I met Mademoiselle George in a cemetery. While visiting Père Lachaise, I passed by a marker that read “GEORGE”. This probably wasn’t a first name, which the French write “Georges“, with an “s”. I thought George was Mr. George and tried to look him up. Then I found that George was actually Miss George, a woman who led a remarkable and fascinating life.

Mademoiselle George was born on 23 February 1787, in the  French city of Bayeux. Her father was German; her mother was French. Drawn to (or into) the theater as a child, Mademoiselle George made her début at the prestigious Comédie Française while she was a teenager. Her career as an actress spanned a remarkable length, from the revolution (1790s) to the Second Empire (1850s). Hers was a household name, known to all literate society.

Mademoiselle George’s exceptional good looks overshadowed her acting abilities. Comparing her to another actress, a contemporary wrote, “Mademoisele Duchensois is so good that she seems pretty; Mademoiselle George is so pretty that she seems good…” (quotation in Roselyne Laplace’s biography, Mademoiselle George, published by Fayard in 1987).

Her beauty won Mademoiselle George a lot of attention from men. In a manner reminiscent of French first lady Carla Bruni today, she had many boyfriends. The men in her life tended to be wealthy and powerful, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, whom she described as the “master of the world”.

Mademoiselle George fascinates me particularly because, towards the end of her life, she wrote her memoirs, which are today in the public domain and easy to consult (in French) on the web. I’m struck by her theatrical tone. Mademoiselle George’s recollections always mention clothing and jewelry (costumes), settings and furniture (sets). She writes stunning set pieces about intimate meetings with her lovers –often described as playful (in other words, as I read her, they were equally actors in their public lives)– but manages to preserve some privacy while exciting or toying with her reader’s imagination (one lover kisses her hand, she spends a night with another “talking”).

Mademoiselle George also intrigues me because she sought out independence, and wrote insightfully about this quest. She was attached to her family but remained unattached (and childless). Her career as an actress gave her the freedom to travel throughout Europe and brought her into proximity of people –artists and political leaders– who interested her, but kept her at the margins of society. She sought out and enjoyed the company of master-of-the-world class men, but fretted about becoming a “toy” or “plaything” (which leads me to ask who was playing with whom). Huge sums of money travel across her orbit, and sometimes passed through her hands, but always had a casino-chip unreality, here today and vanished tomorrow.