Celeste

by Roland Perry

  With this in mind, she joined forces with a pretty and charming young dancer, Adele Page, for a revue at the Théâtre des Variétés in a dance called ‘Le Pas de l’Imperiale’. It was an attempt to regenerate her flagging career on the boards.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Lawyer’s Incentive

  The love–hate, on-again, off-again relationship with Lionel continued into the 1850s, when he finally proposed marriage.

  ‘Your count’s crown would be my crown of thorns,’ Céleste said in her written response. ‘I could never again face those poor lost souls who were part of my life, and I’d never have the right to face a decent woman.’

  Céleste ended her rejection letter with: ‘There are two paths, yours and mine. I shall remain Mogador and you Count Lionel de Chabrillan.’

  This was hard for her to write. In her naivety, when they had first met that night at the Café Anglais back in the mid-1840s, she had wondered about the possibility of becoming a countess. It had seemed to her at the time to be a title that would not quite erase her past, but at least be an antidote to it. However, the reality of the class divide and Lionel’s degrading fall from grace seemed to make this impossible.

  In desperation he made the drastic decision to quit France and try to restore his lost fortune in remote goldmining areas overseas. At first he considered Africa. But after reading about the French explorers’ commentaries on Australia, the huge island in the Pacific with a land-mass larger than China, he decided to chance his luck there, especially as gold had been discovered in a couple of places in the British Colony of New South Wales and the Colony of Victoria, newly formed in 1851.

  This was the equivalent to exile for Lionel. Not only would the culture be foreign, but only the Antarctic ice circle was further away on the map of the globe. Australia had been, until recently, a dumping ground for British convicts, although free settlers were rapidly out numbering the criminals as the ancient land offered the promise of a new life for those disenchanted by an over-crowded, under-nourished Europe. The discovery of gold precipitated a gold rush. The population of Victoria grew from 21,000 to more than 330,000 in just four years, making it the second biggest colony in Australia. New South Wales’s population had nearly doubled to 378,000 due to gold being found near Bathurst.

  Lionel would be a real foreigner in this British-held territory, although there was a small population of French who had also read the papers and travelled in rickety tubs for four months to join the get-rich-quick goldminers. Somehow, he believed his connections would allow him to deal rather than dig his way to a restored fortune, as if it were always his destiny to have money. However, he did declare he would buy tools for the mines once he reached Australia, just in case he got lucky.

  Céleste was struggling as much as he was. She had Solange to provide for and the mess that Lionel had left her in to sort out, including four law suits against her. On Lionel’s recommendation she secured a good lawyer, Maitre Desmarest, who was well connected in the arts. On hearing parts of Céleste’s life from dealing with the cases, he asked if she had kept any written records.

  ‘I always kept a record of my ideas,’ she told him. ‘It’s a kind of diary in which I put on paper the unhappy or pleasant feelings I had known.’

  ‘Could I read them?’ Desmarest asked.

  ‘You cannot be interested in a life such as mine.’

  ‘Mademoiselle, on the contrary, an unusual life like yours is of interest to many,’ he told her. ‘It may well help me in the cases we’re fighting, and I have contacts in the publishing world.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mademoiselle, you said yourself that you would struggle to pay those bringing these cases against you, let alone me. A book of your life may well be a bestseller and generate enough funds to cover all your needs, including your lawyer’s fees.’

  Céleste was suddenly alerted to a way out of her financial and professional predicaments.

  ‘Two new feelings came to give me some happiness,’ she would recall in her memoir. ‘The first was that I might be able to please apart from the pleasure of the senses. The second was that my fate would perhaps gain some degree of interest in view of the events that so constantly overwhelmed me.’

  But she had reservations. ‘Some memories are so terrible that it’s difficult to confess them,’ she told Desmarest.

  ‘You mean your time in the brothel?’

  ‘I’d prefer not to have to write about this part of my life.’

  ‘Have you notes on it?’

  ‘I have, some.’

  ‘Then let a publisher be the ultimate judge.’

  ‘I’m not interested in writing something pornographic.’

  ‘An honest memoir would not be viewed that way. I’ve dealt with publishers enough to know there are discreet ways of handling such issues.’

  ‘I can tell you I lived in vice but loved virtue.’

  ‘Knowing you as I do now, I’m sure this is true.’

  Céleste pondered for a moment.

  ‘I shall try to describe as chastely as possible,’ she said, ‘the most unchaste life in this world.’

  Céleste spent four months in 1851 editing and putting together her handwritten memoirs and diaries. Desmarest read them and was more than impressed with her literary skills, from describing her tough family life and the ugly Saint-Lazare prison to Lionel’s castle and the illegal gambling dens of Paris. He was taken also by her dry wit, which was neither black humour nor knock-about belly laughs. She had her own grey style of observation, born of experience and an at times world-weary view, which had developed a controlled cynicism with an acerbic edge. Céleste saw much love in the world but recognised and analysed more than most its concurrent cruelty and unfairness. Desmarest, patronisingly yet helpfully, gave her suggestions for the manuscript, especially grammatical corrections, which Céleste did not hesitate to act on.

