Tagged: marie duplessis
The Girl Who Loved Camellias by Julie Kavanagh
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
The little known, riveting story of the most famous courtesan of her time: muse and mistress of Alexandre Dumas fils and Franz Liszt, the inspiration for Dumas’s The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi’s La Traviata, one of the most sought after, adored women of 1840s Paris.
Born in 1824 in Normandy, Marie Duplessis fled her brutal peasant father (who forced her to live with a man many years her senior). Julie Kavanagh traces Marie’s reinvention in Paris at sixteen: as shop girl, kept woman, and finally, as grand courtesan with the clothes, apartment, coach and horses that an aristocratic woman of the time would have had. Tall, willowy, with dramatic dark hair, Marie acquired an aristocratic mien, but coupled with a singular modesty and grace, she was an irresistible figure to men and women alike. Kanavagh brings her to life on the page against a brilliantly evoked background of 1840s Paris: the theater and opera, the best tables at the cafés frequented by society figures, theater directors, writers, artists–and Marie, only nineteen, at the center of it all. Four years later, at twenty-three, she would be dead of tuberculosis.
I first heard of Marie Duplessis because of my love of opera. She was the inspiration for Dumas’s The Lady of the Camellias, which was the inspiration for my favourite opera of all time, La Traviata. After watching an amazing version of La Traviata with Anna Moffo in the lead role, I wondered how close her interpretation was to the real Marie Duplessis. Then I began to wonder who Marie Duplessis the person was, not just the character writers, painters and musicians have made her into over the decades.
Although Duplessis only lived to the age of 23, Julie Kavanagh was able to give us a very in-depth, detailed look at her life. Not only that, she provided context for Marie’s rise from simple but pretty farm girl to one of the most sought-after courtesans in Paris’ demimonde. She was a complex woman who could be both unbelievably selfish and petty but at the same time, caring and genuinely kind to the people around her. Money ran through her hands like water to feed her wardrobe and her general lifestyle but at the same time was known to give generously to charities and was very religious in her later years. If she were a mere character in a novel she’d probably be called unbelievable and contradictory, but Kavanagh’s highlighting of her contradictions really humanized Marie for me. She became a living, breathing person instead of this distant legend.
As it says in the blurb, from a very young age Marie was likely sexually abused and when she fled from the countryside she had no illusions about what a wonderful place 1840s Paris was for lower class women. She clawed her way up the unofficial courtesan hierarchy, first being a grisette (a lover to somewhat poor university students) and then a lorette when she found an older, wealthier patron. And then, finally when the simple Alphonsine Plessis caught the eye of a young duke, she was transformed into Marie Duplessis, the irresistible courtesan. It was not an easy path and Kavanagh talks about her struggles in fairly stark language that brings home the idea that while being a courtesan could be glamorous at times, there were many times it was not.
What I especially liked about The Girl Who Loved Camellias was the postscript that detailed the sale of Marie’s estate to pay off her debts and the introduction where Marie’s cultural impact is discussed. Of course, most famously there’s the book The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi’s opera La Traviata but there have also been films and even ballets about her life. Even though few people today actually know her name, Marie Duplessis lives on in the beautiful works of art she inspired.
My favourite thing about this biography is that while Julie Kavanagh goes into detail, she does not get encumbered by it as so many biographers do. While she includes the text from some letters pertaining to Marie’s life, she does not get bogged down in detailing Marie’s correspondence. Instead, she includes short quotes where it’s relevant (which seems like common sense but sadly all too few biographers do this, preferring to include every single scrap of correspondence they can find pertaining to their subject). She gives historical context to Marie’s life but again she doesn’t get too bogged down in irrelevant details. Basically, she tells a detailed but interesting story about a woman who packed quite a lot of living into just twenty three years.
If you’re looking for an interesting biography that’s a fairly fast read, I highly recommend The Girl Who Loved Camellias. It’s one of the best biographies I’ve ever read.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Blood Diva by V. M. Gautier
(Cover picture courtesy of Mythical Books.)
The 19th century’s most infamous party-girl is undead and on the loose in the Big Apple.
