Celeste

by Roland Perry

  The life of a brilliant and determined woman, 150 years ahead of her time, ended on 18 February 1909. Her tombstone at Pré-Saint-Gervais was rendered in the simple yet creative style that summarised with genius the main loves and elements of her eighty-four years. One word, CÉLESTE, adorned the marble plaque on her tomb. Below was engraved a countess’s coronet pierced by a quill. There was no sign of Mogador.

  Notes

  All quotes, except otherwise noted, come from Céleste Vénard’s memoirs and diaries.

  Sources of memoirs and notes

  Céleste Mogador, Adieux au Monde, Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 5 vols, Locard-Davi et de Vresse, Paris, 1854.

  —Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 2nd edition, 4 vols, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1858.

  —Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 3rd edition, 2 vols, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1876.

  —Un Deuil au Bout du Monde, Suite de Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1877.

  —The French Consul’s Wife: Memoirs of Céleste de Chabrillan in Gold-rush Australia, Introduction and translation of Un Deuil au Bout du Monde, by Jeanne Allen & Patricia Clancy, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Press, 1998.

  —Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-century Paris, Introduction and translation by Monique Fleury Nagem, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2001.

  Chapter 2

  1.Rue du Pont-aux-Choux (Street of the Bridge of Cabbages). Vegetables, including cabbages, were grown on the edge of the nearby canal. The apartment where Céleste was born and lived for the first eight years of her life still stands. An electronic sign in the window when the author researched the area said, ‘Love is in the air.’ Half the front door’s window is ornate wrought iron.

  2.The attempt on King Louis-Philippe’s life was made by Corsican Giuseppe Marco Fieschi. He attacked the king with a self-built weapon made of twenty-five gun barrels fastened together. Fieschi shot from the third level of 50 Boulevard du Temple. One bullet grazed the king’s forehead.

  Chapter 4

  1.Roland Perry, The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2014, p 126.

  Chapter 7

  1.The pseudonym of Amantine Lucille Dupin, 1804–76. She happened to be from Berry (where Count Lionel de Chabrillan had his estate south of Paris). She was famous for popular, romantic novels set in regional France.

  Chapter 9

  1.The Tahitian queen of the Pomare dynasty was Aimata (1813–77). She reigned as Pomare IV after her brother, the king, died.

  2.Céleste received this nickname in September 1844. She was nineteen. In that year the Moroccan city of Mogador was fired on by the French fleet.

  Chapter 10

  1.For more on this famous theatre see Nicole Wild, ‘Théâtre Beaumarchais’ in Dictionnaire de la Musique en France au XIX Siecle, Fayard, Paris, 2003.

  2.The Hippodrome was where the Place de l’Étoile is now, at the entrance to Avenue Kleber. This was one of several open-air arenas that were well patronised in Paris from 1845, when the Hippodrome began, to 1907.

  Chapter 11

  1.The Duke of Osuna represented Spain at the marriage of Napoleon III to the beautiful Spanish aristocrat Eugénie de Montijo in 1853. Spanish writer Juan Valera wrote of the way Mariano’s extravagance reached a pinnacle from 1856 (when aged forty-two) to 1862 in St Petersburg, where he made a huge effort to spend his enormous wealth on wine, women and roulette. At fifty-one, he finally deigned to marry a German princess less than half his age, and they had no children. After a life of degeneracy and monumental self-indulgence, he died, aged sixty-seven, in 1882 (Nicolas Hobbs, Grandes de España, in periodic publication, Instituto de Salazar y Castro, Spain, 2007).

  Chapter 14

  1.Berry is a province in central France. The Chabrillans were pretenders to the throne of Monaco in the twentieth century.

  Chapter 15

  1.The marquis was sixty years of age, which was not young in the 1840s.

  Chapter 19

  1.The barricade was at the end of Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

  Chapter 21

  1.Cholera has been a scourge throughout world history. Descriptions of it were found in the fifth century BC in Sanskrit. Study by the British physician John Snow from 1849 (the year the maid Caroline contracted the disease) to 1854 led to significant advances in epidemiology. An effective oral vaccine was only created in the second half of the twentieth century. Cholera still affects up to five million people annually and up to 130,000 die from it.