  He showed the manuscript to Delphine de Girardin, a notable French writer known as ‘France’s muse’; to her husband, Émile de Girardin, Paris’s leading book editor and a prominent politician; to writer Camille Doucet; and to a few other big-name authors, such as Alexandre Dumas Sr. They were unanimous in judging her work as first class. Comparisons were made to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book, Confession, an autobiographical work that showed how society distorted man’s natural goodness.1

  They all told Desmarest that her memoirs should be published. They were ‘hot’ for the time, although not salacious.

  On Desmarest’s advice, she referred to most of the men with whom she had been involved only by their initials. This might avoid further lawsuits unless the lover involved was prepared to step forward and deny a relationship. Count Lionel was called ‘Robert’, and wisely, there was no direct mention of the fiercely private and well-placed Chabrillans. But the memoirs—written as five short volumes—were frank and revealing. They had a rather valedictory title for an author still a few years short of thirty: Adieux au Monde: Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, which translated as Farewell to the World: The Memoirs of Céleste Mogador. But she may well have been thinking of Lionel when she came up with it. He was going to the ends of the earth, and her world at that moment had all but collapsed with his proposed departure.

  CHAPTER 27

  Dalliance with Dumas Sr

  Desmarest arranged an introduction to the big-hearted Alexandre Dumas Sr, forty-nine, who was then a world-famous author, having published two outstanding and widely translated bestsellers in 1844: The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas had been astonished to read the memoirs and it was he who initiated the meeting with Céleste. He was a celebrated—especially by himself—womaniser, who newspapers claimed had slept with more than forty women.

  ‘Slept?’ he had responded when asked about it. ‘I never allow them to even doze when they are with me!’ He also commented that the figure of forty was ‘insulting, defamatory and preposterous! It has to be more like four hundred and forty!’<
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  The two authors greeted each other like two long-lost friends. The fuzzy-Afro-headed, roly-poly author sported a moustache and goatee beard, which only managed to cover one of his chins. His round face was one continual beam as he ushered Céleste into the studio. Most men were dazzled by Céleste and her reputation, yet she held double the attraction for him because she could write. Not only was she physically desirable, she was bright and intelligent, with gifts with the quill that Dumas, despite his popular success, marvelled at, especially her wit and character observations. He also admired her courage, first at the Hippodrome, and second in her writing.

  Céleste was just as enchanted to meet Dumas. He was everything she now wished to be: a successful author. But it was more than that. She wanted to maintain her name but turn it from notoriety into genuine fame. Céleste desired respectability after a life that had defined her in part as disreputable. She also wished to stretch her brain, which she was now beginning to appreciate.

  Dumas, who prided himself as being a chef among many other things, had prepared a lunch, but apart from the wine and champagne it was hardly touched. Within an hour of meeting, Dumas had puffed his way up the ladder to his bedroom, Céleste willingly following. On the surface it may have appeared an odd attraction. He was fat, not good-looking and short. She had a perfect figure, was half his age and three times as attractive. But it was what they offered each other at that particular moment that counted. Dumas could not now afford to keep a courtesan of her standing, but the lure had not been transactional for either of them. He admitted that he had fancied her very much ever since he had witnessed her near-fatal chariot crash at the Hippodrome. He said he had always been jealous of Count Lionel but that he was thrilled that her new interest in books had drawn them together.

  After the roll in the loft, they devoured exquisite Belgian chocolates and sipped coffee.

  ‘You should write fiction, my dear,’ Dumas told her. ‘I’ve worked as a journalist and travel writer, but I found the fiction form to be much easier and far more lucrative. I’ve made a vast fortune and then lost it. You’ve seen for yourself the way rich men throw away their fortunes. That would make grand, tragic fiction.’

  Lionel’s woes were well known in Parisian circles. But she had no wish to tackle a topic so sensitive to him.

  She turned the subject to books.

  Dumas’s son, also named Alexandre, had been an inspiration with his book, Les Dames aux Camelias, which was based on the life of his former lover, Marie Duplessis, whose career as one of Paris’s adored courtesans ended abruptly with her death from consumption in 1847. Duplessis had been dead just eighteen months before she re-emerged as a fictional character in Dumas Jr’s novel.1

  This, and Henri Murger’s Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, had encouraged Céleste to give her real-life account of a courtesan’s existence. Now Alexandre Dumas Sr was going to give her advice about writing and fiction, and also promote her memoirs.

  ‘I want to review your book in Le Mousquetaire,’ he explained speaking of the paper he published and edited. ‘Do not worry, my dear, I will only give my heartfelt opinion of your memoirs, which is how wonderful I think they are.’

  True to his word, he crafted an article that was sure to attract attention without giving anything away. The day after it appeared in print, Monsieur Bourdilliat at publisher Librairie Nouvelle offered Céleste a contract. She accepted without question. She needed the advanced funds. She wrote in her diary that she signed the contract ‘because I could not bring myself to burn the pages I had taken so much trouble to write’.

