The Lady of the Camellias Read Free Page B

KAVANAGH

Suggestions for Further Reading
    Ariste, Paul d’.
La Vie et le Monde du Boulevard (1830–1870)
(Un Dandy: Nestor Roqueplan). Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1930.
    Barnes, David S.
The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
    Boudet, Micheline.
La Fleur du Mal: la Veritable Histoire de la Dame aux Camélias.
Paris: Albin Michel, 1993.
    Choulet, Jean-Marie.
Promenades à Paris et en Normandie avec la Dame aux Camélias: D’Alphonsine Plessis à La Traviata.
Paris: Editions Charles Corlet, 1998.
    Claudin, Gustave.
Mes Souvenirs: Les Boulevards de 1840–1870.
Paris: Calmann Levy, 1884.
    Corbin, Alain.
Women for Hire
:
Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850.
Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press, 1990.
    Gros, Johannes.
Une Courtisane Romantique, Marie Duplessis.
Paris: au Cabinet du Livre, 1929.
    Issartel, Christiane.
Les Dames aux Camélias: De l’Histoire à la Légende.
Paris: Chene Hachette, 1981.
    James, Henry.
The Scenic Art: Notes on Acting and the Drama 1872–1901.
London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949.
    John, Nicholas. Ed.
Violetta and Her Sisters: The Lady of the Camellias: Responses to the Myth.
London: Faber and Faber, 1994.
    Kavanagh, Julie.
The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
    Maurois, Andre.
Three Musketeers: A Study of the Dumas Family.
Translated by Gerard Hopkins. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957.
    Saunders, Edith.
The Prodigal Father.
London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1951.
    Vandam, Albert.
An Englishman in Paris.
Vol 1. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1892.
    Vienne, Romain.
La Dame aux Camélias (Maris Duplessis).
Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1888.

A Note on the Translation
    Do you remember that luscious young celebrity—Daisy something—who was such a big deal when she was twenty? She didn’t act, or sing, or dance, she wasn’t an heiress, but she managed to get herself known, envied, and talked about by everyone who mattered. She was, you know . . . famous for being famous. Daisy always wore expensive clothes and jewelry made by the most in-demand designers; she showed up at every opening and velvet-rope party, usually on the arm of some phenomenally rich man she was dating who had brought her there in a flashy car. You don’t remember? What a pity. Apparently, her fifteen minutes of fame are over.
    But really, once, nearly everyone knew all about Daisy. She was dangerously pretty, dangerously thin, lived a little too fast, and by the time she was twenty-three, she’d been in and out of rehab several times, and . . . well, things ended badly . . . and quickly. You still don’t remember? Maybe this will help: She lived in Paris; Marguerite was her name in French, and though
marguerite
means “daisy,” she was better known for another flower—the camellia, white or red. She carried a bouquet of them with her wherever she went, which is why people liked to call her the Lady of the Camellias. That is, Alexandre Dumas
fils
did, in the novel he wrote about her,
La Dame aux Camélias.
It is
about a woman he fell passionately in love with in 1842, when he was eighteen; a famous Parisian courtesan of the 1840s named Marie Duplessis. When Marie died in 1847, her grave was strewn thickly with camellias. But when young Dumas first caught sight of her, she was a vision of youthful beauty, dressed in a white muslin summer dress and a straw hat. In the novel, he resurrected her in that outfit for a romantic country scene between Marguerite (Marie) and her besotted, obsessive lover, a naive young lawyer named Armand, who of course is cast in the image of Dumas
fils
himself.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    You hold in your hands my translation of their tumultuous, doomed love affair. In my translation, I have endeavored to dust off the language of the