Celeste

by Roland Perry

  ‘The heart of a girl like you is like a disreputable inn,’ he wrote. ‘The honest wayfarer who inadvertently enters, endures the sneers of the regular guests.’ He said his love for her was real, whereas her fake love ‘began with a caress and ended with a price. I am not rich enough. You are free.’

  Richard received a letter from her and returned to Paris. They decided to leave the next night for their marriage in London. Céleste had to get her mother’s consent. He also wished to deposit the 40,000 francs in her bank account. Céleste refused to take it.

  ‘It will help your little girl,’ Richard said, insisting she take it. ‘The money is yours, whatever happens.’

  Céleste began to regret her move the moment the train left Paris. It was the whistle, the yell of the guard for ‘all aboard!’ and then the steady shunt of the carriages away from the station that symbolised her leaving Lionel. It was an emotional moment. Richard comforted her, and may have guessed her misgivings.

  Her impression of London did not help her mood. The fog blocking the daylight was bad enough. When it cleared it released a black snow, a consequence of the industrial revolution’s factories belching out smoke and waste. It stained her white hat and spotted her face.

  ‘I looked like a chimney sweep!’ she wrote in her diary, disgusted. After cleansing her face with cold cream, she only went out by carriage to visit the British monuments. She was not impressed to have to pay entrance fees, especially to see ‘a few jewels in a glass case’.

  Richard fussed about, arranging nights at the opera, theatre and clubs. He remained most concerned that Céleste might leave because of nerves brought on by boredom. He prepared everything for the wedding. Her resolve wavered. It was not improved by a letter from Lionel at the post office. He had contacted Céleste’s maid and bribed her into revealing where Céleste had gone. His communication was mostly negative and a squeak of the heart, rather than a cry. It spoke of his perpetual suffering because of her, but said the marriage would be ‘sheer madness’.

  ‘Once the whim has passed,’ he told her, ‘all you have left are regrets and bitterness.’

  Céleste, in her own dramatic and perverse way, seemed to thrive on these moments. She cried and declared to her diary that she believed this letter proved Lionel still loved her. The pressure was truly on—it was just hours until the wedding began. Richard had even gone to the trouble, a dangerous one for a man, of choosing her entire wedding outfit: a pearl-grey brocade dress, a black lace shawl and a white hat. The veil was ‘fit for a queen’. It may have been wiser to consult the bride.

  ‘This outfit,’ she told him, ‘is terribly gloomy.’

  As effete as Richard appeared, he didn’t quite have a woman’s touch. The carriage arrived at their Knightsbridge hotel and they headed off towards a small church in Sydney Street, Chelsea. Céleste remained silent. Whatever niceties he offered her, and no matter how many times he told her she looked ‘ravishing’ and ‘angelic’, she hardly looked at him or reacted. When they were on the King’s Road and in sight of the church, Céleste panicked.

  ‘No, no!’ she instructed the coachman as they reached the church’s entrance. ‘Keep going! Don’t stop!’

  The coachman turned a querulous face to Richard.

  ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘tell him to go past this door! I must speak to you!’

  Céleste sat back in the carriage, gripping a cushion. Richard ordered the coachman to drive back the mile or so to the hotel. Once inside their suite, he asked her sweetly what she had to say to him. His gentle manner made it tough for her to tell him what was on her mind. Her body shook.

  ‘Richard, you should have nothing but contempt for me!’ she wailed. ‘I’m not worthy of a love like yours. Send me away. I’m a wretch!’

  She may have spoken his mind. He had just been jilted, not too far from the altar, and by an unseen rival. Richard was suddenly very angry, but in keeping with his controlled gentlemanly nature, all he could utter was, ‘How you must love this man!’

  They returned by train to Paris the next day with hardly a word exchanged between them.

  CHAPTER 24

  A Platonic Solution

  ‘I have just been at the Count de Chabrillan’s house, Mademoiselle,’ a doctor informed her on her return to Paris. ‘I’ve seen him four times since 6 p.m. yesterday. I’ve bled him twice. Blood is choking him and he’s delirious. He has twenty times asked that you be brought before him.’

