DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0061
18 VIGEE-LEBRUN
Her friends, seeing her constantly in Lebrun’s company, expressed their
alarm lest she intended to take the very step she had already taken. It
was just the situation of which Victorien Sardou made the finest scene in
his melodrama Dora (known in the popular English version as Diplomacy),
save that in the play it is the new and innocent husband who is warned,
instead of the wife. Among others, Aubert, the court jeweller, quite
plainly told Elisabeth that she would be wiser to tie a stone to her neck
and jump into the Seine than to marry Lebrun. This was bad for a newly
wedded wife to hear, but as she still believed in her husband’s respecta-
bility and was herself the victim of scandalous lies, she was not yet to be
enlightened as to the selfishness of his “ affection.”
The scandals about herself at this trying time were the work of the scoun-
drelly Comte de Brie, to whom reference has already been made. Lebrun
denounced him to the police for spreading reports damaging to Madame
Lebrun’s good name, and particularly for writing anonymous letters in
which it was asserted that she was a young woman of the lowest morals,
several men being actually named as belonging to her crowd of lovers.
The complaint to the Commissary of Police in the Saint-Eustache
quarter seems to have stopped the lying of the Comte, and for a time
the Lebruns were tolerably happy together. They were none too well off
in real and personal property, but she was rich in prospects. They had
bought on the instalment system the house in the Rue de Clery wherein
they lived ; Lebrun’s pictures and furniture were valued at about £4,000
sterling. He owed about £1,200, and he was owed £240. His wife brought
a dowry of about £600, half inherited from her father and half saved from
her earnings, with some furniture, jewels, and the usual outfit of linen.
As money went about three times as far in those days, in its purchasing
power, as it does to-day, they ought to have made a good start had all
their estimated means been tangible.
From the day of his marriage till she left him for Italy, thirteen years
later, Lebrun took possession of his wife’s earnings and fixed the charges
foj her portraits. As she was not at that time a very good business-woman,
this might have been a satisfactory arrangement, had he regarded her
interests as much as his own.
In order to exploit his wife’s powers as fully as possible, Lebrun
suggested that she should take pupils, like some other successful painters.
She agreed to try, and her time was soon much occupied by several girls
whose instruction in the elements of painting not only interfered sadly
Her friends, seeing her constantly in Lebrun’s company, expressed their
alarm lest she intended to take the very step she had already taken. It
was just the situation of which Victorien Sardou made the finest scene in
his melodrama Dora (known in the popular English version as Diplomacy),
save that in the play it is the new and innocent husband who is warned,
instead of the wife. Among others, Aubert, the court jeweller, quite
plainly told Elisabeth that she would be wiser to tie a stone to her neck
and jump into the Seine than to marry Lebrun. This was bad for a newly
wedded wife to hear, but as she still believed in her husband’s respecta-
bility and was herself the victim of scandalous lies, she was not yet to be
enlightened as to the selfishness of his “ affection.”
The scandals about herself at this trying time were the work of the scoun-
drelly Comte de Brie, to whom reference has already been made. Lebrun
denounced him to the police for spreading reports damaging to Madame
Lebrun’s good name, and particularly for writing anonymous letters in
which it was asserted that she was a young woman of the lowest morals,
several men being actually named as belonging to her crowd of lovers.
The complaint to the Commissary of Police in the Saint-Eustache
quarter seems to have stopped the lying of the Comte, and for a time
the Lebruns were tolerably happy together. They were none too well off
in real and personal property, but she was rich in prospects. They had
bought on the instalment system the house in the Rue de Clery wherein
they lived ; Lebrun’s pictures and furniture were valued at about £4,000
sterling. He owed about £1,200, and he was owed £240. His wife brought
a dowry of about £600, half inherited from her father and half saved from
her earnings, with some furniture, jewels, and the usual outfit of linen.
As money went about three times as far in those days, in its purchasing
power, as it does to-day, they ought to have made a good start had all
their estimated means been tangible.
From the day of his marriage till she left him for Italy, thirteen years
later, Lebrun took possession of his wife’s earnings and fixed the charges
foj her portraits. As she was not at that time a very good business-woman,
this might have been a satisfactory arrangement, had he regarded her
interests as much as his own.
In order to exploit his wife’s powers as fully as possible, Lebrun
suggested that she should take pupils, like some other successful painters.
She agreed to try, and her time was soon much occupied by several girls
whose instruction in the elements of painting not only interfered sadly