Celeste

by Roland Perry

  This incident happened at the end of her goldfields tour. Unrepentant and despite two black eyes, she returned to Melbourne for more performances, this time in a big, improvised circus tent. Her fury from Ballarat spilled into this performance and was not helped by her audience being made up in part of vocal, drunken miners on leave from the diggings. Her ‘intercourse’ with the audience, which had worked before, now became a harangue at heckling patrons. She was booed and abused. The next morning’s newspaper reviews ridiculed her. She responded by having notices of complaint pinned in Melbourne’s main streets.

  Lionel became concerned when he heard rumours that she would be dragged out of her hotel—the Grand Imperial—and horsewhipped in a city square. He hurried to see her and was alarmed to find protesters already gathering outside the hotel at the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins Streets. Lionel tried to talk her into leaving Melbourne right away. Her stubborn streak surfaced. She refused. He took her to the window and pointed out the growing mob. Lola still resisted, saying she’d rather fight them. Lionel finally made her see reason and secreted her out of the hotel. They took a carriage to St Kilda, where she stayed with the Chabrillans for two days before he could arrange her ‘escape’ on a ship to Sydney. From there she planned a further tour, this time to America, with the good money she had made in the goldfields.

  Lionel let government officials and newspaper editors know his feelings about the way Lola had been treated, and also the manner in which Céleste had been smeared by association. Defending people who had on occasions offended prudish Victorian sensibilities did not endear him to some. The Chabrillans began to lose the goodwill that had built up around them in recent months.

  Lionel and Fauchery, who had become best friends, sought out the detractors of Lola and Céleste. By coincidence two other Frenchmen were about to settle a dispute in the time-honoured but crude method of a duel, with pistols at dawn, in Alma Road, St Kilda. A policeman intervened and arrested one of the combatants. Lionel waved the French flag, literally, in the police court in an attempt to stop the second combatant from also being taken into custody, but to no avail.

  The newspapers attacked Lionel for his impetuous act and accused him of not understanding the limits of his power and duties as a consul. Lionel was unhappy with this reportage and with caricatures of him, Céleste and Lola that appeared in some papers. Urged on by the meddling Fauchery, Lionel, in a fit of pique, challenged a reporter to a duel.

  ‘Laugh at me, write anything you please,’ he wrote in a note to the allegedly offending reporter, ‘but I forbid you to have anything to do with my private life . . . You don’t know how to handle a sword, and I cannot box. I shall therefore be forced to put a bullet in your head. I mean what I say, and I swear to you I will do what I say.’

  The Argus on 15 March 1856, in an article headed ‘Consular Dignity’, accused the count of displaying ‘a morbid idiosyncrasy’. It exposed his folly in the court in attempting to protect the French duellists from arrest and revealed and rubbished his rash threat to kill the journalist.

  Céleste eventually calmed him down. But his behaviour bothered her. She knew her man better than he knew himself in certain circumstances and she believed something else, something more fundamental, was causing these outbursts. She became ill with liver complaints, which may well have been brought on by stress.

  By April 1856, around the time Lionel started showing signs of renewed strain and odd behaviour, Céleste had been working secretly for more than a year on a novel, The Gold Thieves.

  ‘I have revised it a dozen times,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘I don’t know where to hide it in case Lionel finds it. Perhaps he would laugh at me, and anyway he would scold me.’

  She found the painstaking work affected her health, but on the other hand she discovered the writing helped her forget her troubles. The act of living in a parallel world of fiction was cathartic, creative and liberating. She reckoned the odds were heavily against success, yet she was spurred on by the sales of her memoirs, which had been on the bestseller list in France for more than a year. The publisher was thinking of another edition. Even so, she was uncertain, realistic and hopeful rather than delusional about a follow-up big seller in another, more demanding form of writing.

  ‘I know it’s ridiculous,’ she wrote, ‘but I fancy that if misfortune strikes, I could manage to earn some money.’

