Name Francine Faure Marriage location Lyon, France Parents Fernande | Role Mathematician | |
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Children Catherine Camus, Jean Camus Born 6 December 1914 (age 65), Algeria Died 24 December 1979 (aged 65) Similar Albert Camus, María Casares, Simone de Beauvoir | ||
Camus' Death & Lovers (Rare BBC Documentary)
Francine Faure (6 December 1914 in Oran, Algeria – 24 December 1979) was a French pianist specializing in Bach and a mathematician, She was the second wife of Albert Camus, whom she met in 1937 in Algiers. They were married in Lyon on 3 December 1940. She came from a middle-class French family in Oran, Algeria, which was a French colony at the time. She also taught mathematics, sometimes as a substitute teacher.
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Personal life
Francine's father died in World War I, at the Marne, where Camus' father had also died. Her mother, Fernande, was considered by Camus biographer Olivier Todd to be domineering. Her grandfather had built part of the Oran harbor.
Although Camus was indifferent if not hostile to formal marriage, the couple had twins, Catherine and Jean Camus, in Paris in 1945 after the city's liberation. Francine had moved there from Algeria after two years' separation from Albert, who was participating in the French resistance at the time.
She was different from Camus' string of petites amies. Her beauty was striking, but her presence was reserved, unassuming, and gentle. And she had a cœur droit, in the words of Camus.
Francine suffered from and was hospitalized for depression, for which insulin and electroshock therapy were at various times prescribed. At one point she threw herself from a balcony, whether to escape the hospital or to kill herself is not known. Her depression was blamed in part on her husband's infidelities, and above all on his affair with María Casares. Camus told Francine, "They think I'm the guilty one."
Shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize, Albert Camus mentioned in a letter to her cousin Nicole Chaperon how he was moved by the generosity of Francine, “whom I have never stopped loving in my bad way." In the same letter he said that Francine had “forgiven” him.
She and Camus are buried together in Lourmarin.