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Updated: May 20, 2025
The reasons might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. La Dame aux Camelias, Marie Duplessis, was, to our fancy, a much more feminine, and admirable, and moral, and human person, than the adored Clorinda. And yet what she said was the legitimate result of the state of our fashionable society.
The lover in La Dame aux Camelias was played by a young Italian named Lavaggi, as handsome as an Antinous, a type which I often encountered in Piedmont. With his innate charm, restful calm, animation of movement and the fire of his beauty, he surpassed the acting of all the young lovers I had seen on the boards of the French theatres. The very play of his fingers was all grace and expression.
Vanno hoped that he might find Mary in the garden; for mounting from lower to higher levels, above the cypresses and olives which formed a wind screen for upper terraces near the house, he saw viewpoints furnished with seats of old, carved marble, pergolas roofed with masses of banksia, and one long arbour, darkly green, with crimson camelias flaming at the far end like a magic lamp.
She began to see advantages and the look of a little cat died out, or at least modified itself into that of a little cat upon whom dawned prospects of cream. No mood ever held her very long. "She won't come back to stay," she said. "The Duchess won't let her. I can use her rooms and I shall be very glad to have them. There's at least some advantage in figuring as a sort of Dame Aux Camelias."
"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did not wish to be recognised; the concierge of course knew me, but she can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the marchands de meubles in the quartier, came upstairs, spitting and talking coarsely their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was a humorist, answered, 'If there are any ladies' men present, we shall have some spirited bidding. The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare the organ that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. I don't know why, un caprice de femme. No one but you would have ever thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted something: 'les camélias du balcon ressemblent
Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.
This city was an unlucky one for me, and came very near proving fatal during the third visit I paid to it, as I will narrate in the second volume of these Memoirs. That very night we left Mobile for Atlanta, where, after playing La Dame aux Camelias, we left again the same evening for Nashville. We stayed an entire day at Memphis, and gave two performances there.
From the bottom of my heart I also thanked all my detractors and slanderers, as it was through them that I had had the pleasure of fighting, with the certainty of conquering. The victory was all the more enjoyable as I had not dared to hope for it. I gave twenty-seven performances in New York. The plays were Adrienne Lecouvreur, Froufrou, Hernani, La Dame aux Camelias, Le Sphinx, and L'Etrangere.
I should have thought a girl like Miss Townsend, who has passed examinations in Germany, and so forth, would have had more sense of her responsibility more tact. It shows a dreadful want of I hardly know what to think of it the daughter of a clergyman, too! 'It's all right, Bruce, Edith laughed. 'Miss Townsend told me she had been to see the Dame aux Camelias some time ago.
From Salvini I received a pretty casket of lapis, and from Mary Anderson, at that time in the striking beauty of her nineteen years, a small medal bearing a forget-me-not in turquoises. In my dressing-room I counted one hundred and thirty bouquets. That evening we gave our last performance with La Dame aux Camelias. I had to return and bow to the public fourteen times.
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