The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis (31 page)

“I was the son”:
Ibid.

“It’s impossible”:
Revue Illustrée
, 15 May 1896, from the collection of Jean Hournon.

“a young scamp”:
Horace de Viel-Castel,
Mémoires sur la règne de Napoléon III, 1852
–
1864
(Paris: Chez Tous les Libraires, 1883).

“This play is shameful”:
Ibid.

“pocket-handkerchiefs as a provision for a play”:
Henry James,
The Scenic Art
:
Notes on Acting and the Drama, 1872
–
1901
(London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949).

“It’s the new theatre”:
Arsène Houssaye, “Souvenirs de jeunesse,” Sonnet LXXI (Paris: Flammarion, 1896).

“He could see the end of one era”:
Henry James,
The Scenic Art.

“desired, demanded and begged”:
in Peter Southwell-Sandor,
Verdi: His Life and Times
(London: Midas Books, 1978).

“It’s a work which goes straight to my heart” Quoted in Choulet,
Promenades à Paris et en Normandie auec la dame aux camélias
(Paris:
Editions Charles Corlet, 1998).

“How could Violetta be in her condition”:
Quoted in Arianna Stassinopoulos,
Maria: Beyond the Callas Legend
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980).

“What is immensely striking”:
Quoted in Joanna Richardson,
The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 14th-Century France
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967).

“If only I had seen her Marguerite”:
Quoted in Guido Noccioli,
Duse on Tour, Diaries 1906–07
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982).

“Nothing makes any difference”:
James,
The Scenic Art.

“an old clown”:
Quoted in Justine Picardie,
Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

“She never touches but kisses” Quoted in Diana Souhami,
Greta & Cecil
(London:
Jonathan Cape, 1994).

“old hack story”:
Frederick Ashton to author.

“a mysterious friend”:
Bernard Raffailli, in notes to Dumas fils,
La dame aux camélias
(Paris: Gallimard, 1975).

“No one had told them”:
Théodore de Bauville,
Mes souvenirs
(Paris: G. Charpentier, 1883).

“What rankles in me” and following analyses of Violetta:
Quoted in Nicholas John, ed.,
Violetta and Her Sisters: The Lady of the Camellias
(London: Faber & Faber, 1994).

“something of that vulnerability”:
Margot Fonteyn,
Autobiography
(London: W. H. Allen, 1975).

“Oh how I could have loved!”:
Julie Bernat Judith,
La vie d’une comédienne: Mémoires de Madame Judith de la Comédie-Française et souvenirs sur ses contemporains
, ed. Paul Gsell (Paris: J. Tallandrier, 1911).

Performance history has made this a love story:
Isabelle Adjani played Marguerite at the age of forty-five; Fonteyn was forty-four to Nureyev’s twenty-five; and in the most recent
Marguerite and Armand
partnership there are fifteen years between Tamara Rojo and twenty-three-year-old Sergei Polunin.

“far superior to the profession she practises”:
Le Mousquetaire
, 23 March 1855.

“Without her knowing it”:
Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult,
Correspondence
, ed. Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas (Paris: Fayard, 2001). Letter to Marie d’Agoult, Iassy, 2 May or 2 June 1847. Frederick Ashton always felt that the Piano Sonata in B Minor—the music he chose for
Marguerite and Armand
before learning of Liszt’s affair with Marie—serendipitously fell into place after he discovered the context. “One doesn’t know how much of the piece was Liszt’s memory of her. It may not have been so, possibly not in the least. But you see it
could
have been.” Ashton to David Daniel, November 1974.

“Continuously going up and down green humps”:
Theodore Reff, ed.,
The Notebooks of Edgar Degas
(Oxford University Press, 1976).

“He was of an ideal beauty”:
Charles du Hays,
L’ancien Merlerault: Récits chevalins d’un vieil éleveur
(Paris: Morris Père et Fils, 1885).

“Marie Deshayes fell in love at first sight”:
Ibid.

The younger of their two daughters was Marie Louise Michelle Deshayes:
The source of the error was the article “
Les quartiers de la dame aux camélias,”
written in 1887 by Count Gérard de Contades, president of the Historic and Archaeological Society of Orne. The Ornaise historian Robert du Mesnil du Buisson, himself a descendent of Anne du Mesnil, put the record straight, explaining that the confusion had arisen over the homonyme of Louis Deshayes (born 1761, son of Anne de Mesnil and Etienne Deshayes) and Louis Deshayes (born in 1765, son of Louis Deshayes and Françoise Riche). The correct family tree, which first appeared in the January–March 1982 edition of
Au Pays d’Argentelles: La Revue Culturelle de l’Orne
, is duplicated in Jean-Marie Choulet,
Promenades à Paris et en Normandie avec la dame aux camélias
(Paris: Editions Charles Corlet, 1998).