  Céleste rushed to the house with the doctor and they arrived just as Lionel was having a seizure. The doctor attended to him. Hours later, when he was fully conscious, he recognised Céleste.

  ‘Come closer,’ he said, ‘so I can see what a woman who can cause such pain looks like. What magic did you use to seduce me, daughter of Satan!’

  He haemorrhaged again. The doctor bled him a fifth time and gave instructions to Céleste to stay with the patient. She obliged willingly and spent a week with him. In that time she wrote to Richard, who despite the humiliation in London was still keen to see her. She told him of Lionel’s illness and that she was caring for him.

  ‘Forget me,’ she said. ‘A bit of courage will spare you a life of regrets. Forgive me.’

  Richard could not quite take the advice, but in order to preserve his sanity he left Paris to stay with relatives in the country. Lionel began recovering and Céleste left his apartment but kept seeing him over the next three months until he was fully recuperated. In that time, his elder brother, the ‘fat, jolly’ Marquis Marie-Olivier, came to see her. His message from the family was that she was ‘sending Lionel broke, like an idiot!’

  Céleste was nervous at her first meeting with the head of the family, but his attitude incensed her. She stayed calm. The marquis, who did not care for Lionel, added, ‘Tell him he should get married. What will you do with him when he has not a single farthing left?’

  She felt like saying she would love him even more, but the brother’s attitude reflected that of the family, who hated her and her influence on Lionel. She again said nothing. Instead, she reported the discussion to Lionel that evening. It was a useful pretext for considering his future. Although she discounted the marquis as a man and a messenger, his approach made her realise that the family would never let Lionel marry her. Quite simply, her reputation and background were unacceptable to such an aristocratic clan.

  Lionel’s severe illness had shaken Céleste and she seemed sincere in telling him that if he wished to marry, ‘I would not be angry with you’. If she was in the way, she would leave Paris. ‘We would go from this great love to friendship that always endures.’

  Lionel saw the wisdom in this and suggested a halfway house of sorts. He would set her up in a modest house in Berry near the estate so that he could continue to see her. They would be friends. On the surface this may have seemed a fair solution, given that breaking up had never worked. But Céleste was oblivious to the possibility that she would soon become bored with such an arrangement, which might see her even more isolated from the Paris she loved. Besides that, she still had high hopes for her acting career, which was going through a lull at the Folies-Dramatiques. Nevertheless, if it were to be simply a retreat, where they both saw each other from time to time, then it just might work. They went ahead with this new plan. A ‘darling little house’ opposite a forest was found in nearby Poinçonnet, and she moved in, while not giving up her Paris apartment.

  Around this time her mother came to see her, needing help. Céleste said she would set her up in a tobacco shop, if she swore she would not see Vincent anymore. Céleste did as she said she would, and also acquired a suite for Anne-Victoire at a hotel on Rue de Cléry. A short while later, she went to see her mother at the tobacco shop, which had an apartment above it.

  ‘Her brightest idea had been to rent the apartment to M. Vincent,’ she wrote with contempt in her diary. She was so angered by this that she evicted them both and sold the shop. She made it clearer than ever that she could forgive her mother, bu
t never Vincent.

  The ‘friendship’ arrangement between Lionel and Céleste worked well enough for several months, with Céleste staying occasionally at her country retreat. But it enchanted her less and less, and she and Lionel were spending more time in Paris, although not together. The arrangement became unmanageable when Richard Maylam returned to Paris after ‘recovering his equilibrium’ in the country.

  Céleste had invited a female friend to dine at her place, and a table for two was set by the maid. Back from his country sojourn, Richard arrived unannounced. Then the doorbell rang a second time. Céleste asked Richard to answer the door. Instead of her friend, Richard found himself facing Lionel, who entered the apartment. Noticing her table set for two he said, ‘Fine, I know what I wanted to know.’ He then addressed Richard. ‘You wanted to marry this girl; you can have her. She’s yours.’

  ‘I thank you for your advice, Monsieur,’ Richard replied. ‘You’ve known her for four years. Four years from now, I shall give you an answer.’

