Above: Ad for Cadum soap featuring "Bébé Cadum," circa 1912
Source: Wikimedia Commons. Photo credit: Arsène-Marie Le Feuvre.
Above: Rachel at Longchamps Racecourse, Paris (top, detail); Rachel at a banquet (middle); Rachel as "ambassadress of fashion" at a party in Nice (bottom).
Source: Qui? Detective, "À la poursuite d'un amour défunt" ("In pursuit of a dead love") by Marcel Morin, August 27, 1951, p. 22. National Library of France (via Gallica).
12. Heartbreak, 1932 (continued)
Yves Rameau's interview with Rachel was published in two parts, in back-to-back issues of Liberté Soir in November, 1946, under the title "The Tumultuous Destiny of Rachel Dorange." But it was not the last word on Rachel's tumultuous love life.
In August, 1951 she was approached for an interview by Marcel Morin, a writer for Qui? Detective magazine (Rachel liked to talk to reporters but she never chased interviews – reporters had to lay in wait for her or track her down).
Qui? Detective was the successor to Detective, the true crime magazine that reported on Rachel's attempted suicide back in 1932. Qui? Detective had a reputation for sensationalism but it also published human interest stories that had nothing to do with crime.
In the Morin interview Rachel seems to have come as close as she ever did to revealing the truth about herself. Of course, we can only speculate on how close she came, since once again the only evidence for much of her story is her own word.
"Rachel-Léonie Dorange is my real name – born in Fontenay-sur-Eure (Eure-et-Loir). When? ThatΓÇÖs none of your business. The eldest of eight children; my parents were farmers (while they were in the fields, I raised my brothers and sisters). At 16, I was placed as a salesgirl in a bakery in Malakoff."
One of Dr. Hervé Menager's informants verified the bakery story (page 3).
"I was then a tall, beautiful girl with rosy cheeks and a full figure, which earned me, for a time, the nickname Bébé Cadum" (a baby depicted in advertisements for Cadum soap).
"Well. Time passes. In Paris, at the Champs-Élysées roundabout, right near my last job, I found a spot as a model at a fashion house. A captain took a liking to me, told me so, and whisked me away (those aviators, you know...) He takes me all the way to Neustadt (Palatinate), where his service was calling him. He takes the opportunity to give me my first flight. Now that was fun!"
The Palatinate, part of Germany, was in the French zone of occupation following World War I.
"Two years later, things werenΓÇÖt so rosy since, in his fits of jealousy, heΓÇÖd break plates and vases far too often. I left him and returned to Paris. Back to modeling. Numerous flings, including a fabulously wealthy English colonel, who was strangely determined to ask me to marry him every day. But I thought he was too old for me.
"Then I met Charles, who nicknamed me 'the Child' and soon showered me with jewelry: a real diamond, and pearls – fake ones! It was at that moment that I took my first riding lessons, a sport for which, having shown exceptional aptitude, I soon developed a fierce, all-consuming passion.
"A glamorous life, then, or at least the beginning of one, after the breakup with Charles, thanks to the entirely platonic protection of others, of an admirer who was literally smitten... a Scottish diplomat who called me Perle, because of my smile, he said.
"He had 'set me up in style' (as they said back then): new outfits for every outing; extravagant hats – feathers, pheasants, and birds of paradise – worn only once at each equestrian event...."
"Soon, I performed in a haute école act at the Club de L'Étrier; then at the Empire, where I stayed for two years, with my horses, my carriage, my greyhound, and my coachman in full regalia: a grey top hat, a white cravat, and white gloves.
"Proclaimed 'FranceΓÇÖs leading female rider' by the public and the press, I once had an accident at the Cirque de Paris... in front of the Grand Duchess of Russia, that nearly cost me my life. My dressage horse reared up, and I fell backward, injuring myself quite seriously." Rachel's two-month stint at the Empire Music Hall, which became a one-year contract in her interview with Yves Rameau (page 5), was now a two-year contract. There was more than one real Russian grand duchess who might have been in the audience at Cirque de Paris, but we can rest assured that Rachel's grand duchess was fictional.
We now come to that fatal romance, with Maurice identified as Jean D.:
"I was supposed to recover fairly quickly, but I didnΓÇÖt realize then, alas, that it was my heart that had been most seriously affected – and that the wound there would never heal.
"The young doctor Jean D., whom I had met in Le Touquet a few months earlier, happened to be in the theatre. He rushed over and gave me first aid. After that...."
"After that?"
"Nothing worth telling. I loved him. He loved me. Life separated us. I tried to poison myself one night in Cannes. They foolishly saved my life. ThereΓÇÖs nothing left, I tell you, nothing left but twenty mad races, twenty thousand kilometers on the roads of the world. Twenty thousand kilometers, in pursuit of a dead love."