“Because the Count du H. was a gentleman”:
E. du Mesnil,
L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux
, 10 September 1890.

“After her recovery”:
Ibid.

It was Marie’s aunt and uncle:
An unpublished letter written by the well-known Ornaise writer Gustave Le Vavasseur claims that after selling his wife’s possessions in the town square of Exmes, Marin took both girls to Paris—but this is a misapprehension: Delphine did not leave Normandy until after her sister had died. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

“The immense convoy was watched”:
Imbert de Saint-Amand,
The Duchess of Berry and the Revolution of 1830
(London: Hutchinson, 1893).

“He made everyone tremble”:
Charles Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852.

Maison Fremin, the umbrella shop where she began work:
Vienne misspells the owner Louis Fremin’s name as Firmin.

a louche element to Gacé:
Vienne claims that it was in Gacé that Alphonsine met the procuress whom Alexandre Dumas fils names Prudence in
La dame aux camélias.
But, as Vienne also calls her Prudence, rather than her real name, Clémence Prat, this may just be supposition on his part.

“the old swooning sweetness”:
Appendix to R.W.B. Lewis,
Edith Wharton: A Biography
(New York: Harper Collins, 1975).

Vienne, however, insists that it was Marin:
Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852. Fiennes wrote with such insider knowledge about Alphonsine’s early life that he must have been fed information by someone close to her—very probably her maid.

Alphonsine was given a stuffed green lizard:
In a letter to the firm making an inventory of her dead sister’s belongings, Delphine wrote, “Look carefully in my sister’s peignoir, and, unless it’s been stolen, you will find there a little box containing a green lizard.” Charles du Hays, “The Ring and the Lizard,” in
Récits du coin du feu: Autour du Merlerault
(Alençon, 1886).

“What do you expect?”:
Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852.

“child full of fear”:
Ibid.

“pay for her promiscuity”:
Paris Elégant
, 1 March 1847.

“the most suspect places”:
Gustave Claudin,
Mes souvenirs: Les boulevards de 1840–1870
(Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1884).

“She was nibbling a green apple”:
Nestor Roqueplan,
Parisine
(Paris: J. Hetzel et Cie, 1868).

“Not only delicious, but sacred” Théodore de Banville,
Petites études, Paris vécu
(Paris:
G. Charpentier, 1883).

“like a peasant” … “This made her”:
Roqueplan,
Parisine.

“Most of those without cavaliers left better accompanied”:
Anon.,
Paris dansant; ou, Les filles d’Hérodiade
(Paris: J. Bréauté, 1845).

“Louise was one”:
Henri Murger,
Scénes de la vie de bohème
(Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1886).

“Jumps, fluttering”:
Anon.,
Paris dansant.

“A helter-skelter of bewildering dash”:
Quoted in David Price,
Cancan!
(London: Cygnus Arts, 1998).

“would recount”:
Murger,
Scénes de la vie de bohéme.

“Since when have we eaten”:
Ibid.

“explosion of joy”:
“Un Inconnu,” in
Paris Elégant
, 1 March 1847.

“one of those girls of the Latin Quarter”:
Roqueplan,
Parisine.

“A dinner tempts her”:
Anon.,
Paris dansant.

“on anatomy, physiology”:
Anon.,
La grisette à Paris et en province. Sa vie, ses moeurs, son caractère, ses joies, ses espérances, ses tribulations
(Paris: Renault, 1843).

“sparked a revolution”:
Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852.

“welcomed by two students”:
“Quivis” in
L’Intermédiaire des Cher-cheurs et Curieux
, 10 September 1890.

“Tired of this miserable life”:
Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852.

“lulling the dark city”:
Emile Zola,
The Belly of Paris
, trans. and ed. Brian Nelson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

“They’re virtuous”:
Quoted by Joëlle Guillais-Maury in Michèle Bordeaux et al.,
Madame ou mademoiselle? Itinéraires de la solitude feminine, 19
–
20
me siècle
(Paris: Montalban, 1984).

“the prettiest working girls”:
Roqueplan,
Parisine.

“frisked about like fish”:
Quoted in Guillais-Maury in Bordeaux,
Madame ou mademoiselle?

