The red widow, p.2
The Red Widow, page 2
Meg had lessons in history, geography, literature, drawing, music, and aesthetics. She cared the most about the last two, and it’s no coincidence that these were the subjects closest to her father’s heart. She learned how to play the violin, the piano, and the organ. Édouard also insisted that she be able arrange flowers and “recognize and appreciate things beautiful, ancient or rare—old furniture, old tapestries, old china, old pewter. He showed me the hall-marks on silver, he made me caress cameos and enamel-work and touch embroideries and old lace reverently.”22
These were all important subjects for a proper young lady. As was typical for the period, her education was designed primarily to help her be a good wife, mother, and society hostess, as opposed to open up professional opportunities.23
Édouard also focused a great deal on her comportment. He made her “go up and down a staircase ten, twenty times in succession” and told her how to walk upstairs as gracefully and coquettishly as possible, how to look back at her admirers at just the right moment. As he told her, “You see, darling, any one can go down steps without being ridiculous, but to go up a staircase, that’s another matter. Now then, come down—that’s it—raise your head—go slowly—like a queen in books of long ago. Look as though you came down from Heaven and had wings, and didn’t press upon the carpet!”24 He also had strong opinions on how she should style her hair and what jewelry she should wear.25
This level of paternal attention was highly unusual for the time. Mothers typically directed their daughter’s education, whereas fathers tended to be distant figures who were absorbed in their work obligations. Few cared so much about clothing and hairstyles.26 Édouard’s laser-like focus on Meg might have had to do with his estimation of Émilie’s limits. Her time at a boarding school and her years as mistress of Château Édouard had not entirely obliterated the traces of her origins growing up in the rough-and-tumble world of her family’s inn, and she was in no position to train Meg how to be a proper lady.27 It also speaks to Édouard’s overinvestment in Meg, suggesting that he wanted her to make up for all the faults that he saw in Émilie.
After the lessons, father and daughter made music together and wandered far and wide in the countryside around Beaucourt. If she was stuck at home with tutors or doing chores and he set off before her, she would run out to find him as soon as she could. “Instinct led me in the right direction” and once finding him, she could throw herself into his arms.28 “We had endless surprises, and we laughed at everything, often for no reason at all. A word, a common thought, the shape of a leaf or of a cloud, sent us into fits of ecstasy or laughter.”29 He told her “I love you every day more than yesterday and less than to-morrow” and called her “puppele” (little doll or poppet).30 He implored her, “Try to love me as long as you possibly can. A father like the one you own is worth all the husbands in the world.”31
Meg remembered her childhood as bliss. She was the beloved daughter of two parents who adored each other. Yet as is so often the case with her, her account of her life often reflected her fantasy of what she wished was true, not the more complicated reality.
For one, all members of her household, save perhaps Meg’s mother, Émilie, struggled with severe mental illness. Édouard had extreme swings between depressive states and manic ones; today we might diagnose him as bipolar.32 Her older brother, Julien, also had manic episodes, including ones in which he ate hundred-franc notes.33 Mimi was diagnosed with neurasthenia, a catch-all syndrome that was tied to exhaustion, and spent time in a mental institution, and one observer noted that Juliette had “a tormented mind” and was “excessively irritable.”34 Family members recounted that Meg began to have psychological difficulties when she was an adolescent.35 Although diagnoses of mental illness were routinely slapped on women who were regarded as difficult or unable to conform to the strict standards for womanly behavior, Meg did seem to have real troubles.36 As an adult, she suffered from repeated mental breakdowns that confined her to her bed for months at a time.37
The atmosphere of Château Édouard was also fraught with violence, family discord, and illicit sexuality. According to residents of Beaucourt, Édouard was “rude, brutal, a partier and an alcoholic.” His mistresses were legion and included household servants and women in the town. He had at least one child out of wedlock. Édouard also had unfounded suspicions that Émilie was having affairs right and left and was furious at the prospect of her infidelity.38
