The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Barnes, Julian. The Man in the Red Coat. Random House Canada, 2020.

Barnes’ book is not divided into chapters or parts, though for the purposes of this guide the book is divided into five sections.

The first section consists of pages 1 – 49. Barnes introduces three central figures of the Belle Époque: Dr. Samuel Pozzi, a celebrated socialite and gynecologist born to a Protestant provincial family; Count Montesquiou, a closeted homosexual, writer, and self-proclaimed aesthete whose taste and eccentricities became famous throughout Paris; and Prince Edmond de Polignac, a quiet and dreamy aristocrat and aspiring composer. Barnes describes the Sargent portrait of Pozzi which made the latter famous and earned the book its title, then proceeds to explain how Montesquiou was constantly haunted by shadow ‘selves’ – he was immortalized in Huysmans’ novel A Rebours, which explored dandyism, sexuality, and decadence which were to be the pillars of a large portion of the aesthetic movement in France. Barnes concludes the section with the news that Pozzi, after a successful debut as doctor in Paris and a love affair with actress Sara Bernhardt, settled down and married wealthy aristocrat Thérèse Loth-Cazalis.

The second section consists of pages 50 – 100. Barnes describes duel-fighting and the role of honor in the Belle Époque, as well as key medical advances which Dr. Pozzi helped bring about. He focuses chiefly, however, on dandyism as a movement, exploring Baudelaire, Montesquiou, Jean Lorrain, Oscar Wilde, and other famous dandies to discover their views on beauty, mortality, and morality. The reader then learns that Pozzi’s marriage was a failure, as he and Thérèse realized they were not a good fit and, she being Catholic, resigned themselves to cohabitation without divorce. Barnes explores this and other marriages of the time, using Edmond de Goncourt’s famous ‘gossip’ journal to uncover how society men and women viewed sexuality within and without a marriage. One thing is evident: Pozzi, along with his contemporaries, had no qualms about raising a family with his wife while satisfying his sexual desires completely outside of the marriage.

The third section of the book consists of pages 101 – 151. Barnes turns to painting of the era, exploring Moreau and Degas for themselves while also staying conscious of what the great artists and writers of the day thought of them. He notes John Singer Sargent’s influence and the scandal caused by his painting, ‘Madame X,’ which featured a known married woman posing somewhat seductively. Barnes uses this to launch into an investigation into the blurred line between fact and rumor in biography: was Madame Gautreau, the model for this last portrait, truly sleeping with Dr. Pozzi? Were Pozzi’s paramours flaunted in front of his wife or hidden? Barnes contrasts this heterosexual tension between marriage and love against the life of known homosexuals of the era, since the latter were forced to express their love differently and in secret. Polignac was a homosexual who enjoyed a genuinely respectful and platonic marriage to Winnarretta Singer, an American lesbian, showing how marriage and love – some form of it – could coexist even in the Belle Époque.

The fourth section of the book consists of pages 152 – 207. Barnes writes that Pozzi met Emma Fischoff, a lover who would become his lifelong romantic and travel companion. He dwells heavily on Pozzi’s fraught family life apart from Emma, introducing Catherine Pozzi, his daughter, whose detailed journal entries provide an inside look at her and her mother’s devotion to him and constant suffering at his distant, distracted presence.

In the final section of the book, Barnes writes about Pozzi’s divorce and his continued eminence in the medical world even as his personal life unravelled. Montesquiou, meanwhile, was immortalized in great works of the day more than once, thus Barnes devotes some time to examining Montesquiou’s true nature, his troubled friendships, his selfishness, and his memoirs. Next, Barnes writes of Pozzi’s characteristic aid to a patient – far poorer than his ordinary patients – wherein he operated on the man’s scrotum to try to fix his impotence. The man, dissatisfied at his continued impotence after the surgery, returned to Pozzi’s place of work and shot him, leading to Pozzi’s death. This startling scene comes at the end of the book, with Barnes startlingly describing the end of the life of this ‘heroic’ doctor and reflecting on the kind of man Pozzi was. He finds him genuine in his love for Emma, genuine in his love for his daughter, if terrible at showing it, and charismatic and courageous to the end.