  Céleste knew that the harsh, different, more demanding life she had experienced in Australia was as valuable from a creative and observational point of view as any inert gold nugget she and Lionel could ever have stumbled across in the goldfields. It depended on her writing a good book. No local had succeeded, despite plenty of scribblers trying something. She had perspective on this brash new country that was fresh and honest, at least in her opinion, as depicted through her characters and narrative. Her source material was vast. While Lionel toiled at his city office, she had plenty of time on her hands to take notes and reflect. Her English was now strong enough that she could read the papers, which served drama up daily and in stimulating variety. Céleste drew on all her experiences at sea, and in St Kilda, Ballarat and Melbourne. As she wrote the book, she included everything from hangings to hurricanes and from street fights to bushfires.

  Not only was there the heartbeat of the gold industry and all the wealth it was generating, along with the greed, court action, thieving, murdering and city development evident on the skyline; there was also the micro-drama, mainly tragedy, told to Lionel every day by his French compatriot victims of misfortune, as well as by others—British, Scandinavian, American, German, Dutch, Chinese and Indigenous Australians, who were being swept, often mercilessly, from their own lands.

  Everyone coming to Australia had a story to tell. No one travelling halfway round the world to take a chance at a completely new and pioneering life, in the cities and on the often hostile land beset by floods and fire, could claim to have had a dull, uneventful existence.

  All these tales touched Céleste and she wove some of them into her narrative.

  Her attitude to the huge, clandestine effort behind The Gold Thieves perhaps reflected her strength of character, drive and ambition more than anything else.

  ‘I would rather lose everything,’ she noted, ‘than one day [have to] say to myself, “If only I had persevered more, perhaps I could have achieved something.”’

  But she remained humble when she added, ‘Who knows, in a few years’ time, Lionel might be forgiven for having married me.’

  She did not stop at one novel. Over the two years spent in Melbourne she made time to produce several fictional works. Though she never revealed it in her diaries and memoirs, she was giving everything she had to succeed in this creative area. It was her biggest secret.

  Céleste was alone at the French Chancellery in May 1856 when she discovered the reason behind Lionel’s precipitous acts and moods. Reading his private business files, she learned that his representative handling the flour shipments had gone bankrupt and fled with the 40,000 francs he owed the Chabrillans. The flour in Melbourne arrived by ship from Chile, but only after many other shipments of the same commodity had already arrived. Consequently, the bottom had dropped out of the market. The flour had to be sold at a massive loss.

  The bad luck that Céleste feared had struck.

  ‘Lionel has once again been taken by being too trusting,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘The business partners have nothing associated to their names but debts. He is left solely responsible.’

  The Count de Chabrillan was on his way to bankruptcy. While he was at his Melbourne office, a sheriff came to the St Kilda house to seize it and any personal effects of any value. Céleste owned the house and it was in her name. She could have resisted the seizure, and would have been within her rights under the terms of her marriage contract. Instead, she signed over all her possessions to make sure the situation did not lead to her husband ending up in court.

  Lionel was furious when he discovered he
r actions.

  ‘I owe much more than the house is worth,’ he said. ‘Now we shall have debts and nowhere to live. It’s an act of absolute madness!’

  Céleste was angry at his insensitive and ungrateful reaction to her attempt to extricate him from yet another major financial mess.

  ‘We had a very heated argument for the first time in our marriage,’ she said, ‘but he admitted he had been wrong. He kissed me and begged forgiveness. We both cried and made up.’

  The law moved fast. The house was put up for sale, but there were no initial buyers. Lionel now hoped he could raise enough money so the debts would be mostly paid off, which would mean that the deeds to the property would revert to his wife. But he would not be allowed to leave Victoria until his finances were stabilised, one way or the other. Céleste could travel if she wished. Once more the resilient Countess de Chabrillan knew she had to show her ingenuity and come up with something that might just save her husband.

