The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis by Julie Kavanagh

Author:Julie Kavanagh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307962249
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-06-10T21:00:00+00:00

The veteran actor Marie Bouffé had recently been taken on at the Variétés by Nestor Roqueplan—a significant coup, as Bouffé had made the fortune of the Théâtre du Gymnase. But as the actor’s health was poor, and he did not think he could carry the repertory alone, he had suggested that Roqueplan engage as a second star the celebrated Virginie Déjazet. The gala that Marie was so keen to attend was as much a tribute to Déjazet as to Bouffé, an opportunity for the public to welcome her back to Paris after an absence of several years. “Her name on the posters was enough to attract the finest flowers of Parisian society,” wrote one of her biographers.

By early evening on February 25, the Variétés was full to bursting, its auditorium ablaze with light from gas jets and the huge central chandelier, the buzz of anticipation exactly like that which Zola describes at the start of his novel Nana:

Women were languidly fanning themselves, casting glances over the hustle and bustle; smart young men in low-cut waistcoats and with a gardenia in their button holes had stationed themselves beside the orchestra, peering through opera-glasses poised in their gloved fingertips.… In this first-night audience, always full of the same people, there were little private groups smilingly acknowledging each other, while the regular theatre-goers, still with their hats on, were exchanging waves and nods.… This was Paris: the Paris of literature, finance and pleasure; lots of journalists, a few authors, stockbrokers and more courtesans than respectable women; a strangely mixed bunch, comprising every kind of genius, tainted with every kind of vice.

It was much the same mix at Déjazet’s debut. “Every member of the press, artists, theatre-lovers, gens du monde, students, schoolchildren … everyone scrambling through the Variétés’ doors to pay homage to her.” Renowned for roles en travestie, Déjazet had a nondescript face but was adored by the public for her sparkling personality and exceptional range, which spanned from grande dame to grisette, king to timid schoolboy. “She spoke in all the jargons and dazzled with a thousand metamorphoses!” That night at the Variétés, appearing in her signature role in the vaudeville Premières armes de Richelieu, Déjazet exceeded expectation.

In the audience was the actress’s twenty-four-year-old son, Eugène, who had grown up in an exceptionally free milieu (Virginie Déjazet’s lovers included two members of the Café de Paris’s infamous Souper des Douze—the wealthy man-about-town Alfred Tattet and his poet friend Félix Arvers). But, though spoiled by his mother and avid for any kind of pleasure, Eugène was a charming young man who had recently formed a close friendship with an intelligent twenty-year-old whose upbringing had been just as unconventional. This was Alexandre Dumas, the illegitimate son of the great writer, who was himself embarking on a literary career and had been launched by his father into the easy morality of the times—what Dumas fils called the paganism of modern life.

He and Eugène had spent the day riding together in the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and returned to the city in time for an early supper and the theater.

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