“It’s the intimate hour of the Bois”:
Edmond Texier,
Tableau de Paris
(Paris: Paulin et Le Chevalier, 1852–53).

“Her hat is not much more”:
Ibid.

“ugly, improper”:
Nestor Roqueplan,
Regain: La vie parisienne
(Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1853).

As well as returning the money she owed:
Charles du Hays gives a completely contrary account. It was when Alphonsine fell on hard times, he says, that she gave away her ring. “One of her companions, moved by pity, offered the poor Alphonsine nine francs—everything she possessed. Then poor Alphonsine, in a surge of gratitude, gave her friend this ring.… These nine francs bought bread for a few days.” Matharel de Fiennes,
L’Entr’acte
, 10 and 11 February 1852.

“The lorette is a grisette”:
Bordeaux et al.,
Madame ou mademoiselle?

“The lorette sleeps in an acacia gondola”:
Anon.,
Paris dansant.

“The grisette gives, the lorette receives”:
Bordeaux et al.,
Madame ou Mademoiselle?

“to this aim one sacrifices everything”:
Anon.,
Paris dansant.

“At Chaumière the woman dances for pleasure” … “From these aquaintances”:
Ibid.

When she realized that Valory had abandoned her:
This is presumably “le petit vicomte de L.,” whom Prudence describes to Armand Duval in the novel of
La dame aux camélias.
He is forced to leave, she says, “because Marguerite almost ruined him.” She cried when he left, and although she went as usual to the theater as if nothing had happened, she still kept a miniature of him.

“a true friend” … “I lack nothing”:
Letter quoted in Emile Henriot,
Portraits des femmes d’Héloïse à Katherine Mansfield
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1951).

There, a midwife was employed:
Doubting the veracity of Vienne’s account, a subsequent biographer, Georges Soreau, wrote to the mayor of Versailles asking if one Alphonsine Plessis had given birth to a child around 1841. The mayor, replying on 21 February 1898, claimed that there was no record of any such birth on the Etat Civil lists from 1833 to 1853—as indeed is the case. These lists and parish registers are now numerized and available online. Document, code 5MI131BIS-Commune ancienne paroisse Versailles Acte: TD-Dates: 1833–1842, pp. 92–467. We can see that eight Plessis children were born over this period, but none to a single mother named Alphonsine. It could well be that Vienne was mistaken and the child was born in a different parish or in Paris itself. But this is impossible to confirm as the city’s registry acts before 1859 were among the Hôtel de Ville’s eight million documents destroyed in the great fire of May 1871. However, even the skeptical Soreau came to conclude that Alphonsine had “very probably been a mother.” He was assured of this by Mme Henriette Alexandre Dumas, the author’s widow, who said that her husband had alluded more than once to the fact that the Lady of the Camellias had borne a child. And there are other endorsements:
L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux
of 10 September 1890, claims, “She had a child who was
recognised by his father, who favoured him in his will.” While the most convincing evidence of all is a remark in a letter from Charles du Hays to Gérard de Contades. Helping with background research for the count’s seminal article
“Les quartiers de la dame aux camélias,”
du Hays urges, “I beg you to not talk of her son.” This was written in January 1885—two years before the publication of Romain Vienne’s memoir.

“moderately pretty”:
L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux
, 10 September 1890.

But the viscount’s letters and payments had then stopped:
Unconvinced by the viscount’s claim, Vienne asked Alphonsine if she had requested the proof of a death certificate. She had not. But, once again, there are different accounts of what became of her son.
L’Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux
(10 September 1890) reports: “The child died, and la dame aux camélias inherited from her son.” Charles du Hays told Count Gérard de Contades that a stranger, renowned in equestrian circles, arrived one day in his office who was not only “the image of Mlle Plessis” but also the right age to have been her son. Delphine also believed that she had seen Alphonsine’s son as an adult. In 1869, she told Vienne, a young man in his late twenties had turned up at her home near Gacé. With exquisite politeness, he asked if he could see the portrait of her sister painted by Vidal. “He looked at it for a long time in silence, with visible emotion, not managing to hide the tears.… He then thanked her and greeted her graciously, leaving his card with the words: ‘Judelet, employee of a business in Tours.’ ” “Good God—how like my sister he was!” Delphine exclaimed to her children, and the next morning she sent her eldest daughter to all the hotels of Gacé in an attempt to find him. To no avail. She also wrote to the mayor of Tours, sending him the business card and asking him for information, only to be told a week later that no person or business existed bearing this name.