Plenty of men of his station maintained this same double standard. Bourgeois husbands were certainly not expected to remain faithful to their wives. Men were seen as having physical needs that would be dangerous not to satisfy, and their extramarital pursuits were taken as proof of their masculine power.39 In contrast, bourgeois women were often regarded as essentially asexual and were supposed to be the guardians of their family’s morality.40
Yet Édouard’s philandering went past the tolerated limits. He also physically abused his wife during his fits of jealousy, and townspeople noted that she “often bore the marks of his brutality.”41
Moreover, observers noted that he “had improper conversations in front of his children” and spoke to them about sexual matters.42 It was one thing to have affairs outside marriage but quite another to be so open about them and about sex more generally. It showed that you weren’t ashamed of your actions. After all, if you were going to break the rules, the least you could do was keep your transgressions hidden.43 It was especially bad to talk about sex in front of girls and young women, who needed to be shielded from all sexual knowledge lest any awareness of sex corrupt them.44
Of Édouard and Émilie’s children, it was Julien who both was the most like his father and had the worst relationship with him. Both were violent alcoholics who chased women. Neither had any aptitude for work. Meg described her brother as “bright, witty, a little irresponsible, and very much of a mauvais sujet [‘bad seed’]”—a description that could just as easily have been applied to Édouard.45 Julien had joined the army, where he was heartily disliked by his superiors. But one of the Japy cousins was a general and made sure that Julien never really suffered from the consequences of his actions, which included frequent brawls and a penchant for breaking windows and glasses.46
When Julien was home, father and son exploded into conflict. In one instance, Julien was having a liaison with Édouard’s illegitimate daughter. (That is to say, Julien was sleeping with his half sister.) When Édouard scolded his son, Julien “answered ironically by saying that there was no harm in seeing his sister.”47 Julien was throwing Édouard’s impropriety back in his face: how could his father possibly rebuke him for his liaisons when Édouard’s own behavior was so egregious?
For all Meg’s fond memories of her childhood, the truth was that she grew up in a family where sex was a weapon and where she and her siblings had to contend with their father’s domineering personality, violence, and flagrant impropriety.
In this light, the idyllic portrait of the father/daughter bond that she paints in her memoirs takes on a more sinister cast. There were the lessons about walking up the staircase as alluringly as possible, the insistence that she love him more than any future husband, and even the unusual attention to her dress and comportment. Was Édouard grooming his daughter in the way that he had groomed her mother, so many years his junior?
Indeed, rumors circulated among the Japy cousinage that Édouard routinely sexually assaulted Meg, beginning when she was fourteen. This might just be malicious gossip: at the time, sexual abuse of children was taken as a sign of the child’s immorality as well as the adult’s.48
Yet Meg’s own memoirs provide considerable evidence of a sexual charge to her relationship with her father. She describes the visits from Édouard’s friend M. Doriand and how her father flew into a jealous rage when he thought Doriand was paying too much attention to Meg.49 At her first dance when she was seventeen, she showed up in a plain blue dress with flowers in her hair. Her father told her, “I distrust all these young men. Your entrance has caused a sensation, and all the officers of the garrison are staring at you. I hate it, but, on the other hand, I would have been furious if my daughter had passed unnoticed.”50 She was only permitted to dance with her brother. She told her father he was being a hypocrite, since he loved music, dancing, and partying. His response: “When one loves, one is illogical, and you don’t know, my ‘Puppele,’ how I love you.”51
In both cases—Meg’s relationship with Doriand and her first ball—there was the same dynamic. Édouard was jealous when other men paid attention to her, and Meg saw his rage as a sign of love. She even sought to cultivate it at times. Doing so may have allowed her to feel that it was appropriate and that she had some measure of control over their relationship.
