Ballet dancer, Céline's wife from 1943, and companion of the flight to Denmark and back — she outlived him by fifty-eight years, dying at 107.
A professional ballet dancer trained in the Paris studios, Lucette Almansor met Louis-Ferdinand Destouches in the mid-thirties and married him in 1943 — in time for the catastrophe: the flight across collapsing Germany in 1944, the Danish exile and imprisonment, and the long return to Meudon, where she taught dance in the house while Céline wrote his last books. Widowed in 1961, she guarded the estate through every storm that followed and became, in extreme old age, the last living witness of the century's most argued-over French writer. She died in 2019, at a hundred and seven.
Met · 1936
The dancer he married in 1943 and never left: through the flight across Germany, the Danish prison and exile, and the last years at Meudon — she survived him by fifty-eight years, guarding the house and the estate.
Lived at · 1951–2019
Lucette kept the Meudon house for nearly seven decades — through Céline's death in 1961 and her own long guardianship of the estate — until her death in 2019 at a hundred and seven.
Worked at · 1951
The upstairs studio was her dance school — she taught there while Céline wrote below, and went on teaching into extreme old age.
Met · 1936
The dancer he married in 1943 and never left: through the flight across Germany, the Danish prison and exile, and the last years at Meudon — she survived him by fifty-eight years, guarding the house and the estate.
