DETOUR: A PROSTITUTE WHO (ALMOST) ROSE UP FROM THE STREET

CÉLESTE VÉNARD, AGE 15, FLED TO ESCAPE RAPE, WAS IMPRISONED AS HOMELESS AND BECAME A REGISTERED PROSTITUTE

"A brothel gives you shelter, feeds you, gives you sumptuous clothes and jewels. The alternative is a man who beats you," said a woman met in jail. 

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• Céleste became a "servile woman." They could solicit at particular times and places without being arrested, but their names remained on "the book of infamy" for life.

• She spent a month in a brothel, but hated its restrictions.  When a client paid her debt, she was able to leave.*

*The girls were bound to the madam unless they repaid her for room, board, clothing, etc., estimated at the highest possible rate. 

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She became the renowned cancan dancer "Mogador"* of the bal Mabille, a dance-hall that could make a streetwalker a courtesan:

*"Noms de guerre," accorded by men, proved a dancer's success. The name "Mogador," like "Queen Pomery" below, came from current events.

   Bal Mabille (cut) by Provost, 1867 / zoom

• Fame was short-lived. "Queen Pomery," adulated in 1845, died forgotten in 1846, aged 21.

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She inspired the exuberant "Bacchanale" in Eugène Sue's novel The Wandering Jew, whose installments the literate would read aloud as neighbors crowded around them (July 1844-August 1845).

Céleste funded her tombstone at the cemetery of Montmartre: Its epitaph reads, "Here rests Lise, Born February 22, 1825, Died December 8, 1846. Her Friend Céleste."

• Proof of her gumption: 

• When that outdoor site closed for winter Céleste recycled as a bareback rider, though she had never ridden and was afraid of horses.

• Then she became driver of a Roman chariot, in shows where the public came to see scantily-clad young women take frightful risks. Her chariot turned over and and she was seriously hurt. 

Internet, disappeared

• She posed as the central figure of the painting that dominated the Salon of 1847:

 

   The Romans in their Decadence by Thomas Couture, 1847 / zoom  

 

Celeste's hand

# # #

The man of her life appeared.

Portrait of the French Consul at Melbourne, 1852-1858                                                       His château / zoom

by Antoine Fauchery,  zoom                                                             

Lionel de Moreton Chabrillan was the ne'er-do-well second son of a powerful family. When a group of snobs insulted Celeste in a fashionable café he defended her with a fist fight. They fell in love.

• "I can't live without you," he said, giving up marrying for money.*

 

*His gambling made him a less desirable match. But he was handsome, well-bred and bore a great name.

• His appalled family pulled strings to have him sent as Consul to Australia. Lionel had Céleste's name erased from the police registry and she tried to become respectable...

The Countess de Chabrillon by Gustave Tournachon,1864, zoom

But she had written her memoirs and the book appeared in Australia. Lionel would be invited to events without his wife. He would decline.  

That book and her in-laws hampered the rest of her life.

Read online (in French)

# # #

 Céleste returned to Paris. Lionel, aged 40, died. 

 

• Known according to circumstances as "Celeste Mogador," "Madame Lionel"and the Countess Lionel de Chabrillon, she lived from hand to mouth.

• She is 19th-century France's most prolific female writer, with a dozen novels, eight plays, five operettas. Dumas and Bizet were friends.

Script (in French)

• She wrote songs that she performed herself... 

• Was an actress...*

*Not helpful to a quest for respectability: "My theater, my brothel," says a theater owner in Zola's novel Nana. In France the term "comédienne" is still preferred to "actrice," the stage being a way to attract wealthy protectors.

• And theater director.*

* Women were not allowed to direct theaters, and Céleste had to pay a man to stand in. He betrayed her. 

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As well...

• During the siege of Paris (in 1870-1871) she founded the "Sisters of France," a mobile ambulance corps of 125 women volunteers to care for the wounded. They came from all social classes, brought their own food in that time of famine, accepted no gifts, relayed one another at the heart of the action, were identified by their districts alone and had no rank: The countess was number 9472:

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• In 1875 she made her home an orphanage for 25 little girls from the street. When she watched the inauguration from behind a tree, one of the two sponsors saw her, took her by the hand and publicly introduced her, telling the nuns and children that they must follow her requests. 

The other withdrew his support. 

# # #

Céleste died almost penniless at 83, still refusing to sell her title through pride and love of Lionel. 

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Accounts:

• In English

 

• In French, a biography based on her memoirs, and a novel that evokes the brothels, police, high life and courtesans of 1840-1870 via the fictional "Céleste Mandragore:"

# # #

"The beauty of some women

makes them a special caste." 

                                                                                                       -- Guy de Maupassant

"Pitted, her skin red, her eyes empty, 

Celeste knew that she no longer had a place

in the world to which her beauty, alone,

had for a moment given access...

she was nothing."

                                                                                                          -- Alexandra Lapierre

That was the world 

in which Celeste cleared a path. 

Back to the walk.

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