rue de Berri. From the middle of the 19th century until the 1930s, a lady of society had to hold her "day", which meant that her salon was opened for visitors in the afternoon once a week, or twice a month. Days were announced in Le Bottin Mondain. The visitor gave his visit cards to the lackey or the maître d'hôtel, and he was accepted or not. Only people who had been introduced previously could enter the salon. Marcel Proust called up his own turn-of-the-century experience to recreate the rival salons of the fictional duchesse de Guermantes and Madame Verdurin. He experienced himself his first social life in salons such as Mme Arman de Caillavet's one, which mixed artists and political men around Anatole France or Paul Bourget; Mme Straus' one, where the cream of the aristocracy mingled with artists and writers; or more aristocratic salons like Comtesse de Chevigné's, Comtesse Greffulhe's, Comtesse Jean de Castellane's, Comtesse Aimery de La Rochefoucauld's, etc. Some late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris salons were major centres for contemporary music, including those of Winnaretta Singer (the princesse de Polignac), and Élisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe. They were responsible for commissioning some of the greatest songs and chamber music works of Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. Until the 1950s, some salons were held by ladies mixing political men and intellectuals during the IVth Republic, like Mme Abrami, or Mme Dujarric de La Rivière. The last salons in Paris were those of Marie-Laure de Noailles, with Jean Cocteau, Igor Markevitch, Salvador Dalí, etc., Marie-Blanche de Polignac (Jeanne Lanvin's daughter) and Madeleine and Robert Perrier, with Josephine Baker, Le Corbusier, Django Reinhardt, etc. Salons outside France Salon sociability quickly spread through Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many large cities in Europe held salons along the lines of the Parisian models. Belgium Prior to the formation of Belgium, Béatrix de Cusance hosted a salon in Brussels in what was then the Spanish Netherlands in the mid-17th century. In the late 18th century, the political salon of Anne d'Yves played a role in the Brabant Revolution of 1789. In Belgium, the 19th-century salon hosted by Constance Trotti attracted cultural figures, the Belgian aristocracy and members of the French exiled colony. Denmark In Denmark, the salon culture was adopted during the 18th century. Christine Sophie Holstein and Charlotte Schimmelman were the most notable hostesses, in the beginning and in the