Chapter 6

Asylum of Montdevergues

September 1929

‘Who could forget Rosa! That scoundrel!’ Camille was laughing softly, her distress forgotten as we reminisced about our old friend. Then I ruined it all with an ill-judged remark.

‘Only Rosa could get away with behaving like that.’ I meant her eccentric dress sense, but Camille’s face darkened and the frightening metallic voice was back.

‘Of course, it was all right for Rosa to walk about in trousers, smoking on the streets and living openly with her woman lover,’ she said. ‘Unnatural as she was, Rosa was welcome in all the smartest Paris salons. But me, what was my crime? I fell in love with Rodin and lived my own life apart from my family. And then when I dared to break free from him and make it on my own as an artist, they dragged me away by force from my studio and locked me up with the lunatics.’

I was alarmed when she began to pace up and down, muttering to herself: ‘Toute seule! Toute seule! Abandonée!’ When I tried to bring her back to the bench, she shook me off and screamed at the banked grey clouds, cursing Rodin.

‘Camille, please.’ I pulled her into my arms and stroked her poor thin hair, murmuring to her as I used to when she couldn’t sleep. She clung to me and began to cry again.

‘What is wrong with me? Why am I here? Oh, Jessie, help me, please help me.’

I began to cry too. ‘I will, I promise.’

Dr Charpenel shook his head and for a moment forgot to address me in his impeccable English. ‘Je suis desolé, Madame. What you ask, it’s impossible without the family’s permission.’

I leaned my hands on his desk. ‘But, what good is it doing keeping her here? She should be with people who love her. I would take care of her, Camille could live in my home, she would want for nothing.’ She would sculpt again; we would work together as we once had. I would make her whole and bring her back. Camille, my Camille.

‘Madame Elbourne, please understand that your visit has already upset the patient. Her only other visitor over the past fifteen years has been her brother.’

I closed my eyes. When Paul finally replied to all the letters I’d written him during my search for Camille, he did not tell me she had been abandoned here alone all that time, cut off from everything and everyone she loved. It was monstrous; unforgivable.

‘While it is admirable that you care about your friend,’ Charpenel said. ‘I must insist that you do not raise her hopes of being released. That is simply out of the question – the Claudel family has always been adamant that she remain in our care.’ He closed her file as if the matter were settled.

I would not give up. ‘You yourself said that she would get better if she were cared for by people who loved her. I love her. Let me try at least. I can talk to her family, convince them that Camille is not mad.’

‘My predecessor made a clear clinical diagnosis. Mademoiselle Claudel is in the grip of delusions that she is being persecuted, based on mostly false interpretations,’ he said.

I seized on his choice of word. ‘Mostly false? It sounds as if you believe there might be some truth to her so-called delusions. I would also feel persecuted if I’d been taken against my will and locked up in an asylum.’

He refused to meet my eye. ‘All I can say, Madame Elbourne, is that, historically, the asylum system has sometimes been abused by families who want to get rid of troublesome women.’

I waited.

Charpenel sighed and stared down at this desk with its neat piles of buff-coloured files. ‘When she was first admitted, she wrote letters every day complaining of her wrongful incarceration, to the newspapers, to influential friends, until her mother gave strict orders she could not send or receive correspondence from anyone outside the family. Madame Claudel died earlier this year, and the ban is no longer in force – it is why you were able to write to her.’

I thought of the letters I had written over the years to Camille at her family’s address; they had all gone unanswered. Now I knew why. All those years I had thought she was ignoring me, too busy with her own life to bother with me, and all the time she was here, shut up alone. No wonder she was so broken.

I put my hands on Charpenel’s desk so he was forced to look up at me. ‘Doctor, I implore you as a man of compassion, let me try to help Camille.’

‘Even if you were to obtain permission, the outside world would be an enormous shock to Mademoiselle Claudel. Everything has changed so dramatically since she came here in 1914 from the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard. She was transferred with the rest of the patients when the Germans began advancing on France.’

The mention of that year made me flinch. My sons were among the first to join up. They were different when they came back, but at least they came back. Camille would know nothing about the Great War, other than whispers from beyond the asylum walls.

Charpenel rubbed his chin. ‘It would be too dangerous for her to travel to England, and I cannot in all conscience recommend this course of action.’

I began to protest but he held up his hand and continued. ‘However, I do believe she would be happier and calmer under supervised freedom and the right medication in her family home.’ He began to scribble on a pad. ‘What I will do is recommend in the strongest possible terms that Mademoiselle Claudel be released into the care of her sister, Madame de Massary, who lives in the patient’s childhood home in the country. Perhaps now that the mother is dead, the family will reconsider their position.’ He put on his glasses and picked up one of the files.

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

Charpenel stood up and led me to the door. ‘Please do not expect miracles. Families in such cases are often reluctant to take on the responsibility of caring for an elderly relative.’ He paused at the door and shook my hand. ‘I will also forward your offer to care for the patient, but I can do no more. After that, it is up to the family.’

I held onto his hand. It seemed so unfair that Camille’s fate should be decided by the same people who’d condemned her to this living hell in the first place. But there was no point railing at this reasonable man.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll wait while you write the letter and take it to Louise myself.’

Camille and I waited outside in the dying afternoon sunshine for my husband to pick me up. If he was as appalled as me when he saw Camille, he hid it well. He talked of the weather and his cheerful good manners seemed to have a calming effect on her. When he suggested a photograph, she sat meekly next to me while he fussed over the camera. I reached for Camille’s hands, which she kept folded in her lap, like an obedient schoolgirl. She was quiet, defeated, and she seemed somehow absent, as if her soul were elsewhere. It upset me more than anything to see the awful emptiness in her eyes.

I kissed her three times, the Parisian way she’d once taught me. ‘I’ll come back, Camille.’

She smiled blankly at me. ‘That would be nice. Thank you for coming such a long way, Madame.’ Her pupils were huge. They must have given her something while I was with Charpenel. A nurse led her away, and Camille was once again just a small bent old woman. I wanted to run after her, bundle her into the car and take her far away from this place.

When the gates clanged behind us, I turned to my husband. ‘I have to go to Paris.’

He sighed and rubbed his temples. ‘I knew this was a bad idea. What about our trip to Italy?’

‘You go. I can’t leave her here.’

‘Very well, Jessie, do what you have to do. You’ve always done exactly as you wish.’

Had I? I had always been so sure of the path my life would take, but that all changed when I became entangled in the affair between Camille and Rodin.