Tragic Muse by Rachel Brownstein

Author:Rachel Brownstein [Brownstein, Rachel M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83182-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Prince Napoleon, photograph by Disdéri (photo credit 4.8)

Unromantically, she enjoyed protracted friendships with her ex-lovers. Not only the Second Emperor remained devoted and useful: Girardin continued always eloquent in her defense; Prince Nap came by yacht to visit her at Le Cannet, and promised to look after Gabriel’s career when she was dead. Most shockingly of all, she stayed chummy with Louis Véron, the Balzacian character credited with “corrupting” her in the first place, and “ruining” her in the second. The liaison with Véron that titillated contemporary caricaturists continued to amuse generations of biographers, who savored the spectacle of pure Camille in her toga squired by the fat-necked entrepreneur. Hector Fleischmann’s analysis of the association relies on a predictable play of rhetoric and prejudices: “The doubleness of Rachel’s character gives itself away clearly here. A woman, that is to say, hot-tempered, passionate, all nerves and anger, she will spurn Véron; a Jewess, that is to say, prudent, calculating, forward-looking and self-interested, she will use him. On the one side, her honor and dignity; on the other, her future and fortune. And would she hesitate? Would she place the one before the other? Do you think she isn’t a daughter of Father Félix?” Legend (propagated by the dramatist Ernest Legouvé, in his memoirs) says she once planned to shoot Véron from the stage during a performance, with a gun she took with her for the purpose, but in fact she never even dropped the double-dealing doctor from her acquaintance. The scandalous affaire Véron—the reading aloud of the compromising letters—had occurred in 1841; all through the early 1850s, Rachel wrote her old friend boasting letters about the strenuousness and enormous profits of her tours. He was one of the most powerful men in Paris, still; she was an ambitious actress who carefully cultivated public awareness of her international fame. In 1849, before embarking on one tour, she wrote and prettily begged Véron not to forget her during the three months she would be away. She lists proudly, for his benefit, all the cities and the dates on her itinerary, commenting, “What a journey! How exhausting!! But what a take!!!” (Her word is dot, which means dowry.) In closing, she professes her love: “I love you with all my heart and am your most devoted friend.” The choice of pronouns and gendered nouns is perhaps flirtatious, certainly hard to gloss: Rachel addresses Véron with the formal vous, also strangely refers to herself as his ami, underlining the masculine noun and its matching article. There may well be a private joke involved. But from here it seems that Rachel, sure that the old ironist would appreciate her self-knowledge, is signaling her amused awareness that she appears unwomanly in a world where energies and appetites and aims such as hers are not the sort of thing a tragedienne, or any woman, can confess to.

AT THIRTY, in a letter to Véron and his friends written from Prague, she reflected on her career and life in general, and therefore on money.

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