  But there was more to it than her creativity. She had sold off most of her furniture and jewellery to meet creditors’ demands and fight the legal cases. Creditors had taken her apartment on Rue Joubert and her carriages on Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin and had set their sights on the house at Poinçonnet in Berry. There was ongoing opposition from the Chabrillan family and creditors over the mortgage Lionel had given her to cover the 20,000 francs she had lent him. On top of that she still needed some funds for Solange to be looked after.

  The publishing deal promised some respite. But there was no date set down for publication. Céleste did not consider herself a writer yet. It was still only a dream inflated by the praise of Dumas and others.

  ‘I studied the legal code,’ she wrote. ‘I spent my time in lawyers’ and magistrates’ offices, I haunted the Courts of Justice. When all my cases were in hand, I worked seriously in the theatre.’

  Céleste saw her three roles simultaneously as ‘a courtesan, an actress and a plaintiff . . . I ran from the Law Court to the Variétés.’

  After two months she won a case over her possessions, mainly furniture at her former apartment at Rue Joubert. This boosted her confidence, on top of the enormous lift she had received from the publishing deal.

  ‘The more I thought things over,’ she reflected, ‘the more I regretted not to have owed to my intelligence what I had gained by my beauty.’

  Alexandre Dumas’s worst fears for the political situation in France—and himself—came to fruition when his enemy Louis Bonaparte organised a coup d’état in December 1851 in order to remain president. Previously, a president could not run for a second term, but Bonaparte changed the constitution. Dumas and others who had campaigned against him were now in trouble. The celebrated author fled to Brussels, in Belgium. However, the consolidation of the Bonaparte family in power worked in Céleste’s favour. One of her main aims in life was still to have her name erased from the dreaded prostitutes’ registry. By April 1852, it had been there for many humiliating years. Now with a restored financial position and an invigorated sense of self, she wished to clear her name from the ignominy attached to the registry.

  Dumas had suggested she approach Prince Napoleon, or Plon-Plon as he was nicknamed, a cousin of President Louis-Napoleon. Céleste knew both to be supreme womanisers.2

  Céleste was two years younger than Prince Napoleon and had first met him at parties when she was at the Hippodrome. He had flirted with her on numerous occasions, and that had led to a short affair. Céleste managed to avoid becoming one of the charming, tubby prince’s long-term mistresses and adroitly kept him as a friend and contact. The pudgy-faced, big-nosed Plon-Plon was a close adviser to his cousin, and an influential government member, who used his position and power more freely than most. So much so, that there were rumours he might even stage a coup d’état himself to oust his cousin. This resulted in Louis-Napoleon being wary of leaving Paris in case someone, possibly Plon-Plon, moved against him.

  When Céleste approached Plon-Plon, he was delighted to help, but at a small price. And so after an evening out at the Café Anglais with several of his friends—as a cover should anyone guess their reason for being seen together—she accompanied him to his grand apartment for the night. Plon-Plon was discreet. Like her, he did not wish his friend Count Lionel to know of the assignation, even though the prince believed that the affair between the two was over.

  Céleste left him after breakfast the next morning with a big smile on her face. The conceited prince believed it was as a result of his powers in the boudoir. But Céleste, the expert courtesan who knew how to please any partner, had used all her imaginative skills to extract a promise from him that he would act quickly to have her name struck from the book of shame, tout suite.

  A week later, on 27 April 1852, the Fifth Bureau of the Paris Police Prefecture recorded that ‘Vénard, Élizabeth-Céleste is no longer on the list of public prostitutes’.

  It was a profound moment for a sophisticated and talented woman, who had once been trapped unwittingly as a naive and abused young girl into a life she never desired.

  CHAPTER 28

  Lionel’s Voyage of Discovery

  Céleste’s easy intimacy with Dumas and Prince Napoleon was because she finally did believe that her relationship with Lionel was irretrievable. As his lands were sold off he became an inconsolable wreck and insulted her in between moments of
reprieve and occasionally spending time with her. Céleste did not make any effort to stop him sailing for Sydney, Australia, in May 1852. She believed the parting would allow them both a chance at a new life. But Lionel was still in her head, if not her presence. He began writing copious letters that became more observational and interesting as he distanced himself from Europe. He continued with his insults, baleful outpourings and bleatings about their relationship. But they were becoming fewer with each communication.

  Lionel reached Sydney in mid-September and announced that he had bought a horse and would be riding for the mines in Bathurst, 210 kilometres west. He calculated it would take him eleven to fifteen days to cover the distance. He had decided on Bathurst, rather than travelling on to Melbourne and the Victorian goldfields. The New South Wales Government had been encouraging arrivals to its goldfields, after the gold rushes to California in the United States and to Victoria had begun to drain the Sydney population.

  Lionel had read about the rivers around Bathurst containing gold. The area’s geological features of quartz outcrops and gullies seemed similar to those of California. The fact that finally swayed him was that 880,000 ounces (24.5 tonnes) of gold had been discovered around Bathurst during 1852. The Great Western Road from Sydney to Bathurst was now clogged with miners and the shortest route to his dreams and hopes.