by Roland Perry
Richard seemed so enchanted that he didn’t care about the possible trade-off for squiring Céleste about town. And she was always honest with him, after charming him into submission.
The more she was away from Lionel, the more her passion magnified his positive qualities. Céleste put aside his born-to-rule arrogance and petulance; his put-downs about her background and life; his bank account– and asset-withering lifestyle; and his incompetence at most things, except hunting. She thought only of his being a gentleman in the smallest details. He had a quick mind and was ‘kind, generous and honest’. He was ‘so exuberant in ardour and imagination’.
Richard did not quite measure up, although she found him ‘sweet and kind’. He was generous, too. He set her up opulently, paid for her sometimes extravagant accumulation of clothes, shoes and jewels, and made sure she was invited with him to the best parties. This created the opportunity for her to stand tall among all the Paris princesses of the late 1840s. The artifice was at its peak. Céleste was on top.
Now settled in to yet another new apartment, this time at 24 Boulevard Poissonnière, Richard and Céleste were walking to a nearby restaurant, the Maison d’Or, when they were confronted by Lionel. He stopped in front of them and asked if he could have a private word with her. Richard realised it had to be her long-term paramour and was irritated. He agreed, most reluctantly, to her polite invitation that he carry on to the restaurant and she would follow.
Lionel apologised for the interruption but claimed he had to talk ‘business’ with her.
‘I should have known that when one leaves a woman like you for just a few hours,’ he began in a cutting tone that Céleste knew well, ‘it’s necessary to write ahead, to avoid running into others.’
Céleste diplomatically ignored his remark.
‘You had the right to leave me,’ she said, ‘and I had the right to replace you. I have no fortune. I’d rather die than ask you for anything.’
‘So, you don’t love this man?’
‘No, unfortunately.’
‘Then stay with me. Don’t have dinner with him. You owe me that much. I’ve broken off everything. I can’t live without you. If you go out with him, I’m leaving and will never see you again.’
Céleste had heard this kind of declaration before. She called his bluff by telling him she still loved him but that she could not stoop so low towards Richard.
‘I’m going to dinner with him,’ she said. ‘After dinner I shall write and tell him I can’t see him anymore.’
‘Go,’ Lionel said, ‘I shall wait for you.’
Richard was overjoyed to see Céleste walk into the Maison d’Or but was soon deflated by the news that she was going to see Lionel after the meal. Richard asked for the truth and she confirmed that she still loved Lionel.
‘I can’t compete against him,’ he conceded, and told her to leave. ‘Your presence hurts me,’ Richard admitted, ‘but do not forget me.’
Lionel was waiting at her apartment, but he was cold. Inside, he made disparaging remarks about all the ‘tasteless’ furniture and expensive artefacts Richard had bought for her. Lionel then produced the pièce de résistance in the form of an emerald-and-diamond set of jewellery, including a bracelet, a brooch, earrings and rings. He had paid his Royal Palais jeweller 40,000 francs for the set, double the amount he had offered her as a parting settlement before. But this was now an enticement to come back, and in particular to return with him again to his Berry estate.
In the euphoria and romance of the moment, she accepted without reflecting on the sluggish life (compared to her high-kicking Paris life) she had endured the last time. There was always the hope that things would improve. But they did not. Lionel hunted more boar than ever, and she became more bored than ever. He was slipping into debt again and as ever this offended her somewhat hypocritical sensibilities. Predictably, she and Lionel were heading for a big argument. It was precipitated by him coming home without shooting a boar. He was grumpy over what he considered a defeat.
Céleste took the moment to go on the attack.
‘This chateau is bad luck,’ she said. ‘Your gardener has lost his two daughters to The Fever in less than a month. The little girl after whom I named my daughter has lost her mother. There’s rabies in your kennels. All I hear is howls at night. Each day one or two of those wonderful hounds I practically raised must be hanged.’
Lionel’s face was expressing a kaleidoscope of emotions, most of them dark. His face puffed up red.
‘You spend money madly and this household is ruining you!’ Céleste continued. ‘You made me an accomplice in your follies by giving me those magnificent jewels.’
‘They made you happy!’ he exclaimed.
‘Happy? I shall tell you what I need to be happy near you: I need to see you curtail your expenses! I would be delighted to stay cooped up here if I encouraged you to straighten out your fortune.’
Céleste was hitting home more than she knew. A few days later Lionel lost an ‘important’ amount on the stock market, not necessarily due to his poor judgement. He could not be blamed for the vicissitudes of his stocks and the market. But it exemplified his less-than-golden touch. Nothing he did in business or with money, at least in Céleste’s experience, seemed to be sound. He was a loser at the Bourse or roulette, in investments or even in his choice of agents and managers. The volatility of politics and the markets at the time damaged his luck, and his dwindling, credit-driven fortune.
Lionel no longer mentioned his quests for a rich partner anymore, but Céleste’s deep love for him made her sensitive to every nuance of his emotions, perhaps even his deeper thoughts. Failure to shoot a boar only exacerbated his more important preoccupations. She sensed that he was yet again considering the prospect of a more suitable, wealthy wife.
