4/4. In the final part of the portrait dedicated to Claude Pompidou, Laurence Pieau returns to the illness and disappearance of her husband, Georges Pompidou.
At the start of 1971, her Georges said nothing to her, but she clearly saw that he was getting more and more tired. Some days he even has difficulty walking. When she questions him (and she questions him very little), he talks about repeated flu, work that exhausts him…
Their son, Alain Pompidou, was at the time an associate professor of medicine. It is therefore him – he told it later in a book – who logically becomes the main interlocutor of the doctors who treat his father.
In April 1972, the President’s personal doctor, Doctor Vignalou, put a name to the Head of State’s illness: Waldenstrom’s disease, a leukemia about which little is known and for which there is no treatment. The era is not one of transparency and medicine does not always reveal to the patient what he is suffering from, even though this patient is the President of the Republic. In The Elysée for women”(1), the historian Joëlle Chevé writes: “At first, Pompidou is informed that he is suffering from a ” bone marrow failure” and Claude is simply reassured about the evolution of her condition without further details. The months that followed confirmed the doctors in this approach. They inform the son of the results of the examinations, who then presents them to his father as a natural evolution and to his mother as temporary disorders”.
A secret disease
Does the President suspect that his end is near? In August 1972, in Brégançonhe wrote his will in secret from Claude (2). He suffers from joint pain, he has put on weight, his cortisone treatment is making his face puffy… The disease is obvious! Georges Pompidou, however, refuses to communicate on his state of health “No, I won’t, he replies to his advisers. I don’t have to answer the papers, I don’t care. I’m not going to post a disclaimer. If I do it once, I’ll have to do it again next year.(3). But will there be a next year?
Journalist Christine Clerc (4) reports that Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, with whom Georges Pompidou befriended at normal school (Jacqueline, Claude’s sister, even went out with him), does not understand that the President does not tell the truth to his wife.
“But anyway, why doesn’t George speak to him? He can’t leave her like this in the dark“
Claude remained in denial until September 1973, according to the then well-informed journalist Raymond Tournou. It was there, when Georges Pompidou returned from an extremely tired trip to China, that she understood.
Giscard, Chaban… the indecent ball of the successors begins, there before their eyes. Pompidou grumbled: “Every time someone shakes my hand, I feel like someone is taking my pulse” (5).
The whole of France watches Claude’s husband suffer martyrdom, sometimes losing his words during his speeches. Charlie Hebdo publishes caricatures of Cabu relating “The Adventures of the Widow Pompidou”… On February 7, 1974, a press release from the Elysée doctor states that the head of state is suffering from an influenza infection. It is said that this is when she broke down.
For how long is there still? She does not leave him, accompanies him on February 11, 1974, to the dinner of the Government which he presides with difficulty. “When Thierry Le Luron, who provides the show, imitates Chaban Delmas, a real estate agent showing the Elysée to two potential buyers, Giscard and Mitterrand, writes Robert Schneider (6), she hardly dares to look at Georges. Pale, he has the strength to be ironic: “I raise a glass to your health… and to my own health, given that I have been deeply touched by the interest shown in me by certain” (7).
Four days later, he cannot chair the Council of Ministers.
“Every time someone shakes my hand, I feel like someone is taking my pulse.”
The President’s Last Days
On March 29, 1974, Claude was with Georges in their house in Orvilliers when a overwhelming sepsis Declares itself. Emergency return to Paris, to their home on the Ile Saint Louis “Pompidou, very weakened, refuses hospitalization, writes the historian Joëlle Chevé (8). Ahe medical team takes care of him at home and Claude questions his son: “I have to know. I want to prepare”. But to the answer that leaves no hope, she still refuses to believe. And she will always refuse. Years later, she will answer the questions of Bertrand Meyer Stabley: “I would not have been informed? Of course not because no one knew anything. We never knew precisely what ailment my husband suffered from. The ultimate infection yes! He could still be there if he hadn’t had this infection at the last moment which took him away”…
Georges Pompidou died on April 2, 1974. Claude demands that the official press release not mention the illness that was fatal to him : “No one will understand this unpronounceable name” she says. And then Georges Pompidou himself did not wish to communicate …
The President is entitled to an official mass in Saint Louis en L’ile and a very simple burial in Orvilliers. Claude Pompidou will never set foot in the Elysée again, the “house of misfortune“. The rest of her life will be devoted to defending the memory of her husband and to fighting for the Pompidou Center which will see the light of day in 1977, and for its foundation.
She will survive Georges Pompidou thirty-three years.
1 Ed du Rocher
2 First Ladies, Robert Schneider, ed Pocket
3 The Elysée, story of a palace, Georges Poisson, ed Pygmalion
4 Tigers and tigresses, Christine Clerc, ed Plon
5 First Ladies, Robert Schneider, ed Pocket
6Ibid
7 Claude Pompidou, the misunderstood, Aude Terray, Ed du Toucan
8 The Elysée for women, Joëlle Chevé, ed du Rocher