Above: Portrait of Rachel Dorange by Marin Marie (1901-1987). The small blurry image is from a video of a slide show. The larger image is a sharpened enhancement created by the Canva Sketchify app to give a better idea of the original painting.
Source: Hervé Ménager, Presentation to the IFCE "equi-meeting Tourisme," May 9, 2012, (via Youtube, at 12 minutes 35 seconds).

Marin Marie was the pseudonym of Marin de Saint-Front, a painter who specialized in seascapes and ships at sea. Rachel's is one of the very few portraits that Marin Marie seems to have painted. It is not listed in published catalogues of his works and seems not to be reproduced anywhere, but it is one more indication of Rachel's connection to well-known people in the art, music and theatre world.

Above: Dr. Hervé Ménager.
Source: Same source, at 6 minutes 13 seconds).

Above: Division 34, Cimetière parisien de Thiais.
Source: Google Maps

Above: Cimetière parisien de Thiais. Division 34 is circled in yellow.
Source: Same source.

23. Afterward

With the announcement of her retirement, Rachel's public life – at least as reflected in newspaper reports – comes to an end. Yet she lived until 1982. We are left with an 18-year-void and more questions, questions which are not confined to the last years of her life.

For example, what became of the hoard of trinkets and souvenirs that she accumulated on her long-distance journeys? What became of her travel diary? More importantly, what became of the letters she sent home when she was on the road? Where are the reminiscences of the many people who knew her?

Of course the underlying question is, who was Rachel? One thing seems clear: in transforming herself from a farm girl into a sophisticated society woman, Rachel consciously invented the person that she wanted to be.

We all invent ourselves as we move (or drift) from childhood into adulthood, but the Rachel that she invented imposed special demands on her. This is because Rachel was determined to be a star. A celebrity.

Rachel's fanciful exaggerations, her varying life stories, her sometimes ferocious secretiveness (especially about her income and age) and her tortuous obsession over that one love affair, all tempt us to descend into armchair psychoanalysis. But there is no need for this.

Rachel's behaviour is largely, if not completely explained by the dilemma that people experience when they become the object of public curiosity, or worse, veneration: that is to say, when they become celebrities.

One aspect of this dilemma is the problem of how to preserve a corner of your private life to serve as a refuge from the voracious, predatory nature of media attention and fandom. Rachel was obviously well aware of this need and resolutely fenced off her private life from public scrutiny. So successful was she that even now, more than 40 years after he death, her private life is still locked away out of sight.

Nevertheless Rachel was no recluse. On her trip to Berlin and back in 1927 she sent home a trove of letters and photographs that reporter Hugette Godin was allowed to see (page 7) and although she was not a very faithful correspondent for her sponsor, Le Petit Journal, on her 1928 trip to Bucharest and back she sent "a hundred" letters and postcards from Warsaw to friends (page 27).

Practically everyone who met Rachel found her approachable and charming, while her stage performances and "galas" made her many friends in the Parisian theatre world.

The other aspect of the celebrity dilemma is the need to control your public life, or rather, media and public perceptions of that life. This explains the dazzling stories about herself that Rachel fed to the newspapers. Essentially you concoct facsimiles of yourself and toss them out of the sleigh to distract the pursuing wolves.

Anyone can have an obsessive emotional crisis, but when you are a celebrity the fallout is on public display. For Rachel, her heartbreak crisis became one more aspect of her life that she had to take control of by telling her own story. Or stories.

Perhaps what is most remarkable about Rachel's career as a celebrity is how rapidly she adapted to the pressures that it imposed on her. She was a fast learner.

It was Dr. Hervé Ménager who discovered what finally happened to Rachel. In 1980 she was admitted to the Charles Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a southeastern suburb of Paris. She died there in 1982 and was buried in Thiais cemetery. Dr. Ménager found her grave in Division 34, row 13, at grave 45.

Thiais is a densely populated cemetery with its square or rectangular divisions neatly laid out and separated by groves of trees. The east side of the cemetery parallels the A86, a grim concrete expressway plastered with graffiti, but a wall and a screen of trees shield the cemetery from the sight and sounds of traffic. Division 34 is near the northeast corner.

Thiais has a web site which currently (2026) lists 66 distinguished residents of the cemetery whose graves are frequently sought out by visitors. Rachel's name is not included – at least not yet.

Rachel's family did not know what had become of her until Dr. Ménager informed them. "Rachel was very proud," he says. "She didnΓÇÖt want anyone to see her decline, so she cut off all contact."

Was Rachel estranged from her family? We don't know. Rachel told Yves Rameau that "Of all her family only her mother, who she adores more than anyone in the world... came to see her regularly in Paris and was always her closest confidant."

However, when she attempted suicide in 1932, one of a dozen letters she wrote was addressed to her brother Bernard who was then living in Paris. In 1948, on her return from London, she made a point of visiting the grave of her brother Jules who was killed in World War I (page 61).

Families can be problematical (we choose our friends but not our families). Rachel's relationships with her family. whatever they were, do not necessarily tell us anything about Rachel.

Dr. Ménager photographed Rachel's gravestone, a simple slate tablet inscribed "Rachel Dorange, 1899-1982." Did Rachel commission it herself? It seems in character, providing as it does only basic information. Other details, it suggests, are none of our business.

But the slate tablet seems hardly a fit place to end the story of someone who was so full of life and whose life, both real and imagined, was so eventful.

Luckily there is one more report, published in 1971 in Dziennik Zwiazkowy, a Polish language newspaper. Not a Polish language newspaper from Poland, which Rachel visited, but a Polish language newspaper from Chicago. Here it is:

"Fame Fades.

"She was FranceΓÇÖs most famous female equestrian. Men adored her, famous painters painted her, and she earned a fortune. She performed in the circus and became famous for a horseback trek across Europe, during which she rode 9,500 kilometers, celebrated by crowds in various capitals. But that was 40 years ago. Today, Rachel Dorange is 60 years old. Her fame is long gone, and her money has run out.

"Years ago, Rachel earned a living driving a horse-drawn carriage around Paris; many people were eager to take a ride with the famous former Amazon on the box seat. Later, however, horse-drawn carriages disappeared for good from the streets of Paris, and the aging Rachel Dorange found herself in poverty.

"She lived in a squalid basement, spending her time among the Parisian 'clochards,' [tramps] warming herself with them at the exits of the subway tunnels. However, she was approached by a certain taxi owner, an elderly man who still remembered RachelΓÇÖs heyday.

"'ItΓÇÖs impossible for a woman like that to live in poverty!' he declared. He paid for her to take a driving test – which the elderly lady passed with flying colors – and hired her as a taxi driver. The elderly lady, wearing a black Amazon tailcoat and a traditional top hat, gained great popularity as a taxi driver."

We can safely dismiss this tale as a fabrication. If Rachel had become a Paris taxi driver, the Paris press corps would have jumped on the story. There would have been interviews and photographs. But as in the case of other tales about Rachel there is no corroborating evidence.

It's the sort of story that begins with a question: "Whatever became of...?" The question invites speculation. Speculation begets a theory. The theory congeals into accepted fact.

But what a story! It would certainly appeal to Rachel, even though she didn't invent it herself.