Read The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis for Free Online

Nationale de France, François-Mitterrand
    Bibliothèque-Musée de la Comédie-Française
    Manuscript Library Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Bibiliothèque de l’Institut de France
    Ministère de la Défense, section des archives historiques
    Mulgrave Castle Archives
    National Archives of Estonia
    Pleyel Pianos Archives
    Stadtarchiv, Baden-Baden
    The Girl Who Loved Camellias
would not exist without the belief and enthusiasm of my agent Lynn Nesbit, and my two Knopf editors Shelley Wanger and Bob Gottlieb. All three encouraged me to pursue what can only have seemed a dismayingly uncommercial venture in today’s uncompromising publishing world. I can’t thank Shelley enough for her skillful, sensitive shaping of my book, or Bob for his continuing support and generosity in letting me use his rue Jacob apartment as my Paris base.
    At Janklow & Nesbit UK, I am immensely grateful to Claire Conrad for her tireless championing of
The Girl Who Loved Camellias
. I also owe thanks to Janklow’s Stephanie Koven for herefforts to launch the book into a global market. At Knopf, Shelley’s assistant, Juhea Kim, was tremendously helpful in securing images, and unfailingly kind and obliging. I owe sincere thanks to Andrew Dorko for his meticulous care and patience, and to Anne Cherry for her scrupulous copyediting, specialist knowledge, and zeal.
    I am indebted to the friends who encouraged me throughout the writing of this book: Lola Bubbosh, Rupert Christiansen, Peter Eyre, and Gaby Tana. The late Patrick O’Connor was its earliest supporter; Julian Barnes cast an aficionado’s eye over the manuscript, as did Peter Conrad, who played devil’s advocate and urged me to write an introduction placing Marie Duplessis in a wider context. Selina Hastings has been, as ever, my first reader, dearest friend, and lodestar: I can’t imagine writing a book without her.
    I have dedicated
The Girl Who Loved Camellias
to my family, who will always get my most heartfelt thanks of all.

Part One
Alphonsine

 

Part Two
Marie

 

Part Three
The Lady of the Camellias

 

Part Four
Marguerite

 

Part Five
The Countess

 

A Note on Sources
    The prime source as well as the inspiration for my book is Romain Vienne’s
The Truth about the Lady of the Camellias
, and yet it is by no means definitive. “I know the complete list of Marie Duplessis’s lovers and I intend to tell all,” he declared to the editor of
L’Eclair
in 1886, the year he began writing the book (issue 10 April 1894). But there were several lovers whom Marie kept to herself. One was Alexandre Dumas fils, whose affair Vienne believed was pure invention. “He was bragging,” he continued. “He never saw Marie. This beautiful girl, despite being known for her generous heart, would never have granted that writer a single kiss.” Enough evidence exists to prove otherwise, and I can’t help wondering if Vienne’s exclusion of Dumas fils from his book was motivated by an element of revenge. He was obsessively proprietary about Marie, to the point of having visiting cards printed with the words
Friend of the Lady of the Camellias
under his name. Regarding himself as a man of letters, Vienne believed that he knew Marie better than anyone else in Paris. How galling, then, it must have been that a penniless young poet had made his name and fortune out of her. Nevertheless, he actively sought Dumas fils’s approval by sending him a copy of his own work. The famous novelist eventually responded, and his description of Vienne as “a sympathetic and faithful historian of the model”would today be used as a jacket quotation (extract of a letter dated 1 April 1887, catalogue to Hôtel Drouot sale on 23 and 24 March 2009). But this must have been an early draft. In a preface in which Vienne describes being taken to a performance of the play after a decade of living abroad, he claims never to have read “a traitorous word” of
La dame aux camélias.
He left before the curtain rose.
    Vienne