  Duels were fought with pistols at dawn over lesser incidents during this era, but Lionel left after directing a look of loathing at Céleste. Distressed, she asked Richard to leave, too. Then her guest arrived and spent the rest of the evening consoling Céleste over her moment of melodramatic farce. But it was more than that and threatened to revive the triangle of dysfunction that had prevailed before.

  Lionel reacted by taking another mistress, Charlotte Odene, an attractive, auburn-haired twenty-year-old from Montpellier in France’s south, whom another man had brought to Paris for 10,000 francs. Lionel doubled the offer and Charlotte accepted when he swore to her that his well-publicised, now long-term rough ride with the formidable Mogador was over. He then put his newly purchased mistress in his apartment. Céleste heard rumours of this development and was unhappy. She tried to convince herself that had Lionel taken a richer, aristocratic partner and married her, she would not have stood in his way. But taking another, younger version of herself—a lorette or courtesan on the make—was not what Céleste had envisaged. Lionel’s excuse was that he had failed to reach any agreement with the numerous suitable but wary young women. The possible countesses had not been so concerned with his looming poverty or even the likelihood that he would have to mortgage his lands and eventually sell them. Most would have put up with that. The big problem was his never-ending affair with the prostitute/dancer/chariot rider/actress Mogador. How could any self-respecting wife of the Parisian elite deal with having to foot the bills for his ongoing dalliance with and generosity towards such a woman? The families rejected this even if the smitten young beauties of France’s highest circles did not. In turn, Lionel’s passion for Céleste was so deep that it showed. Subconsciously or otherwise, he was putting off every prospective wife. A newly ensconced concubine amounted to him avoiding everything except anaesthetising himself with a flurry of sex, drinking and more gambling.

  Despite the haze of the decadent high life, he still wanted some connection with Céleste. He wrote to her demanding she come to see him. Richard told her Lionel was boasting that she would ‘go to his house any time he wanted’.

  This prompted her to reject his invitation. Lionel then wrote a pitiable letter saying he only wished to see her ‘to wallow in the misery of hatred you have left in me’.

  ‘I want to end up between the bottle that supplies the drunkenness it promises,’ he wrote, ‘and a pistol that will grant me forgetfulness.’

  The letter unsettled Céleste. It sounded like a suicide threat.

  CHAPTER 25

  Crime of Passion

  Richard invited Céleste to a benefit dance performance at Paris’s Cirque. Despite the vivid lighting and costumes, she found it all too dreary. That changed, hideously, when she spotted Lionel with his new mistress. Charlotte began to behave in a coquettish manner, more for Céleste’s benefit than Lionel’s. Out of the corner of her eye, Céleste saw Charlotte touching his arm, then his hand. The bold Charlotte even leaned up to kiss him several times. It was too much for Céleste, who asked Richard to take her home. He pleaded with her not to go or make a scene for once, for his sake.

  ‘Today, in front of all these people who are observing us,’ he said, ‘make the effort, for one hour.’

  In these moments of almost uncontrolled feelings she had often behaved as if all men were Vincent. She would either walk away or make them pay, at least emotionally. This time, she acquiesced, writing that she felt ‘like a child’. In other words, it was very much against instinct. Richard dropped her off at her apartment and she went to bed. But the whole experience of seeing Lionel at play with this younger, sexually inviting mistress built to a rage. She got up, dressed and at 1 a.m. made her way on foot to Lionel’s place. Céleste woke the porter, persuaded him to let her in and hurried upstairs to the second floor.

  ‘I rang [the bell],’ she recalled, ‘powerfully enough to make the house shake.’ Lionel answered the door holding a candle.

  ‘You here!’ he said. ‘What do you want from me now?’

  She thrust his letter at him as she pushed past. ‘I’m here because you wrote to me yesterday!’

  Lionel laughed and then implied that the letter was written in a state of alcohol-induced melancholy. ‘So I did, after lunch.’

  ‘You mentioned killing yourself!’

  ‘You only came because you saw me with another woman . . . She’s here and can hear everything,’ he said and then taunted, ‘I love her! She’s beautiful; as beautiful as you are ugly!’

  Céleste was fuming. ‘I would be married if it weren’t for your letter to me in London.’

  She turned to go, but Lionel blocked her exit. He wanted to insult her in front of his one-person audience.

  ‘I despise you,’ he said, ‘you miserable wretch, whom I picked up out of the mud! In gratitude you have defiled me!’

  Céleste tried to push past him, but he thrust the candle at her.

  ‘You used me as a ladder,’ he continued. ‘You placed yourself on the auction block and sold yourself to the highest bidder!’

  Céleste picked up a knife from a sideboard and threatened him.

  ‘Finally.’ Lionel laughed. ‘I see you’re suffering.’

  ‘Banish this woman,’ she said, ‘or I shall kill you!’

  Lionel shrugged and still blocked her way.

  Céleste pushed the knife at her chest. It was not an overly vigorous act, but Lionel now moved to take the knife from her. She attempted to stab him in the right arm and only succeeded in opening the skin on his bicep. Blood smeared his shirt. Moments later, Céleste collapsed.

  Céleste awoke the next morning in a four-poster bed, still at Lionel’s. She heard him speaking to someone, saying that her wounds and his were superficial. The horror of the night came back to Céleste. She examined her chest and saw a small bandage where she had cut herself. It had been dressed by a doctor who had been and gone while she slept. She began crying. Lionel entered the room, torn between care for her condition and contempt for her behaviour.

  ‘You’re feeling better?’ he asked. ‘My word, you are insane! You knew what you were doing when you left me. I really do wish to be free from you.’

  Charlotte came into the room and spoke to Lionel in a strong provincial accent. Céleste asked her to leave so she could dress. Charlotte obliged, leaving the room with a scornful laugh after first embracing Lionel. Céleste expected at least a handshake from him as she left, but there was no effort to do so.

  It was 6 a.m. Humiliated, Céleste wandered the deserted streets back to her apartment. Her tempestuous relationship had reached its lowest point and was just short of a crime of passion—and any wounds deeper than the ones she had inflicted would have caused that. She turned, as ever in the last year, to Richard for solace, and learned that he, too, had given up on her and taken another woman.

  Lionel’s financial position, meanwhile, became even more dire as creditors moved in. He sold all his possessions, but could not raise near
ly enough to meet his debts. Lionel’s jeweller, who drained a small fortune from him by offering him credit on usurious terms of up to thirty per cent, turned on Céleste and held her responsible for the count’s failure to pay up. She received demands for bills of 46,000 francs. This was a desperate move, for under the law, only the payer for the goods, not the receiver, could be held accountable unless unlawfully obtained. Yet still it hurt Céleste. Lionel’s extravagance had collapsed on her as well, and it promised to bite her financially. The house in Berry, along with all the furniture in it, had been seized by creditors. Creditors were also going to dispute her loan to Lionel of 20,000 francs, which stood as a mortgage. If successful, they would receive the sale proceeds that again, under the law, were due to her.

  As Céleste’s slide from grace accelerated, she received a note to visit Denise, the woman who had drawn her into prostitution. She was dying in abject poverty. Céleste was kind and not judgemental, realising that at the time, Denise believed she was helping her waif-like but wilful new friend. The experience of seeing Denise during her final days, at just twenty-eight years of age, made Céleste reflect more on her own life. She sifted back through her diaries, which had begun soon after the attempted rape by Vincent. In their pages she could trace the trajectory of her unusually eventful years and how episodic and startling they had been.

  Céleste was still in her mid-twenties and facing a tragic end like Denise if she did not reassess her own existence. She was aware that she could not forever rely on her fame/notoriety as a former Hippodrome star and courtesan. She needed a more solid and steady source of income. Given that she never expected to marry, especially with her dedication to the increasingly desiccated Lionel, she would have to create her own destiny. At first she considered success in the theatre, which had so far evaded her. She’d had more dramatic follies in her private life than with the Folies-Dramatiques. Mourier had not quite given her the big roles she wanted and there were many lulls without income between shows. He felt she was a better dancer than she was an actress, and even she admitted this was probably right. It may have been because Céleste’s real life was one of considerable drama. She was a figure of substance, however she was viewed. Audiences would always see her as Mogador playing somebody else of lesser interest. Very little invented by playwrights for characters on the stage could match her own experiences.