womaniser... " a man of prodigious abilities and flagrant infidelities".. very handsome, well connected and very serious in his profession.  (He visited Glasgow to see Lister to see the work he was doing in relation to surgical asepsis.)

"Pozzi lived a life among a vivid circle of artists and libertines, including the irrepressible aesthete Count Robert de Montesquiou, (known by his friend Marcel Proust as 'the professor of beauty'), his sometime enemy the wolfish scandal-monger, writer and duellist Jean Lorrain, and a revolving cast of friends and sparring partners including the free-loving Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde, Sargent and James MacNeill Whistler."

The Book: 
Basically, it is a collection of stories with lots of parenthetical asides which I quite enjoyed. I also had to look up a few words which certainly opened my eyes to the more unusual aspects of French life, e.g. duels, marriage arrangements, which were part of 'normal' life and which perplex the non-French! 

Julian Barnes gives examples of French writers, artists, 'dandies' at that time who crossed back and forth between Paris and London at the end of the 19th Century, those who were aspiring to be English and vice-versa.  Think of Oscar Wilde (although he is not English).  Pozzi moved in these circles, was 'everywhere'.

Link to Guardian article by Tim Adams is. here.

The Surgeon:
Pozzi’s career takes off during the surgical innovation that followed the relatively recent discoveries of anaesthesia (1840s) and antisepsis (1860s) particularly in the field of gynaecology. He was widely admired by patients and colleagues in his own time.

Laparotomy operation at the Broca hospital, Paris, 1901. Prof. Pozzi is standing forefront, on the right of patient.

* * * * * * * ** and while we are here * * * * * * * * * 

The Diva and the Doctor God: Letters from Sarah Bernhardt to Doctor Samuel Pozzi by Caroline de Costa and Francesca Miller,  Xlibris, Corp. (28 Oct. 2010)

Summary of this book:

The great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) conducted an affair with her doctor, gynecologist Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918) in the decade before he married. They remained friends, and she always called him her Docteur Dieu (doctor god).

The handsome physician was a leading light in French gynecology and in the Paris arts community.

At first happy, Pozzi’s marriage degenerated into coldness, but his wife would not grant him a divorce. He then established a long-standing, public relationship with Emma Fischhof. During the Dreyfus affair, which unmasked the horror of entrenched anti-Semitism in France, physician and actress both fought against the ill treatment of the Jewish officer.

In 1915 and at Sarah’s insistence, Pozzi amputated her painful leg. Three years later, he was shot and killed by a disgruntled and delusional patient who blamed him for a minor illness.