Near Toulouse, Olivier Racaud recounts “his life with the Little Model Girls” in a book
President of the Musée du Pays Verfeillois, Olivier Racaud recounts in a book his childhood as a neighbor of the domain of the Little Girls Models.
The cemetery of the Little Model Girls remains a tourist hotspot in Verfeil. Sacred “the smallest museum in France” when it was created in 1976, the Musée du Pays Verfeillois retains a few objects that belonged to them in the 1860s. Ségur, the historian Olivier Racaud, president of the museum, confides in a book “his childhood with the Little Girls Models”.
Book filled with anecdotes
“I evoke memories that go back more than 35 years. I spend all my vacations and weekends there. In fact, I wanted to tell my story through theirs, everything I experienced in the 1980s, when I was barely 7 years old,” explains Olivier Racaud. A book filled with anecdotes, to be read with relish. He adds: “Several objects were given to us for the museum by a descendant of Eulalie Larrey, who was the companion of the Little Girls Models, also buried in front of the gate of the cemetery where they lay.”
A rich correspondence
Heroines of the Countess of Ségur’s novels, such as “Les Malheurs de Sophie” or “Un Bon petit diable”, the story of the Little Girls Models begins in the middle of the 19th century in Aube, in the Orne, at the Château des Nouettes. The Comtesse de Ségur lives there with her daughter, Nathalie de Ségur, married to the diplomat Paul de Malaret. But his professional activities took him to London, where he settled with his wife and two daughters: Camille and Madeleine. The distance then weighed on the morale of the Countess, who saw this separation badly with her granddaughters to whom she regularly told stories. This is why she decides to write stories for them, over the many letters she sends them. Once published, this correspondence will enrich the libraries of many children of the 20th century.