He had several well-known affairs and ended marriages abruptly to other women
Although Debussy is well known for his tranquil music, his personal life, particularly as it related to women, was anything but. He had a number of well-known affairs and ended his marriages to other women suddenly. It's one of the interesting facts about Claude Debussy that we want to mention. Once, author Marcel Dietschy penned: “There was a woman at each crossroad of Debussy’s life. Certainly women of all ages seemed fascinated by him, and they attached themselves to him like ivy to a wall.”
In the 1890s, as he established his reputation, Debussy shared a home in Montmartre with a woman by the name of Gabrielle DuPont. After working for DuPont for more than ten years, he abruptly told her to find another place to live so he could wed model and seamstress Rosalie Texier. Due to his sympathy for Gaby and women in general, Debussy lost friends, and DuPont shot herself but survived and vanished into obscurity.
Rosalie Texier, however, allegedly did not satiate Debussy's intellectual curiosity, so in the summer of 1904, after nearly 5 years of marriage, he sent her home from their seaside getaway (and later gave her the written okay to divorce him) and picked up another woman named Emma Bardac that same day from the train station (pictured with Debussy above). Claude Debussy had his only child, Claude-Emma Debussy, with Emma in 1905. He remained with her for the rest of his life and wed Bardac in 1908.
