Lyautey has been called “perhaps France’s most distinguished – or infamous – homosexual.”
[50] Prime Minister
Georges Clemenceau – whom Lyautey despised, as he did most politicians – is quoted as having said:
Here is an admirable and courageous man who always had balls up to his ass. It’s just a shame that they are not always his.
[51]
It has been speculated that Lyautey might have provided
Marcel Proust with the model for the character of the homosexual Baron de Charlus in his
magnum opus Remembrance of Things Past.
[50]
The actual evidence for Lyautey being a homosexual is primarily circumstantial,
[52] but it was widely regarded as an open secret at the time,
[51][53] one which some historians claim Lyautey did not take any effort to hide.
[54][55] Robert Aldrich writes that he liked hot climates and “the masculine company of young officers”.
[9] Lyautey’s wife is said to have told a group of her husband’s young officers that “I have the pleasure of informing you that last night I made you all cuckolds,” implying that the officers were all
paramours of her husband, and that she had had sex with Lyautey the night before.
[51]