In 1875, Céleste’s close friend Georges Bizet produced his finest, most commercial opera at the Opéra-Comique. Some critics savaged it and branded it as ‘shocking’, which of course generated interest. The big-drinking, chain-smoking and overweight Bizet, ill and depressed by the critical response, died of a heart attack at age thirty-seven, almost exactly three months after the opening performance. This was when Carmen became a stupendous success, and Bizet never knew. He had lived for his work and had been inspired by people such as Céleste, who believed in his talent and urged him to keep producing. Bizet always said his output and mild acclaim were rewards in themselves. He never seemed to suffer from recognition deprivation, although it was known that he had the highest expectations for Carmen.
‘The gypsy heroine is little more than a splendid animal,’ Paul England wrote in his book Fifty Favourite Operas, ‘irresistible in her sensuous beauty, superb in her physical courage, knowing no law higher than her own desires. Carmen’s amours are rarely of more than six months’ duration’.1
Many critics then and later suggested that Bizet based the character on Céleste, who early in her career fitted most of this description.2 He loved whores and he was so enchanted by Céleste that he wanted to give up his girlfriend for her. Céleste was rarely out of the press and his mind. They lived close to each other for more than a decade, but according to her, never had sex.
Bizet’s early demise prompted Céleste to turn to her creativity for solace. She wrote the play Ambition Fatale with such manic drive that she caught bronchitis and ended up in a nursing home, the Maison Dubois. But the nurses could not stop her frenetic scribbling. By the time she was well enough to leave she had finished and sold the play to the Théâtre Beaumarchais, which produced it at the end of 1875. She did not stop writing and returned to a remote Australian setting for another book, The Two Sisters. It had one memorable line: ‘Dreamers don’t go to Australia; dreamers would not have time to dream there.’
The Australian experience may have been harsh for her, but she was extracting everything from it to help her make a living.
Céleste had moved from being productive to prolific. The book’s sales were modest, but she was keeping her name before the press and public. It prompted Céleste’s publisher to convince her to bring out a new set of memoirs, Death at the End of the World (Un Deuil au Bout du Monde), covering her wedding, the boat trip to Australia and her life in Melbourne and the goldfields. It was 1877, twenty years after she had returned to Paris from her Australian sojourn.
She had been thinking about publishing her memoirs from that time ever since her tour of Belgium five years previously and she had been refreshing her memory of the experience with the odd talk in Paris. It was an about face after all her protests two decades earlier about the republishing of her first set of memoirs. But she felt comfortable with this book and her fears about the Chabrillan family’s reprisals had subsided. It was scandal-free and gave her a chance to reiterate Lionel’s efforts to make sure their marriage was valid. It covered their lives in Australia, and expressed the factual experience from which she drew her themes in the fictional The Gold Thieves.
Death at the End of the World was published under the name Countess Lionel de Chabrillan, a defiant reminder to the Chabrillan family. Just to make the point even stronger, she agreed to the publisher bringing out a third edition of the original memoirs.
The family had won many of the early battles in thwarting her career in publishing and the theatre, but she was winning the war in reminding France of her marriage and her grand love affair with Count Lionel. The new book also kept her name in the press and generated welcome extra income.
Céleste finally convinced her benefactor the Count de Naurois to approach the Count d’Haussonville, who was in charge of helping the people of Alsace and Lorraine, with her suggestion about an orphanage at Le Vésinet. Haussonville knew the Chabrillans and refused to facilitate the building work. Naurois was not used to being rejected, especially over such a humane and charitable project. He persisted. Haussonville accepted the proposal on the condition that Céleste would not be on the list of patrons. Céleste never wished accolades for the charity. She agreed to this and building began. While she was overseeing it, the nuns, the Sisters of Saint-Charles, who would bring up the twenty orphans, approached her about the construction of a small chapel for them. Céleste made sure their wish was granted.
The chapel was consecrated on 22 August 1877 with a fair sweep of France’s aristocracy represented. However, only one member of the Chabrillan family attended—Céleste herself, even though she had not been invited. She lived a stone’s throw from the chapel and orphanage and it was easy to creep into the woods nearby and observe the ceremony. When the guests began to disperse, Naurois beckoned her to meet the nuns and orphan girls, explaining that Céleste was their true guardian angel.
This description flattered and humbled Céleste, for she was forever being reminded in commentary and art that many viewed her as more of a fallen angel. In 1878, 26-year-old French painter Henri Gervex produced a superb oil on canvas he called Rolla. It depicted a young, beautiful prostitute lying asleep on her back on a bed with an aristocratic-looking fellow—very much like Alfred de Musset—gazing out the brothel window at Paris rooftops. Gervex said he was inspired by a long poem by Musset. The text recounted the destiny of a young, debauched and idle ‘Jacques Rolla’ (read Musset himself) who fell in love with Maria, a teenager who escaped from a life of misery by going into prostitution. The poem was written a few years before Musset met Céleste, but the girl depicted in 1878 by Gervex bears a very close resemblance in face, body, colouring and circumstance to a young Céleste. Gervex knew her. He had read her memoirs and the perennial stories about her in the Paris press. He had read of Céleste’s relationship with Musset. Again, as with Georges Bizet and the inspiration for Carmen, he would have had the well-known Mogador in mind when he painted the girl.
Similarly to Carmen, this outstanding creation caused feverish controversy. The bureaucracy banned the work from the opening of the Salon de Paris, a place for the best artists to exhibit. The judges saw it as ‘immoral’. The post-Franco-Prussian War era was generating a degree of conservatism as if in repsonse to the idea that, as the Germans had suggested, France’s softened morals had helped in its defeat by the more rigid, disciplined Prussians.
Naurois became ill suddenly in 1878 and called his good friend Céleste to his deathbed to say goodbye.
‘I’m going to leave you 1200 francs a year,’ he told her, ‘which will be held in trust by my stepdaughter. There will be an additional 800 shares, which will need a final payment in a few years.’
Céleste expressed her gratitude.
‘No, no, my dear,’ he said, his eyes filling with tears. ‘My whole fortune would not have been too much of a reward for the happiness you have given me.’
He was buried in the chapel he had funded at Le Vésinet.
Naurois’s death left Céleste feeling isolated. Close friends, family, dependants and benefactors were dying or disappearing with such alacrity that she had a sense of being alone. It began with Dumas, and was followed by Solange, Anne-Victoire, Bizet and now Naurois. Her relationship with Desmarest, who had retired, had fallen away. She could no longer use the apartment in which he had set her up. Nor could she live at Le Vésinet, which was now incorporated into Naurois’s estate. She had grown to enjoy the secluded life and thought she would miss Le Vésinet, but she still preferred Paris, if she had to make a choice. She took a small room in the Passage de l’Opéra.
Céleste’s method of getting over the losses and loneliness was to write. She laboured over the play M’ame Nicole. She still had the energy but was not flavour of the decade anymore. Young playwrights who had not experienced the period from 1830 to 1870, and who had been influenced mainly by the morbid impact of the Franco-Prussian War, were preferred. Nevertheless, she broke through yet again when this play was produced by the Folies-Dramatiques in 1880, the year she turned fifty-six. Céleste’s run seemed almost over and it had been a good one of twenty-six years—a generation—since her memoirs had burst onto the literary scene in 1854.
During the two years since leaving Le Vésinet, she often made the short train ride to see the nuns and the orphan children. Once more her whimsical, spontaneous nature took over and she decided to buy another home there but found herself cash-strapped. She consulted her long-term friend Alexandre Dumas Jr.
‘Why don’t you think about selling the copyright to your ten novels to Michel Lévy, the publisher at Calmann-Lévy? I’ve done it. We struggling authors need all the help we can get.’
‘I must consider it,’ Céleste said, more than interested.
‘Mind you, it hurts. You’ll never again receive royalties.’
‘I’m not worried about that. Most of them aren’t generating funds.’
‘Don’t forget, you can’t pass on the copyright to any dependants in your estate, or anyone you have bequeathed.’
‘I’m not concerned. I have no children, siblings or family.’
‘What about Solange?’
‘I haven’t heard from her in nearly a decade. I heard rumours that a German soldier had taken her away. I hope she’s happy.’
‘You realise that books can generate royalties for seventy-five years after your death?’
‘They’re not creating royalties now. How could they that far into the future?!’
‘You wouldn’t consider keeping the copyright for The Gold Thieves? It’s done so well as a book and play.’
‘It’s lost its appeal,’ Céleste said despondently. ‘There’s no momentum.’ She thought for a moment and laughed. ‘The only one copyright I really don’t care about losing is for the memoirs.’
Céleste sold all the copyright to the publisher and in the deal it bought another book from her, Marie Baud. The payment allowed her to buy the property at Le Vésinet, which she called Chalet des Fleurs. She found it difficult to maintain and ended up subletting two rooms to a young, struggling photographer. Céleste believed in him and the potential for this new and fast-growing creative area. When his operation flopped, she recognised the usual inability of artists to run a business, and took it over. She told him to produce the photos and organised a Paris company to do the development and printing.
Soon afterwards, Céleste fell ill again, this time from accidental coal poisoning. Dumas Jr rushed to see her at Le Vésinet and suggested strongly that she again enter the Maison Dubois nursing home. When she demurred he understood it was because she was, as ever, short of funds. The upkeep of the Chalet des Fleurs and her Paris pied-à-terre had drained her finances. Dumas paid for the sojourn and said she should always see him if she needed help. Céleste wrote to thank him for his generosity and kindness.
He then sent her a huge bunch of red roses and white lilacs.
Dumas Sr and Dumas Jr had always seen the inner beauty and soul of this unusually tenacious, spirited and gifted woman, who had often fought against the odds.