‘When you are jealous,’ she would later write, ‘you look for the truth until you find it. Then you are ten times more miserable.’
‘Since you care so much for the chateau,’ she said, pushing him, ‘go ahead. Accept a marriage that will make you twice a millionaire.’
She half expected the bluff would not work this time. He admitted that a marvellous proposition had been offered.
‘I turned it down because of you,’ he said with a measure of regret.
He suggested she return to Paris, which she did.
CHAPTER 23
Actress
This time the split changed her thinking. She had forsaken Richard, although she hoped he would remain a friend. This meant she could not rely on him to prop up her finances. She was approaching twenty-five years of age and she had Solange to provide for. Like all the demimonde habitués, Céleste realised that the brainless party life could not go on forever. She either had to find a man to support her in marriage or somehow obtain a job that would deliver security. And since she believed she would never find another man she truly loved while Lionel was alive, she had to seek a trade or profession that would sustain her. Her mind ran over several options. But after her exposure to fame at Bal Mabille and the Hippodrome, which had been only two years before, she could not really countenance another dress or fashion shop, or any mundane retail job for that matter.
Her mind turned to her deepest passion: the theatre.
She did not regard her former flirtation with the stage as a serious, planned and organised effort at acting. But having attained the status of a top courtesan, there was only one level above in her world that enjoyed more fame, rather than notoriety, and was more acceptable in French society, and that was being an actress. Céleste decided that this was the moment to try for this profession and follow her youthful dreams. She had been forced into risk-taking and now it was part of her way of life. She did not wish to die wondering whether or not she had what it took to be a success on the stage. She needed the adrenaline rush that she had had at Bal Mabille, the Hippodrome and her few previous dance performances. The fame and the thought of being loved and even more recognised were also important to her. Th
ere was always the hope that an elevated position in society might help erase the past and assist her in her fervent desire to be removed from the prostitutes’ registry. If she maintained her reputation as a courtesan, the police prefecture and courts would always regard her as a prostitute, albeit one of high class.
Céleste at first fumbled around the theatre world. From a series of rejections she learned that she must try to present herself to Monsieur Mourier, director of the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques. He had a reputation for being fierce and direct and the best theatre administrator in Paris. Céleste liked the fact that he paid his actors well, and had still accumulated a fortune for himself. She asked actors about him and always received the same positive response. Céleste thought it better to write to him, which would display her ever-improving command of French. She had been barely literate as a teenager, but reading as a hobby and writing a diary had developed her confidence in the written word. She expressed herself well and with more than a dash of panache.
Mourier was impressed. Like everyone in the Parisian theatre world and most of the city’s inhabitants, he knew of Céleste. He invited her to meet. She entered his office, its walls adorned with colourful posters of his countless successful stage productions. He was at his desk, writing. He did not get up, but let her stand in front of it. Perhaps he was judging her composure under pressure. Maybe he was just rude and impolite and this was part of his ‘blunt’ image. He looked sideways at her and asked, ‘Have you ever acted?’
‘Yes, Monsieur, but very little and not well,’ Céleste replied. ‘I was in a play at Beaumarchais and one at Delassement.’
‘And so you would like to be here?’ he asked, taking off his glasses and running a weary hand over his bald pate.
Céleste nodded firmly.
‘I must warn you that you’ll have to work and be on time,’ he said, scrutinising her now.
‘If you wish me to try out, you don’t have to pay me to start.’
That seemed to touch a nerve, perhaps his pride. He got out of his chair. ‘Mademoiselle, I don’t hire for nothing! I pay the people who serve me.’
He reached for a script on his desk.
‘Someone has sent me a parody called The Wandering Jew,’ he said, putting on his glasses and examining the front cover. ‘There’s a part for a bacchanalian queen.’ He looked over his glasses at her and asked, ‘Will that do?’
The director may have been making a cynical choice, given that bacchanalian festivals were riotous affairs ending in orgiastic rites. But Céleste did not care. It was a break. She asked about the play.
‘The Wandering Jew, as a twelfth-century legend has it,’ the director replied, ‘was the fellow who would not let Jesus Christ, carrying the heavy wooden cross to his own crucifixion, rest in front of his house. God allegedly told this mean yet unfortunate chap that he would have “to wander the earth until I come”.’1
‘Nicely set up for a parody,’ Céleste said, accepting the part.
Céleste was elated. She felt like shouting to passers-by in the street about her breakthrough. She happened to be in Boulevard Saint-Denis, where Richard lived. He was surprised to see her. He listened to her enthusiastic babble about the contract she had just won. He was ‘cold’. He inquired about the relationship with Lionel and was told about yet another split. Richard was naturally sceptical. The off-again, on-again affair was well known in the demimonde. Céleste judged that the meeting was hurting Richard, who dampened her enthusiasm for the theatre contract by saying it was a wrong move.
