MARIE DUPLESSIS : COMPOSER FRANZ LISZT A FRIEND : MARRIAGE TO AN OLD BEAU: HER INESCAPABLE DEATH

It was at a concert in Paris that Maria Duplessis met the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.  They were introduced by the doctor who had Maria as a patient and had bogus cures he treated rich women with. But the doctor also had the composer's mother and ex-mistress as patients. (His mistress and the mother of his children was Marie d'Agoult.) She remet him as a guest at parties where he entertained, playing piano. He knew that she was terminally ill. And she wanted to go with him on tour, travel, be taken from Paris, which was a plan that never happened.

Excerpt page 49 : (From Liszts own reportage)

... she told me ... fifteen months ago: I shall not live; I am an odd gierl and I shan't be able to hold on to this life which I don't know how to lead and that I can equally no longer endure.  Take me, take me anywhere you life; I shan't bother you.  I sleep all day; in the evening you can let me go to the theatre; and at night you can do with me what you will!'

Maria was never one to depend on one man and for a woman in her position was wise about this. Because she went to London and met up with Count Edouard de Perregaux at the Kensington Register Office where a civil marriage was performed. She signed in as Mlle. Alphonsine Plessis of Paris, age 22. Though the couple gave an address in London, the two never did live together.  And she kept her surname Duplessis. She returned to Paris alone. But I surmise that perhaps this man granted her a great wish, to be a married woman before she died. 

Excerpt page 50 : With the help of a specialist she designed her own coat of arms, using part of the arms of her husband, and had them emblazoned on her carriage, her linen, and her silverware.

By this time, Marie was desperately ill. You could say she tried everything. She traveled to spas in Germany hoping have a cure. Her gambling was out of control, her visits to pawn shops numerous, both Count Gustav Von Sackelberg abandoned her as had the seven men who had shared her. Yet, she had possessions removed from her lavish apartment, renting other apartments to store furniture and valuables to prevent creditors from seizing them.*** She saw various doctors and ran up debt. Some of these doctors gave her advice that was useless really, recommending walks in nature and good food. We would say some of them were quacks but the fact is there was no cure for tuberculosis. 

Most of her friends left Marie to die alone. But three of her patrons did remain in her life to the end - men less significant in her life whose names do not appear here in this reportage.  At only twenty three years old, the woman who had inspired artists and writers, died on February 3, 1847, having been last seen in public weeks earlier. Among the few mourners were some prostitutes who she had helped financially. Count Edouard de Perregaux, her husband who had made a Countess out of Marie, appeared overcome with grief as the small funeral processions of those who had not abandoned her completely went to the cemetery of Montemarte where her grave remained unmarked for years.

FIND A GRAVE : MARIE DUPLESSIS

Missy here!  Thank you for sticking with me as we explored the life of Parisian Courtesan Marie Duplessis.  You can bring up archived posts by searching for the word Courtesan or Paris ... 

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot 

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

MARIE DUPLESSIS MOVES INTO A BETTER APARTMENT : COUNT EDOUARD DE PERREGAUX

As Marie Duplessis moved up in the world, she attracted Count Edouard De Perregaux as a new love and perhaps he was the man she would come closest to becoming a Mistress of. His father was a financier who had been made a senator by Napoleon Bonaparte and was attached to the Bank of France. Edouard himself had been in the military in Africa and had earned a good reputation and inherited a sizable fortune but he also seemed to be determined to spend it and go into debt.

Excerpts pages 41 - 42 : He first encountered Marie at a masked ball at the Opera House in the rue Le Peletier, the tradition of masked balls having been revived there in 1839, such events being held every Saturday evening during the carnival time before Lent. Edouard and Marie were intregued by one another, and Edouard rapidly dropped another courtesan, Alice Ozy, in order to take up with her.

The apartment in which he installed her at 22 rue d'Antin comprised a drawing room, a boudoir, dining room and two bedrooms. The widows, and Marie's bed, were curtained with muslin and silk. Marie ordered her goods and services from a wide range of providers" wines from Madame Tisserant, just opposite in the rue d'Anton; cakes delivered by Rollet from the passage de l'Opera, glace fruits from Broissier, mint pastilles from Gouache in the boulevard de la Madeleine. Edouard would join in the consumption of all these luxuries, not stopping to make the calculation that by spending at the rate of three thousand francs a month, which was the absolute minimum Marie required to live on, he would rapidly use up his already depleted fortune. 

Marie felt flattered because Count de Perregaux seemed to be only interested in her but eventually also felt she had been deceived into thinking his fortune was substantial enough to last past her spending. He was estranged from his family and friends over his unrequited passion and extreme spending in order to keep her happy. She didn't cut him off completely but took on other lovers willing to keep her in the accommodations she desired. Considering his fixation on Marie, it must have taken some expertise to both disappoint him and keep him in her life.

At a time in which concerns about venereal diseases such as syphilis, for which there was no real cure, prevailed and during which contraception was limited, women especially paid the price for sexuality and pregnancy. But there was another disease that people feared and that claimed countless lives for which there was no cure and that was tuberculosis. Young Marie Duplessis must have realized she was seriously ill by this time as she was spitting up blood. 

Count Edouard de Perregaux is important to the story of this Courtesan though because towards the end of her life, as she was dying of tuberculosis, it was he who she married.

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights