FEMININE MYSTERIES

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4328, 24 August 1937, Page 2

FEMININE MYSTERIES

FRENCH COURT DRAMA CAREER OF PAMELA i ' Woman is a riddle, an enigma, and 1 instead of growing more simple, she tends to become more complex as ; time goes on. Who is she? What is she? These questions have been asked from the beginning and still remain : unanswered (writes Zora Cross, in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’). “ Dear little, interesting Pamela “ angelic Pamela ’’—Pamela, “ the incomparable child ” whom Madam cle Sillery (comtesse de Gentis) introduced into society towards the end of the eighteenth century as her adopted daughter is an example. The story begins with the comtesse herself, who entered the Palais Royal 1 as lady-in-waiting to Duchess Chatres 1 and became governess to her sous and daughters. She was a brilliant writer 1 and teacher, and the first woman to 1 use modern methods in teaching. PamI ela was her protegee, whom she brought up with the royal children of ' France. Pamela herself could not remember her parents. She could recall being brought from England to I' ranee ' as a tiny child and handed over by ; her escort to Louis Phillippe. He 1 kissed her and carried her to the Comi tesse de Gentis, who wept over her 1 with him. From this it has been deduced that Louis Phillippe and the • comtesse were her parents. : Pamela grew up _ incomparably - lovely, with a charming face and > figure, and in due course married Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Irish patriot, • who loved her most tenderly. .At the i marriage the comtesse gave her name ’ as “ Stephanie Caroline Simms, known under the name of ‘ Pamela,’ aged 19 s years, native of London, daughter of ■ William Berkley and Mary Simms.” [ But the principal witness at the wedi ding was Louis Phillippe himself, i Elsewhere Pamela’s name is given as i. “ Pamela Capet, daughter of Louis Phillippe, aged 1G years.” Her . mother’s name being unrecorded, it t was generally believed that the comtesse was her mother and that Pamela . had been born at Spa about 177G during four mysterious years spent there by Louis. This made her third in succession to the throne of France. r Pamela lived a short idyllic life with Fitzgerald, and after his death went with her three children to join the Comtesse de Gentis and her pupil, . INI lie. d’Orleans, at Hamburg, where | the comtesse was supporting herself by her writing. Here Pamela remarried. She became the wife of the American Consul, but separated from him after the birth of a son, and took her first husband’s name again. The mystery of her birth was revived on the publication of the comtesse’s memoirs, in which the name of Pamela’s father was given as Seymour, and her birthplace the Islo of Fogo, Newfoundland. After the comtesse’s death, Pamela lived in Paris, where she died in such poor circumstances that only 100 francs were found in her possession at her death. Friends attended to her burial in the cemetery at Montmarte, where her small grave with its headstone inscribed “ A Pamela,” may be seen to this day beside the more conspicuous monument of Armand Marrast. There is a portrait of her, too, in the Louvre. But who she really was nobody will ever know. ACTRESS POISONED. A deeper mystery surrounds the death of the actress, Adrienne Lecouvrer, incidents of whose life have inspired the famous opera ‘ La Traviata ’ and the popular play ‘Camille.’ Adrienne was the child of a hat maker and a washerwoman, who lived in Paris near the Comedie Francaise. An actor, calling for his laundry, one day noticed the beautiful, precocious child and got her a theatrical engagement. Adrienne was the first actress to speak, walk, and act naturally on the stage. In 1720 she attracted the attention of Count Maurice de Saxe, and was appointed chief of a band of players organised to amuse his troops when they were not fighting. Maurice sometimes sent his company over to the enemy to give them a flight's entertainment, and Adrienne had to hurry her troupe back quickly after the show, as the battle began again at dawn ! Returned to Paris, the Duchess de Bouillion became Adrienne’s rival for Maurice’s affections, and the story goes that the duchess attempted to remove Adrienne from her patlx by poisoned sweets. A young abbe was chosen to deliver the fatal lozenges to Adrienne. He arranged a secret meeting with her in the Luxemburg Gardens; but he confessed everything, and Adrienne took him to the lieutenant of police, who promptly told the cardinal. The abbe was accused of lying, and was thrown into the Bastille, but the duchess arranged for his release, and the matter was hushed up. Soon after she sent for Adrienne at the theatre, and presented a bouquet of flowers to the actress, who shortly after 101 l ill and died of a mysterious illness. Voltaire, in whose arms she expired, declared that her death was natural. But no inquiry was held into her death, and she was buried secretly on the banks of the Seine before the police could interfere. HASTY MARRIAGE. Saddest of all feminine mysteries, and perhaps the best known, concerns the fate of an Englishwoman, the illstarred poetess, “ L.E.L.” (Laetitia Elizabeth Landon). She was discovered by Mr Jerdan, the editor of the ‘ Literary Gazette,’ while still a child howling her hoop, and it was Jordan who helped her with her first efforts at verse-making. At IS she published a long narrative poem which sold out, and thereafter, under the intriguing initials, “ L.E.L.,” she contributed , love poems to the ‘ Literary Gazette.’ The secret of her identity was kept for a long time, until, indeed, she had a wide audience, had been compared to j Shakespeare, and was specially popular among the young undergrads of Oxford. When she was introduced to so- * ciety she created a sensation. Slie was quite unlike her sad poetry, ‘ being witty, pretty, with a retrousse ‘ nose, and she was a charming dancer. ‘ Her fame and reputation spread, and * she made many friends, among them Lady Caroline Lamb and Bulwer Lytton. At the height of her fame scandal linked her name with Jerdan, and she accepted a proposal of marriage from a t rising young barrister named Forster, f who, on receiving an anonymous letter i

regarding the scandal, wrote and asked her if it were true. She immediately broke off the engagement because she said she could not marry a man who distrusted her, and, probably in pique, she boasted that she would marry the first man who asked her. Mr George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, on the Guinea Coast, then the chief British settlement in West Africa, turned out to be the first. Though her friends thought she had only been joking, she married him at once, Sir Edward Bulwer giving her away. She left England in good spirits, and seems to have enjoyed her first ride in a train. But her friends never saw hoi again. A few months after she had arrived at the lonely fort, where she had nownere to go and saw no one at all, she was found by a servant dead, with an empty poison bottle in her hand. A little native boy confessed that ho had brought her coffee just before her death. Was it suicide or an accident? Was it something uglier? Xo one can say. Her friends were all too far away in* England to make proper inquiries. Funeral and inquest were all over in a few hours. The mvsterv of “ L.E.L.” can never be solved. Though for her poem ‘ The Troubadour ’ she received the sum of £6OO. t he highest amount ever paid to a woman for a single poem, she is forgotten as completely as her work is. Onlv plaintive references to her untimely, tragic death, written by her sympathetic sister-poetesses, Mrs Browning and Christina TJosetti, and the others, remain to remind ns of her at all. Poor lonely singer, lost in her own mystery on that desolate African coast, what secret is locked away with her there for ever?