‘You’ll end up spending more than you earn,’ he said. He would be threatened by any success she had because he feared that even if Lionel was removed from the scene, she would be desired by more rivals than ever, which would once more make her inaccessible. Nevertheless, Céleste’s charm had thawed him by the time she left. She had dangled hope, just enough to kindle his interest again. Soon afterwards, with the euphoria of her new stage deal, their affair was reignited. Richard, however, would never feel secure knowing that her real passion was still for someone else.
Céleste brought all her wit and charm to the Folies-Dramatiques but found it wasn’t enough in this rarefied world of massive egos, extreme narcissism and perpetual insecurity. It was not unlike her early days at the brothel. The female performers wanted to know why Mourier had dared to hire the notorious Mogador. They whispered that her main claim to public interest was being a chariot rider. They were not quite mollified by being told she would boost ticket sales. The older performers felt alarmed; the younger ones threatened by her looks and reputation.
The male performers were a different proposition.
‘They were all very charming with me,’ Céleste wrote, ‘and fought over the pleasure of giving me the advice I so desperately needed.’
She prepared with some of the biggest names of the day, including the famous Jacques Odry, who was sixty-eight, a bit doddery and prone to forgetting lines and missing cues. She found the talented, popular Alphonse Lassagne too cocky for her liking. He played tricks on her on stage.
‘He would add [lines] to his part,’ she recalled, ‘and I would miss my cue and not know what to do.’
Mourier stepped in angrily at these moments and Lassagne would be threatened with fines, but it did not stop him tormenting the new girl. However, Céleste was not put off by the stunts. It toughened her. Yet she did not make an impact on the stage and struggled to be thrown bit parts that neither satisfied her nor the audiences. The critics sneered and jeered.
Meanwhile, there were more dramas in her private life. Lionel kept reappearing from the country and went to extreme lengths to woo her back by mortgaging his lands and giving her ever more expensive gifts. The peak of this was his buying, rather than renting, her an ‘adorable little surrey drawn by a pretty bay horse’. The carriage was bright blue. The silk interior was lined in the same colour. Céleste’s name was on the harness. A small, painted garland on the door panel held the words ‘Forget me not’ alongside her initials. She was overwhelmed.
‘I walked around it ten times,’ she wrote in her memoir. ‘I touched the ivory ornaments; I opened and closed the windows. I looked at the passers-by with pride.’
She rushed inside her apartment to put on a green dress, red shawl and yellow hat. ‘I must have looked like a parrot,’ she wrote. Dressed in all this finery, she went on a two-hour ride around the Bois de Boulogne. ‘Everyone let out an “oh” and “ooh” when they saw me.’
Céleste felt she had reached the pinnacle of her life as a courtesan. She was part of the continuous procession of sparkling, ornate carriages trotting around the Bois. It was where the top women of the demimonde promenaded in the mid-afternoon for eager spectators who lined the path on either side from the Grande Cascade to the middle of the Place de la Concorde.
She found it difficult to leave on that first exalted day. On the way home, she spotted Richard, and in a moment of vanity signalled for him to come closer. But he walked away without a friendly gesture. He was not, at that moment, an enchanted admirer. But his aloofness did not last long.
That encounter led to Richard sending her a note at the theatre urging her to see him. She obliged and visited his apartment. He appeared tired but what he had to say was new. He proposed marriage.
‘I’m offering you a happy, honourable future,’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘It will help you forget a past I shall never again mention.’
Céleste was dumbfounded.
‘I shall give you 40,000 francs,’ he added. Seeing she had not rejected him, he said, ‘We shall immediately leave for England where I shall marry you without difficulty. I’m English and have no parents.’
She buried her face in her hands. ‘But it’s impossible!’ she cried.
Richard was furious. She calmed him by saying that she had no idea this was coming. He had caught her off guard. She said she felt faint, but to mollify and stall him, she suggested he go to London to see if it really could be arranged t
he way he was proposing. She would write to him in a few days’ time, which would be the signal for him to return to Paris and then take her back to London. Richard was defensive. He didn’t believe she would write. But once reassured, he agreed.
The stakes were now higher than ever before. She wished to see Lionel’s reaction before doing anything so precipitative with Richard. She got in touch. Lionel invited her to dine at his apartment, but in the presence of a male friend. Midway through the meal, she was in two minds about bringing up Richard’s proposal. Then Lionel started a quarrel, ‘as usual, for no reason’.
‘Once and for all,’ she demanded, ‘why do you reproach me?’
‘Because you have poisoned my heart!’ he replied.
The argument built. Céleste finally revealed her secret offer.
‘I wish I didn’t have to tell you,’ she said, ‘but this life is hell! It would be better to leave you for good.’
‘Bravo!’ he said and laughed. ‘What great acting. What imaginative blackmail. You only told me this to force me to match the offer. Well, I urge you to accept.’
Céleste was exasperated. She left, vowing never to see him again. It was a vow they both made to each other regularly but never kept. However, she was determined to go to London to be with Richard. She got leave from Mourier. When she arrived home there was a letter waiting for her from Lionel.