  CHAPTER 40

  Solvency Solutions

  ‘I think I have a solution to our financial situation,’ Céleste said one morning. ‘Your cousin owes 40,000 francs for jewels I sold him. That would clear our debts.’ This cousin was also Count de Chabrillan.

  ‘But you sued him for the capital and interest, and it failed.’

  ‘Because we’re so far away. If I confront him in France, he’ll pay up.’

  ‘I’m not letting you travel back. You’re still not well enough. Besides, I can’t go with you.’ He looked away and added, ‘I don’t wish to be left alone.’

  ‘It’s the only solution we have, darling,’ she said. ‘A little bit of hardship on the trip will be worth it.’

  She sold all her best dresses and remaining jewels to raise funds for the boat trip for her, Solange and Marie. Then she went to the trouble of having a senior government official intervene with Lionel’s creditors so that he would be given time—six months—to pay back the money owing. This influenced Lionel to at least consider allowing her to make the voyage. Yet in another moment of weakness, more symptomatic of the old pre-marriage, pre-Australia Lionel, he said, ‘I’ll die worrying about you. If they make life too hard for me here, I’ll put a bullet through my brain!’

  Céleste would have none of this talk, which she viewed as self-indulgent. But she also knew that he was capable of killing himself in a moment of discouragement. The easy access to weapons and the fact that most people in Victoria carried arms also bothered her.

  ‘If I were strong enough,’ she told him, ‘I would beat you for saying such a thing! Your life is no longer your own. It belongs to me, and I value it more than my own. In time everything can be arranged.’

  ‘Your liver won’t stand the trip. You know that.’

  ‘It’s true, I’m not well, and nor is Solange. But our doctor says we’re more likely to die if we stay in Australia. Something about the climate. We haven’t adjusted as well as you.’

  This swayed Lionel slightly. He became convinced when Fauchery told him he feared for his own wife’s life because of a sudden sickness. Madame Fauchery wanted to go back to France to heal or die but had been ordered by her medico not to attempt the arduous trip.

  Céleste did not show it, but she worried about this ‘very big step’ of leaving Lionel and even ‘the wretched country of Australia’. Yet she felt it was her destiny to go. In the back of her mind, she would take the opportunity to sell her novels, which Lionel had no idea she had written.

  She was struck by a surprising bout of nostalgia for Australia after having complained endlessly to friends in France and bitched to compatriots in the privacy of her own home.

  ‘I felt myself loving that hard Australian soil,’ she recalled. ‘The plants, the trees, my own loneliness—I was going to regret [leaving] them all.’

  Céleste, Solange and Marie were set to sail on board an American ship—the James Baines—when Lionel turned up to spend one last night with her. He risked a treacherous trip by boat in a squall on Port Phillip Bay to give her his most treasured heirloom, a small ivory figure of Jesus Christ on an ebony cross, which he had inherited from his mother. It was the only item of his mother’s that he possessed.

  ‘Keep it with you always, do you understand?’ he said through chattering teeth after his mid-winter ordeal in rough seas. ‘It’s the last sacrifice I can make for you, the last proof of love I can give you.’

  Céleste was more touched than she had ever been, especially when he added, ‘I have no regrets, and if you were not my wife, I would still marry you.’

  ‘That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,’ she said, tears welling.

  ‘My only regret is that I have involved you in my failed business affairs.’

  ‘You should not feel remorse. I don’t. We’re a team; all marriages are in themselves business relationships. We share the same problems and successes. That’s marriage. That’s married life.’

  The night was spent exchanging promises and when day broke they had hardly slept. Céleste awoke with less courage for her plans than when she had fallen asleep.

  ‘I want you to stow away with me,’ she whispered, trembling. ‘I don’t think I can stand to be away from you.’

  ‘Céleste, please don’t talk like that. I gave my word to the Victorian authorities that I wouldn’t attempt to escape the colony.’

  Her plea, however, played on his conscience. He stayed in the cabin until well after the time visitors were supposed to leave, almost as if he was planning to sail away by ‘mistake’.

