performance.
Is it surprising then that very soon Céleste began to dream that one day
she would perform on a stage herself? It was not just the proximity of the
theatres, but that, along with many others among the poor of Paris, she saw the
melodramatic events of her own life reflected there. Even today, on any given
night in the theatre, a pulse can be felt to vibrate back and forth between the
stage and the audience, as the players strike a chord, a situation or a feeling
that members of the audience recognize and to which they respond. The resonance
of their feeling rebounds to the stage, inspiring the actors to even greater
intensity.
In Céleste’s life, this pulse would have continued after she left the
theatre, as she realized that the heroism of the players reflected her
mother’s heroism and her own when they were confronted with violence and
the threat of death. The images she saw would have dignified this victory,
giving the spirit within her a new strength. In this way, imagination must have
played a crucial role early in her life.
Perhaps it was the ability to imagine herself as heroic that helped her survive
the next chapter in her life. Her mother soon took a new lover, a fair-haired,
blue-eyed young man from whom her daughter was to face still another peril.
Almost from the beginning, Céleste disliked Victor. Rough and moody, he
was at times resentful of her, and perhaps she sensed, in the way that children
can, the side of his character that was to emerge later. It was after she
became an adolescent, the beginnings of a woman’s body newly visible,
during a period when her mother was visiting her own father in Fontainebleau,
that Victor attempted to rape her. Céleste fought him off, and for the
third time in her life escaped. But now, alone in the streets of Paris, without
her mother, she had nowhere to go.
Yet here is where her history began to form another pattern, one that could
easily have given her the illusion of predictability. For again a prostitute
was to come to her rescue. Céleste had slept for four nights in a hayloft
and wandered the streets of Paris by day in search of food when finally she
broke down weeping. There, just in front of the massive entrance to the Eglise
Saint-Paul, a streetwalker named Thérèse found Céleste and took
her home for the night to her own room. It was an act of extraordinary kindness,
especially since a prostitute caught keeping a child on her own premises could
be sent to jail for six months. In fact, when they were walking together in the
streets a few days later, a policeman took Céleste away from Thé
rèse, incarcerating her, as was a common practice for the protection of
homeless girls, in the women’s prison named after St. Lazare.
Soon afterward, Thérèse found Céleste’s mother and told her
where her daughter was. But a month passed before Anne came to bring her home.
In that time Céleste began her education, an introduction to another world,
one that for most working women was always perilously close to their own. A
world of last resorts, but also a world of dreams. Her time in the jail was
softened by the friendship she made with a girl called Denise, hardly older
than herself, who would tell her about the fine clothes a young prostitute
would be given in a brothel and the good money she could earn there. “I
saw myself rich and covered with lace and gems,” Céleste wrote later
in her memoirs.
When she finally returned home, nothing had changed. Her mother did not listen
to her when she tried to tell her why she had left. Victor kept trying to
molest her. In the way that it can only for an adolescent, her life seemed
hopeless. Another girl might perhaps have waited, languished in the atmosphere
that was eating away at her. But from the two earlier escapes she had made with
her mother and the one she had made herself, Céleste had learned well the
lessons of urgency. And though later she
Is it surprising then that very soon Céleste began to dream that one day
she would perform on a stage herself? It was not just the proximity of the
theatres, but that, along with many others among the poor of Paris, she saw the
melodramatic events of her own life reflected there. Even today, on any given
night in the theatre, a pulse can be felt to vibrate back and forth between the
stage and the audience, as the players strike a chord, a situation or a feeling
that members of the audience recognize and to which they respond. The resonance
of their feeling rebounds to the stage, inspiring the actors to even greater
intensity.
In Céleste’s life, this pulse would have continued after she left the
theatre, as she realized that the heroism of the players reflected her
mother’s heroism and her own when they were confronted with violence and
the threat of death. The images she saw would have dignified this victory,
giving the spirit within her a new strength. In this way, imagination must have
played a crucial role early in her life.
Perhaps it was the ability to imagine herself as heroic that helped her survive
the next chapter in her life. Her mother soon took a new lover, a fair-haired,
blue-eyed young man from whom her daughter was to face still another peril.
Almost from the beginning, Céleste disliked Victor. Rough and moody, he
was at times resentful of her, and perhaps she sensed, in the way that children
can, the side of his character that was to emerge later. It was after she
became an adolescent, the beginnings of a woman’s body newly visible,
during a period when her mother was visiting her own father in Fontainebleau,
that Victor attempted to rape her. Céleste fought him off, and for the
third time in her life escaped. But now, alone in the streets of Paris, without
her mother, she had nowhere to go.
Yet here is where her history began to form another pattern, one that could
easily have given her the illusion of predictability. For again a prostitute
was to come to her rescue. Céleste had slept for four nights in a hayloft
and wandered the streets of Paris by day in search of food when finally she
broke down weeping. There, just in front of the massive entrance to the Eglise
Saint-Paul, a streetwalker named Thérèse found Céleste and took
her home for the night to her own room. It was an act of extraordinary kindness,
especially since a prostitute caught keeping a child on her own premises could
be sent to jail for six months. In fact, when they were walking together in the
streets a few days later, a policeman took Céleste away from Thé
rèse, incarcerating her, as was a common practice for the protection of
homeless girls, in the women’s prison named after St. Lazare.
Soon afterward, Thérèse found Céleste’s mother and told her
where her daughter was. But a month passed before Anne came to bring her home.
In that time Céleste began her education, an introduction to another world,
one that for most working women was always perilously close to their own. A
world of last resorts, but also a world of dreams. Her time in the jail was
softened by the friendship she made with a girl called Denise, hardly older
than herself, who would tell her about the fine clothes a young prostitute
would be given in a brothel and the good money she could earn there. “I
saw myself rich and covered with lace and gems,” Céleste wrote later
in her memoirs.
When she finally returned home, nothing had changed. Her mother did not listen
to her when she tried to tell her why she had left. Victor kept trying to
molest her. In the way that it can only for an adolescent, her life seemed
hopeless. Another girl might perhaps have waited, languished in the atmosphere
that was eating away at her. But from the two earlier escapes she had made with
her mother and the one she had made herself, Céleste had learned well the
lessons of urgency. And though later she
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