Meg’s comportment more generally was highly sexualized, which can be a sign of childhood sexual abuse. Tongues wagged in Beaucourt about her habit of brazenly flirting with factory employees and her father’s agricultural workers.52 Such behavior was strictly forbidden for girls of Meg’s station, who were supposed to demonstrate their purity through displays of restraint and by walking demurely with their eyes lowered, refusing to respond to male attention.53 They definitely were not supposed to bat their eyes at working-class men who might then think that bourgeois girls and women weren’t quite as morally pure as they claimed to be. Meg hadn’t learned these lessons. Instead, her childhood had taught her that sexual attention was love and a form of power.
When she was fifteen, the flirting extended to a secret romance with the son of a grocer in Beaucourt. They went on long walks in the woods and exchanged letters through her family’s cook, a woman who had plenty of secrets of her own, as she was one of Édouard’s many mistresses.54 When her parents found out about Meg’s relationship, they were none too happy. After all, it could only have sparked Édouard’s jealousy.
Yet for all Édouard’s overbearing ways and overinvestment in Meg, he was quite lax in certain respects. Bourgeois girls were typically closely supervised, never left alone with a member of the opposite sex or allowed outside the house unaccompanied. Otherwise, they might fall into temptation and sin.55 While Meg was disinclined to follow the rules, her parents were just as disinclined to enforce them. Neither Édouard nor Émilie cracked down on Meg’s behavior or tightened restrictions on her after they discovered her first romance.56 Perhaps they were too absorbed in their own troubles, or perhaps Meg was able to convince them not to do so.
This flirtation was a foretaste of what was to come. Only the next time, the consequences would be severe and would shape the rest of her life.
CHAPTER 2
TROUBLE CAME IN THE form of an army lieutenant named Gustave-Édouard Sheffer, who was one of Julien’s friends and classmates. Unlike Julien, he was hardworking and liked by his superiors. Beginning in 1885, when he was twenty-one and Meg sixteen, he started coming to Beaucourt with Julien, enjoying the boundless hospitality on offer at Château Édouard. In exchange, Édouard and Émilie hoped that the winning ways of Lieutenant Sheffer would rub off on Julien, their problem child.1
They didn’t, but the young officer’s visits became even more frequent over the next couple of years. How could they not? Meg had inherited her father’s charisma and expansive nature as well as her mother’s features. She had large, light blue-green eyes and masses of long hair that was dark brown or auburn, depending on how the light hit it.2 She was charming, spirited, and, in the words of observers, “already very captivating.”3
In a photograph taken when she was seventeen—the moment when Lieutenant Sheffer’s courtship of her began—she seems delicate, almost fragile. Her fine features and pose show off her tiny waist and slender hands and feet. The lacy white dress with frills and bows and the precarious pose, where she seems to be sliding off a rock, heighten the sense that she could at any moment fall from grace. She seems awkward, not quite at ease with herself, a reminder that her boldness masked her innocence and vulnerability.
Meg at seventeen
Meg was enthralled with her new beau. She found him “charming and clever,” as did everyone else who met him. His fellow army officers considered him “very intelligent, educated, a good dancer…and bold with women”—more or less the male version of Meg.4
Meg related that over the course of Sheffer’s visits to Beaucourt, “there grew between us a kind of poetical intimacy.” During the day, they read to each other in the gardens of Château Édouard and took long walks around her family’s property. At night, they sang together.5 He wrote poetry for her and sent her love letters when he returned to the army barracks in the nearby town of Belfort.6
Of course, Meg’s parents knew why the young army officer’s visits were so frequent. They, too, were very fond of him. But Édouard could neither entertain the prospect that Meg was serious about this—or any other—suitor nor say no to her. Instead, he only “uttered vague words” when she spoke about her hopes for a future with the army officer.7
The two love birds, though, ignored Édouard’s equivocation and rushed into their romance with their whole hearts. His widowed mother came to Beaucourt from Geneva to meet Meg and her family, as sure a sign as any that the couple were thinking of marrying. Mme Sheffer was “modest and gifted” and had “silvery hair” and a “smooth pure brow.” It’s not hard to imagine that Meg saw her as an ideal mother-in-law, someone who was as loving as her own mother but had a practical sense and worldliness that Émilie lacked.8
Meg and her beau hid their intentions, however. He sent letters to her via poste restante, or general delivery, which were picked up by the family cook to avoid prying parental eyes. They also got engaged in secret.9 Meg hoped that with time, her father would come around and bless their union. It’s true that Sheffer had little money and that the life of a wife of an army officer wasn’t a particularly easy one, but he was from a respectable family.10 With the ardor of youth and with Meg’s impetuousness, none of that mattered, anyway—their love would overcome any hardships they encountered, although if Édouard agreed to a generous dowry, that would help. After all, she regarded her parents’ marriage as a great love affair. Her mother and father had conquered the odds and built a family and a life for themselves despite their age and class differences. Meg and Lieutenant Sheffer had even fewer barriers to surmount. Meg must have thought that her father, so loving and indulgent, would never deny her the chance to marry the man of her dreams.