  Chapter 23

  1.Presuming this directive to mean for quite a long time, the Jew, Ahasuerus, found himself propelled by an unseen force that would not let him find a place to rest.

  Chapter 26

  1.The philosophical works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1722–78) were among the most influential in the world in the eighteenth century and continue to be so. They included The Social Contract and Émile, both published in 1762.

  Chapter 27

  1.Alexandre Dumas Jr’s 1848 novel La Dame aux Camélias was adapted into Verdi’s celebrated opera La Traviata.

  2.Prince Napoleon, or Joseph Charles Paul (1822–91), was the son of Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, King of Westphalia. He was an arts patron, and his fortnightly dinners at the restaurant Voisin were legendary for their glamorous guests.

  Chapter 29

  1.Alexandre Dumas Jr 1824–95 was the illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas and dress-maker Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay. His father took him from his mother and educated him. The distress this caused Dumas Jr saw him write about tragic female characters. In his play The Illegitimate he expressed the belief that if a father sired a child, he should marry the mother. He wrote twenty-five plays, one unfinished, and fifteen books.

  Chapter 30

  1.Edgar Holt, Plon-Plon, The Life of Prince Napoleon, Michael Joseph, UK, 1973, pp 72–3.

  2.Françoise Moser, Life and Adventures of Céleste Mogador (Vie et Aventures de Céleste Mogador), Albin Michel, Paris, 1935, pp 143–4.

  Chapter 31

  1.Françoise Moser, Life and Adventures of Céleste Mogador (Vie et Aventures de Céleste Mogador), Albin Michel, Paris, 1935, p 147. Also Roland Perry, The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2014.

  Chapter 35

  1.The book caused a big stir in Paris, but nothing in Melbourne to begin with, despite Céleste’s dramatic claims in her memoirs about Lionel reading newspaper accounts of it in local papers before he even disembarked in Melbourne. The morning paper had only a reference to the Croesus being late. But contrary to the account in her memoirs, there were no alarms in The Argus or The Age about the ship being lost and all on board presumed drowned. Céleste’s memoirs imagined obituaries for the count and references to his notorious wife. They were never written or published. Using dramatic licence, she spiced up the memoirs occasionally but not enough to destroy their integrity or credibility. It seemed part of her prejudice, based on ignorance, about the locals and her own insecurity about being married to a count.

  2.From 1851 to 1857 there were mass desertions to the goldfields. At one point in 1854, ninety-seven vessels coming from Hong Kong and England did not have enough sailors to leave port. In the end, shipping companies were offering sailors as much as seventy-five pounds for the return trip to first entice them to make the outward journey, and second, influence them to make the return trip. Even so, once boats reached Australia, there were thousands of desertions over the decade until 1860.

  3.A palanquin—a carriage for ‘important people’—is a covered seat on poles carried by four men.

  4.Where Princes Bridge at Flinders Street is situated now.

  Chapter 36

  1.Baroche redeemed his somewhat idle, under-achieving image (compared with his high-profile politician father) when he joined the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 in command of a battalion of 5000 soldiers. He died in action leading his men into battle. Victor Hugo delivered a
back-handed remark when he said, ‘On that day, the death of the son made one forget the life of the father.’ (See the Dictionary of French Biography.)

  Chapter 37

  1.Céleste’s second set of memoirs were derived from her copious notes on her trip to Australia and the two and a half years she spent there. She called them Un Deuil au Bout du Monde—A Bereavement (or Death) at the End of the World. This had a double meaning. She had a passionate hatred of Victoria. In one sense she meant that it was akin to death to be there. In another, she was thinking about her husband, who is buried in Melbourne. The book was published in 1877, two decades after the experience, which meant she had time to reflect on her diary entries and compose her work with hindsight and a little ‘shaping’ of the narrative and editorial, assisted by the newspaper clippings she collected. Some experiences of other people reported on in her second book were included as if they were hers.

  2.There are no reports of this incident in any papers in Ballarat or Melbourne. No pictures were published. Patricia Clancy and Jeanne Allen in their introduction to The French Consul’s Wife appear rightly sceptical about this mine ‘event’. They point out that the governor’s wife, Lady Hotham, was widely praised when she and her husband visited in early September 1854. Was Céleste’s entry a fabrication? Possibly, and she may well have had enough English to read the newspaper accounts and ‘incorporate’ them into a personal account. However, she did visit the goldfields on several occasions. It was fashionable (and still is) for visitors to be taken down the mines.

