The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis (40 page)

Marie’s most indulgent protector, Count von Stackelberg,
seated far right
, as Russia’s special envoy at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. Engraving by Jean Godefroy.
(illustration credit bm.12)

Alexandre Dumas fils, whose 1848 novel
La dame aux camélias
and sensational play of the same name immortalized Marie. Exactly the same age, they were lovers for a short time in 1845.
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A self-portrait by Count Olympe Aguado, a pioneer of French photography. He was only eighteen when he became Marie’s lover, and he remained a loyal friend until the end.
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The most famous pianist of his time, Franz Liszt was thirty-four and a romantic icon when he met Marie in 1845. He always said he was inspired by her enigmatic quality.
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A painting of Marie by the twenty-one-year-old artist Charles Chaplin in 1846, just months before her death.
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A miniature of Alphonsine’s mother, the melancholy Marie Plessis, painted by an unknown artist in the style of Vigée Lebrun, shortly before her early death in 1830. The pendant is on display in the Musée de la Dame aux Camélias, in the Normandy town of Gacé.
(illustration credit bm.17)

Found among Marie’s things at her death: the skeleton of the once-stuffed green lizard given by Gypsies to Alphonsine on her way to Paris. Believing it would bring her luck, she kept it with her always.
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Marie’s tomb at Cimitière de Montmartre
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Pretty young Marietta Piccolomini (1834–1899) was the first Violetta to make a triumph of
La Traviata
, and to launch it in Paris and London.
(illustration credit bm.20)

The original Marguerite Gautier, Eugénie Doche, a young Irish actress with something of a louche reputation herself. She made her debut in the role at the Théâtre des Variétés on February 2, 1852.
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Sarah Bernhardt as Marguerite in 1884. It was a role she inhabited with complete authenticity and is said to have played a total of three thousand times.
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The Italian actress Eleonora Duse, the only one to rival Bernhardt’s interpretation of Marguerite. Pictured here at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1898.
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