All Again and Be Different

Who was Denise Menasce? According to Fenwick in ‘Joan. The remarkable life of Joan Leigh Fermor’ (2017) page 125-130: “her family were upper-middle-class Sephardic Jewish bankers and businessmen, who had been made barons in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” I can’t find any proof for this claim on the internet. There is a Denise de Menasce whose father is a baron but this Denise is born in 1909 and married in 1931 (source).

Our Denise is 24 years old in 1944, so she must be born around 1920. She has a sister called Laure: “Laure my sister” 

 

And has a Turkish nationality (letter 24-2-[19]45): “In the midst of my transports, and rereadings / of the cable, I suddenly heard the wireless, / ‘Turkey has declared war on Germany and / Japan’ _ i.e. Miss Menache becomes an / ally and provided she is not sent / to Turkey as a landgirl, she may be / able to travel in allied countries much more”

Denise has her own flat and her mother is not poor (22-11-[1944]): “I will miss you too! Mummy is giving me some / lovely long diamond earrings in which I hope / to look rather fetching – anyway Hispano Mauresque.”

Was she a student? She wrote (“Sundaynight”; reconstructed around Christmas 1944): “My life at the university is still full of charm, / for the first time in my life I feel the most intelligent / pupil in the room, which is always gratifying.”

She has chosen for France and not Greece. On 15-11-[19]44 she wrote: “(...) I’ve been given the choice between / France o[r] Greece, but I’ve chosen France, as somehow / Athens will be exactly like Cairo in many ways, and I / shall only find the things I am trying to get away / from. It might be fun for three months, but afterwards / it will become a v[ery] beautiful, but v[ery] uncomfortable Cairo. I / am longing for something new, prestine, which I can discover, not what I know already. Don’t you think I / am right darling?”

At the end of January 1945 Paddy went back to England. The day after he wrote a letter to Denise, which she received two months later. On 26-4-1945 she wrote: “(…) [A] million thanks for / the sweetest letter I’ve ever had in my / life, which you wrote the day after you left. / I don’t know whether you still mean all / you wrote over two months ago, but it does / make me happy that you ever did / think such adorable things about a silly little / fool like me. When I look back on it all / I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself. O that / I could have it all again, and be different.” 

P.S. I wrote about Denise before: 01-2022 and 11-2021. And about Balasa: 7-2021, 6-2021, 5-2021, 3-2021, 3-2021, 10-2020 and 9-2020.

P.P.S. Denise is familiar with Balasa. On 31-10-[1944] she wrote: "I've packed your things. / Have found the letter for / Balasa & kept it myself so that / it is there when you want it."