  3.The count’s proclamation appeared at Sovereign Hill, Eureka, on 3 December 1854.

  4.There was conjecture over whether or not the drummer boy, John Egan, had actually died. Some reports suggested he died much later, in 1860, because of injuries sustained in the battle with miners. A memorial was erected to him in Ballarat Cemetery, and remained there for fifty years after the incident.

  Chapter 38

  1.Before Australia, Antoine Fauchery fought in Poland in 1848 and was imprisoned in Magdeburg. In 1852 he sailed for Melbourne on the Emily and joined the gold rush at Ballarat. After his café venture, he returned to the goldfields as a store owner at Daylesford. This venture also fell well short of profitability so he returned to France in 1857. His only modest ‘success’ was to published eight Letters from a Miner in Australia in serial form in Le Moniteur Universal. On returning to Paris, he edited the letters into a book published by Poulet-Malassis et de Broise. It gave an intense and colourful view of Melbourne and the goldfields. He then gained a grant from the French Government for an official photographic assignment to India, Australia and China.

  Fauchery returned to Melbourne with his wife. In 1858 he worked at a Collins Street studio and published Sun Pictures of Victoria. He later wrote Letters from China (Lettres de Chine), which was where his charmed, struggling yet up-beat life ended in 1861 after a short illness.

  2.Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans, Castle Books, New Jersey, 2004.

  Chapter 41

  1.Writer and poet Henri Murger had presented a Left Bank student’s tale of a prostitute, grisette, in his book Scenes de la Vie de Bohème. It was the basis for the opera La Bohème by Puccini.

  Chapter 47

  1.The Belleville Theatre at 94 Rue de Belleville still operates, on a smaller, more modest scale, in a down-market part of the Belleville district.

  Chapter 48

  1.Bizet and Céleste met in 1865 and remained good friends for life. He struggled for another seven years until 1872, when he wrote the music for Alphonse Daudet’s play, L’Arlésienne, before creating his best known opera, Carmen.

  2.Even today there is a certain snobbery from French aristocratic ranks concerning Céleste. In their eyes, someone with her background has no right to break into their circle. There is disregard for her achievements and exceptional life.

  3.According to Moser, the mini-biography was published by La Hune but no date or detail is given.

  Chapter 50

  1.ZED, La Société Parisienne, Librairie Illustrée, France, 1888, pp 94–5.

  2.Maxime du Camp, Paris Ses Organes, Ses Fonctions et Sa Vie dans la Second Moitié du XIXe siècle, vol 3, Hachette, France, 1876, p 453.

  Chapter 51

  1.Paul England, Fifty Favourite Operas, Bonanza Books (Crown), New York, 1985, p 436.

  2.The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Oxford University Press, UK, vol 2, p 755.

  Chapter 52

  1.Alexandre Dumas Jr’s last work, La Route de Thebes, was never finished. Céleste kept diaries from 1895 until her death. They were repetitious and disclosed nothing new.

  Chapter 53

  1.Françoise Moser, Life and Adventures of Céleste Mogador (Vie et Aventures de Céleste Mogador), Albin Michel, Paris, 1935, pp 242–3.

  2.In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served throughout the Great War (1914–18) and ended his service as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He died aged seventy-six in 1935.

  3.La Providence still stands and remains a notable old persons’ home. It has recently been refurbished and is known as La Providence Maison de Retraite. Montmartre is now thriving more than ever and the area is one of Paris’s main tourist attractions. It is a short walk from Paris’s red-light district Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge.

  4.Céleste’s remains were exhumed in 1993 and placed in the cemetery at Poinçonnet. The local Historical Society thought it appropriate, given her life and relationship with Count Lionel. Perhaps it was also because she had expressed such anguish at being in the same burial place as the hated Vincent.

  WORKS BY

  Céleste Vénard, Countess de Chabrillan

  Céleste Mogador, Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-century Paris, University of Nebraska, 2001.

  Adieux au Monde, Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 5 vols, Locard-Davi et de Vresse, Paris, 1854.

  Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 2nd edition, 4 vols, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1858.

  Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, 3rd edition, 2 vols, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1876.

  Un Deuil au Bout du Monde, Suite de Mémoires de Céleste Mogador, Librairie Nouvelle, Paris, 1877.

  NOVELS

  Les Voleurs d’Or, Michel Lévy, Paris, 1857. Translation: Lucy and Caroline Moorehead.

  The Gold Thieves, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1970.

  La Sapho, Michel Lévy, Paris, 1858.

  Miss Pewell, A. Bourdilliat, Paris, 1859.

  Est-il Fou?, A. Bourdilliat, Paris, 1860.

  Un Miracle à Vichy, Vichy Bougagard fils, 1861.

  Mémoires d’une Honnête Fille, A. Faure, Paris, 1865.

  Les Deux Soeurs Emigree et Deportees, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1876.

  Une Méchante Femme, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1877.

  La Duchess des Mers, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1881.

  Les Forçats de l’Amour, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1881.

  Marie Baude, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1883.

  Un Drame sur la Tage, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1885.

  PLAYS

  Bonjour au Vaincu, 1 act, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 19 April 1862.

  En Australie, 1 act vaudeville, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 1862.

  Quarelle d’Allemond, 1 act, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 28 October 1863.

  Les Voleurs d’Or, 1 act, Théâtre de Belleville, Paris, 28 May 1864.

  L’Armour de l’Art, Théâtre des Folies-Marigny, Paris, Alcan-Lévy, 4 June 1865.

  Chambre à Louer, 1 act, Théâtre des Folies-Marigny, Paris, 20 October 1865.

  Un Homme Compromis, 1 act, Théâtre des Folies-Marigny, Paris, Alcan-Lévy, 4 September 1865, 1868.

  Les Crimes de la Mer, 5 acts, Théâtre de Belleville, Paris, 8 May 1869, Morris pere et fils, 1869.

  Les Revers de l’Amour, 5 acts, Théâtre des Nouveautés, Paris, 3 April 1870.

  L’Américaine, 5 acts, Théâtre des Nouveautés, Paris, 3 April 1870.

  La Plaideuse, 1 act, Thé
âtre de l’Ambigu-Comique, Paris, 26 December 1874.

  L’Ambition Fatale, 5 acts, Théâtre Beaumarchais, Paris, 15 April 1875.

  Le Bonnet d’Une, 1 act, Paris, 1876.

  Entre Deux Balcons, Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, Paris, 7 March 1880.

  Ma’am Nicole, 3 acts, Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques, Paris, 4 July 1880.

  L’Armour et la Rose, 3 acts, Théâtre des Arts, Paris, 1880.

  Pierre Pascal, 5 acts, Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique, Paris, Paris, 4 August 1885.

  Cordon, Revue, Théâtre Pépinière, Paris, 26 December 1886.

  OPERETTAS

  Nedel, 1 act, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 23 May 1863.

  Militairement, 1 act, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 28 October 1863.

  En Garde, 1 act, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 14 January 1864.

  Les Pierrots en Cage, 1 act, Théâtre des Folies-Marigny, Paris, 9 September 1865.

  A la Bretonne, 1 act, Théâtre des Folies-Marigny, Paris, 10 September 1868.

  La Tiretire d’Yvonne, 1 act, Paris.

  Note: Céleste wrote twelve poems and seventeen songs.

  Bibliography

  Adcock, W.E., The Gold Rush of the Fifties, W. Cole, Melbourne, 1912.

  Allen, Jeanne and Clancy, Patricia, The French Consul’s Wife, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003.

  Chisholm, A.R., ‘Céleste de Chabrillan and the Gold Rush’, Meanjin Quarterly, Australia, June 1969, pp 197–207.

  Clarietie, Jules, La Vie a Paris, Charpentier, Paris, 1907.

  Claudin, Gustav, Mesn Souvenirs, Les Boulevards de 1840–1870, Calmann-Lévy, 1884.

  Diguet, Charles, Les Jolies Femmes de Paris, Librairie Internationale, Paris, 1870.

  Du Camp, Maxime, Paris, Ses Organes, Ses Fonctions et Sa Vie Dans la Second moitié du XIXe Siècle, Hachette, Paris, 1876.