Résumé
Résumé de Une amitié amoureuse
Go deeper: the whole of Une amitié amoureuse
About 5 h 40 min to read.À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who enjoy letters between two witty people, quiet psychological drama, Paris salons of the 1890s, and the gap between what people feel and what they say will find a lively companion here.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
What happens when two people who like each other promise to stay only friends? One November in Paris, Philippe de Luzy writes a polite note to Denise Trémors, offering to bring her a little book of verse. From that note grows a correspondence of more than two hundred letters, and every letter is a move in a delicate game.
Loving Friendship came out in 1896. Hermine Oudinot Lecomte du Noüy wrote it wholly in letters between an idle man of fashion and a young mother who lives apart from her husband and composes songs. There is no narrator, so you learn everything from what the two choose to say. You get a clear look at what choosing friendship over love can cost.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A polite note begins a dangerous friendshipFree
- 2Idleness is Philippe's creed and Denise sees through it
- 3Small gifts and a New Year table bind them
- 4Denise tells the story of her marriage
- 5Nimerck brings a declaration and a refusal
- 6Fourteen months later they begin again
- 7Daily visits and a closer summer tighten the knot
- 8Denise composes while Philippe dreams of writing
- 9Denise's love breaks into the open
- 10The book asks what friendship is without love
Point clé 1 sur 10
A polite note begins a dangerous friendship
The book opens with Philippe writing to Denise on a November day. He asks to call the next afternoon and bring the little volume of verse she wanted. He says he felt they had been friends for years, then adds that he distrusts such instincts.
Denise answers within hours and says yes. She calls the evening where they met tedious, yet says it became so little tedious thanks to him.
After the visit Philippe writes again, delighted that she consents to be simply a woman. In a postscript he wonders whether a hostess has guessed he loves her, though he has told no one.
Denise cries out at once, like an honest player, telling him to look out. Three words in his letter frighten her, yet she still wants the friendship, which she thinks is the loveliest thing a man and a woman can grow. A friendship that names its own danger at the start has already begun to meet it.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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Questions about Une amitié amoureuse
What is Loving Friendship about?
It is a novel told in letters between Philippe de Luzy and Denise Trémors, a man and a woman in 1890s Paris who try to keep a deep friendship free of love and watch it change over several years.
Who wrote Loving Friendship and when?
Hermine Oudinot Lecomte du Noüy wrote it. Her dedication to Laure de Maupassant bears the date October 1896, and the book is set among the salons, musicians and writers of her Paris.
Who is Hélène in Loving Friendship?
Hélène is Denise's young daughter, golden-haired and affectionate. Her small remarks about birds, pennies and dolls cut through the adults' poses, and her bond with Philippe matters more and more as the story goes on.
Is Loving Friendship a true story?
It is fiction, though presented as real letters between friends. Writers such as Maupassant and Massenet appear in the letters as acquaintances of the characters, which gives the book the feel of a true record.
Is Loving Friendship easy to follow?
Its letters are short, dated and lively, each in a clear voice, and many are only a page. Jokes, anecdotes, music and descriptions of Brittany keep the pace pleasant from one letter to the next.
Cite this edition
Lecomte du Noüy, Hermine Oudinot. Loving Friendship. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/loving-friendship.
Lecomte du Noüy, H. O. (2026). Loving friendship. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loving-friendship (Original work published 1896)
Lecomte du Noüy, Hermine Oudinot. Loving Friendship. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loving-friendship.
@book{lecomtedunouy2026loving,
author = {Lecomte du Noüy, Hermine Oudinot},
title = {Loving Friendship},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/loving-friendship},
note = {First published 1896}
}
