Above: Rachel in her bed at the Salpêtrière hospital following her train accident.
Source:. Paris-Presse / L'Intransigéant, January 7, 1951, p. 5. National Library of France (via Gallica).
Above: Poster advertising Fanfan La Tulippe.
Source:. Cineman.
Above: Rachel and Rombière. The original photo, too faint to reproduce here, has been enhanced with the Canva "Sketchify" app. The sign on the stall reads "Indisponible" ("Unavailable").
Source:. Le Bien Public, August 2, 1952, p. 5. National Library of France (via Gallica).
Above: Rachel driving a bevy of Catherinettes to Maxim's restaurant.
Source:. New York Herald Tribune (European edition), November 26, 1952, p. 5. National Library of France (via Gallica).
20. Scrapbook: 1949-1956 (continued)
Scrapbook: 1951 (continued) Rachel did not allow her accident to disrupt her plans, one of which was a trip to New York with Coco:
"Next October, Paris will lose (for just eight days) one of its most curious and charming figures: Rachel Dorange, the horsewoman in the red jacket. She will set sail for New York with her popular horse-drawn carriage and her trusty horse, Coco....
"When asked the reason for her trip to New York, she replied with a touch of emotion, 'To make Coco happy. ItΓÇÖs his birthday present – he just turned fourteen!'" At fiirst blush the idea of taking a horse and cab across the Atlantic and back for the sake of a week in New York seems preposterous, a mere flight of fancy like the ones that Rachel occasionally fed to newspaper interviewers.
However, as she divulged to Maurice Morin, she was completely serious about her plan and had actually booked passage on an ocean liner, the S.S. De Grasse, with the departure date of October 4.
The De Grasse was not in the same class as the Queen Mary or the SS United States but she was a respectable and well-appointed "intermediate" liner. Built in 1921, she was scuttled at Bordeaux by the retreating German army and, refloated and refitted, sailed on for nearly 20 more years.
Among the De Grasse's distinguished passengers were conductor Arturo Toscanini and 114 members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on their first European tour in 1930 and, in 1949, Jacqueline Kennedy (then Jacqueline Bouvier) who sailed to France for a year of study in Paris.
Sadly for us, the New York trip fell through. Rachel and Coco were still working in Paris on October 4 during the 1951 Paris taxi strike according to the New York Herald Tribune:
"Only the cabwoman, Mme Rachel Dorange, dressed in a derby and red jacket, and waiting for a fare with her open horse-drawn coach, wasn't bothered [by the strike].
"'Coco always keeps way over on the right,' she said, 'we've got nothing to do with traffic.'"
The reason for Rachel's change of plan may have been that Coco had been offered a supporting role in a French feature film, a swashbuckling romantic comedy entitled Fanfan La Tulippe. Coco actually appears in several scenes.
However, what seemed like a golden opportunity ended tragically. During the movie shoot Coco came down with a cold and died that winter. Rachel blamed herself for putting him in danger.
The year ended with Rachel's final courtroom victory over her former friend, the couturier Madame Nadal (page 54), but this did not foretell a change Rachel's luck. The year 1952 was to bring her more misfortune.
Scrapbook: 1952
Coco's loss was devastating to Rachel but she was determined to get back on the road.
"The sunny boulevards yesterday somehow made me think of the city's only woman horse-cab driver, Rachel Dorange," wrote Paul White, the Daily Mail Paris correspondent, "so I looked her up and learnt she will be out for the first time this year on Sunday [April 13], plying on the Place de la Concorde or the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées.
"There has been another woman driver on the boulevards, but Rachel, who had just finished repainting her cab brown and yellow, says her rival has now gone into the café business.
"Mlle Dorange was almost in tears when I asked about Coco, her horse. 'He died this winter,' she said, 'after I had driven him for 11 years.'"
Rachel's replacement for Coco was a 20-year-old mare named Rombière (whose somewhat insulting name translates to "Old Biddy"). However, pulling a loaded cab proved to be too much for Rombière and near the end of July she collapsed, breaking both her forelegs.
This would normally be death sentence for a horse, but Rachel, not willing to lose two horses in less than a year, resolved to save her. One report claimed that Rachel sent Rombière to convalesce "in a meadow in Normandy."
Whenever there was a public festivity in Paris that called for a horse-drawn cab, Rachel was likely to be called on to supply it. An example is the celebration of Saint Catherine's Day on November 25, 1952, as reported in the New York Herald Tribune:
"Girl workers at the Paris fashion houses held their annual observance of St. Catherine's Day yesterday with attendance at religious services in honor of the saint, patroness of maidens, and gay parties at the establishments where they work or at restaurants in the Madeleine quarter, traditional center of the Paris Haute Couture.
"There was little, however, of that prewar rollicking on the sidewalks by groups of girls walking arm-in-arm and wearing green-and-yellow bonnets in all fabrics, shapes and sizes to mark their eligibility to marriage, though past 25. Perhaps the cold weather had something to do with it, but oldtimers saw in the absence of 'Catherinettes' on the streets one more sign of the passing of one world and the coming of another.
"One pleasing exception was the bevy of salesgirls from Christian Dior's, who discarded the symbol of undesired celibacy and donned town costumes of the turn of the century. They drove to Maxim's in the horse-drawn cab of Rachel Dorange, familiar figure on the Champs-Elysées cab stands, and there gave a regular party, with tableaux vivants and all, in honor of their employer."
The photo at left shows Rachel driving the "bevy" to Maxim's. Rachel is at the far left, but there is another passenger to the right of her, a young gentleman in a military-style uniform and a pillbox cap who may represent a fictitious character known as "le chasseur de chez Maxim's," a combination doorman-gofer.
The character became a kind of mascot for the restaurant and in the picture he seems to be performing the duty of either greeting or escorting the women. The character originated in a popular 1920 Vaudeville play in which a wealthy businessman leads a double life by night as a beloved "chasseur" at Maxim's. The play was made into movies at least five times between 1927 and 1976.