Meg and the young officer were so in love that they threw caution to the wind. One day, her art teacher, Mlle Ringel, inadvertently walked in on the two. She opened the door to one of the grand rooms on the first floor of Château Édouard and “found Marguerite nonchalantly lying on a couch” with Sheffer. He jumped up and quickly “grabbed a book in order to give me the impression that he was reading,” but Mlle Ringel knew from their flustered faces and hurried excuses that they were not.11
Mlle Ringel couldn’t keep the information about what she had seen to herself. For one, she was “known in the area for having a mean tongue and for having broken plenty of hearts, since she is jealous of everyone,” in Meg’s estimation.12 Furthermore, to have not told Meg’s parents about their daughter’s session on the couch with her lieutenant would have been to condone Meg’s behavior.
And that behavior was very, very bad. Young women of Meg’s station had to remain virgins before marriage. Indeed, many of Meg’s peers got married with no understanding of what sex was or what they would be expected to do on their wedding night.13 To have sex before marriage was a sign that a young woman was immoral and not a proper member of the bourgeoisie. This was the type of trouble that working-class women—always presumed to be less virtuous than their wealthy counterparts—supposedly got into.14 Meg’s parents’ lenient oversight of their daughter was also regarded as a sign of their moral laxity and a dereliction of their duty to maintain her purity.15
Then there were the marital plans. Engagements weren’t promises whispered in secret between two young people but involved extensive negotiations between the two families.16 At the very least, Meg’s beau needed to have secured Édouard’s permission to ask for her hand.
Most parents would have been upset with Meg. Her father was furious. In the words of one of the family’s servants, “For two nights, no one in the house was able to sleep.”17 What Meg had read as love was revealed as an obsession with control. Édouard was incensed that she had tried to escape his domination by entering a secret romantic relationship with a man of her choice.18
The consequences were quick and severe. Quite obviously, the engagement was off. Édouard and Juliette’s husband also requested that Sheffer give them Meg’s letters.19 The return of letters was a standard end to many a romantic relationship, and it prevented any compromising letters from falling into the wrong hands. It was also one way that Meg’s father asserted that he was in control of her.
Another was to send her away. She was put on a train to Bayonne, where Juliette lived with her husband and children. This was a city in the southwestern corner of France, about as far from Beaucourt and Sheffer as Meg could get in metropolitan France. Her father hoped that distance would keep the lovers apart. It was also a form of punishment and a way to remove her from his sight so he could recover from his favorite child’s monstrous betrayal.20
The young couple was devastated, all their hopes and dreams of a life together dashed. To see her one last time, Lieutenant Sheffer went to the train station as she was leaving for Bayonne. He was wearing a marguerite daisy on his lapel, a sign that the relationship was over but his love for her was not. When he arrived, she was no longer on the platform but was already seated, as if in a metal cage. They said a tearful goodbye as she was whisked away to her life in exile.21 He would see her one more time, decades later, under the most adverse circumstances.