When 23 year-old Parisian courtesan, Marie Duplessis succumbed to consumption in 1847, Charles Dickens showed up for the funeral and reported the city mourned as though Joan of Arc had fallen. Marie was not only a celebrity in in her own right, but her list of lovers included Franz Liszt – the first international music superstar, and Alexandre Dumas fils, son of the creator of The Three Musketeers. Dumas fils wrote the novel The Lady of the Camellias based on their time together. The book became a play, and the play became the opera La Traviata. Later came the film versions, and the legend never died.
But what if when offered the chance for eternal life and youth, Marie grabbed it, even when the price was the regular death of mortals at her lovely hand?
In 2014, Marie wonders if perhaps nearly two centuries of murder, mayhem, and debauchery is enough, especially when she falls hard for a rising star she believes may be the reincarnation of the only man she ever truly loved. But is it too late for her to change? Can a soul be redeemed like a diamond necklace in hock? And even if it can, have men evolved since the 1800′s? Or does a girl’s past still mark her?
Blood Diva is a sometimes humorous, often dark and erotic look at sex, celebrity, love, death, destiny, and the arts of both self-invention and seduction. It’s a story that asks a simple question – Can a one hundred ninety year-old demimondaine find happiness in 21st century Brooklyn without regular infusions of fresh blood?
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
As my regular readers are probably well aware of by now, I love opera. It makes up the bulk of music I’ve listened to in the past two years or so and since there’s nothing on television anymore it also makes up the bulk of movies/performances I watch. I guess you could say I’m an opera fanatic, so when I saw this book on NetGalley I decided I’d go for it. After all, while I’d never heard of the real Marie Duplessis, I sure loved Violetta in La Traviata. I figured it would be nice to see a different take on the woman behind the legend.
What was really clear from the beginning is the Gautier loves opera and she loves the book by Alexandre Dumas fils. She has this excited energy about both of them that you really just can’t fake. However, to me it seemed like her love of opera sometimes exceeded her knowledge of it. When referring to a famous aria from Verdi’s Rigoletto she called it “Dona e mobile”, which is not correct Italian. It should be “La Donna e mobile”. At another point a vampire tells her he calls blood l’elisir d’amore because of the Rossini opera; that’s not really possible because Donizetti wrote the opera in question. Some other errors like saying “vencere, vencere” is the last line of the aria “Nessun Dorma” can be attributed to the lack of knowledge of characters, but the two examples above should have been caught in the editing process.
For all of my nitpicking, I really did enjoy Blood Diva. Marie/Alphonsine is a great character and is very three dimensional. She struggled so much with her transition to being a vampire and now she struggles with being a vampire because she’s falling in love with a human. A human that doesn’t (and can’t) know about her past. Marie also really struggles about what she’s forced to do for work because sometimes the elder vampires (in order to gain funds for the communal fund to help other vampires) sometimes make her revert to her old profession. It’s actually kind of sad that she was gifted an immortal life on her deathbed and yet, for all that she’s seen and learned, she’s back where she started 200 years ago.
This is mostly a character novel, so it helped that both Marie and Dashiell were three dimensional. The one thing I really loved was that their relationship was intense and beautiful, but that it also had its rocky moments. Contrary to how they’re portrayed in many novels, relationships are rarely straightforward and couples in love do argue. Marie and Dashiell certainly argue, but you can always feel that they love each other. Considering their relationship takes up most of the book, I really appreciated that Gautier spent so much effort on it.
The plot was pretty good right up until the end. As I’ve said, this was character driven so of course it’s going to be slower than a plot-driven novel, but Blood Diva never really drags. The characters are far too interesting for that. My only problem is that the ending left me unsatisfied. It fits with the theme throughout the book of Marie’s fictional incarnations, so I don’t mind that the ending was not necessarily the most cheerful ever. I just felt unsatisfied, like “I read all that only for it to end like this?”. It didn’t feel like there was much closure, really.
Still, Gautier’s writing style was beautiful, her pacing was excellent as well as her characters and she had that kind of excitement that you just can’t fake. Despite the ending and the little mistakes I really, really enjoyed Blood Diva and I hope that Gautier, whether under this pseudonym or another, writes more novels in the future.
I give this book 4/5 stars.