  After he left, sorrow, fatigue and emotion overtook Céleste and she collapsed in her cabin. When she came to, the ship was eighty kilometres from Melbourne. Céleste climbed on deck, but all she could see was the ‘huge, sad, green expanse that often makes us believe in the end of the world’.

  Céleste kept a diary for the hundred-day journey. As with all long ocean trips of the era, death stalked the James Baines. But Céleste hung on to life, her duties and ambitions. She was driven by her responsibilities to Solange and her husband, and the grand prospect of seeing the boulevards of her beloved Paris again. At last in late November 1856, after more than two and a half years away, they arrived home.

  Céleste wasted no time in taking a modest apartment at 11 Rue d’Alger and wrote to her mother, inviting her to visit. Anne-Victoire came and was saddened to see her daughter’s appearance. The harsh Australian sun and conditions had hardened her looks, and she seemed to have aged beyond her thirty-one years. But Céleste was unperturbed by her reaction.

  On the fifth day of her return, she met with her ex-lover and lawyer, Maitre Desmarest, in her battle to recover money from Lionel’s cousin.

  ‘I want to sue him again,’ she said, ‘but this time we’ll really put the pressure on.’

  ‘There’s no guarantee we would win at the second attempt,’ Desmarest said.

  ‘Typical lawyer’s attitude!’

  ‘Yes, and we deal in realities.’

  ‘Without imagination. The family hates publicity. If they thought the legal battle would be in the papers . . .’

  ‘The case could take six months.’

  ‘No. Lionel would be bankrupt in Melbourne by that time.’

  ‘Is there any way he could be brought to Paris?’ Desmarest asked. ‘That would put pressure on the cousin. Lionel would add a certain level of integrity to the claim that you sold the jewellery to him. I would imagine that this could swing the dispute your way.’

  ‘Then I must find a way to get him back. Under the colony’s legal restrictions, he must stay there until his financial situation is cleared up, one way or another.’ Céleste paused to consider another problem. ‘Under the terms of his contract as consul he can’t leave until 1859.’

  ‘Again, too late!’ Desmarest said.

  In less than a fortnight, she had fulfilled Lionel’s wish to place Solange in a convent at Ardentes, near Châteauroux. Now she felt free to turn her mind to how she might make some money to liv
e. Top of her list was an attempt to sell her novels. It was her deepest desire.

  While making inquiries on where she might sell The Gold Thieves, Céleste was surprised to see how well her memoirs were thought of in Paris literary circles. But she was less than pleased to learn that the publisher was about to issue another edition. She once more sent Desmarest into the legal fray in an attempt to stop publication. He failed, but Céleste again called on Prince Napoleon for assistance and he managed to get a temporary annulment of the contract for the memoirs after the fifth volume had been published. A further three volumes would sit in limbo until a court case sorted out the dispute.

  A friend at La Presse, Charles Edmond, was now in charge of magazine serialisations, which were all the reading rage in France and England. He said he had too many serials piled up to fit her book in, but suggested she see another publisher, Michel Lévy.

  Edmond’s recommendation was so glowing that, with the promise that Céleste had more novels on the way, Lévy bought The Gold Thieves. Céleste was ecstatic. It gave her even more joy than when she had found a publisher for Mémoires. She felt that her gifts lay in fiction—in character depiction drama, plot and narrative.

  ‘It had to be a success,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘so that Lionel would not scold me for having gone into this new venture into the public arena without telling him about it; a venture that could do me so much harm.’

  An advance from Lévy and more proceeds from Mémoires meant that Céleste could send some much-needed funds to Lionel, who had borrowed privately himself. Collectively, they had enough to pay off his debts. Ownership of the St Kilda house reverted to Céleste, which was a turn in their fortunes because property prices were rising fast. Under the colony’s laws, Lionel was also free to leave Victoria if he wished. But his first tour as consul ran for five years and he could not request leave before that time was up in 1859.