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The Outcast Actress Who Became The Soul Of The French Republic
“Hate and Murder and Madness Incarnate She Stood”
The Mademoiselle from Bad Boys’ Street
In the early 1830s, the Felix moved in Bad Boys’ street (rue des Mauvais-garçons) in Paris, hoping to settle down for good. Their five children had been born in various places in Germany or Switzerland, each birth marking a stop in their lives as wandering Jews. Elisabeth-Rachel, the girl who’d grow to become famous as Mademoiselle Rachel, was born in clandestinity at the Soleil d’Or inn in Mumpf, Aargau (Switzerland), because her mother was too exhausted to travel the 20 or so miles remaining to Endingen, the one town in the region that tolerated Jewish people.
The family was so poor that children were put to work as soon as possible. Sarah, the eldest daughter, would spend her days in the city as a beggar by age six. Jacob, the father, loved theatre and music so much he enrolled the girls in music lessons and then formed an acting troupe comprising all his children, performing in the street. He also taught dramatic recitation, but his strong German accent didn’t help.
Elisa was considered the most promising actress of the bunch. As a teen, she moved on to théâtre du Gymnase for a while, then the small and scrawny (for the times’ standards) 17-year-old auditioned for the most prestigious theatrical institution of the time: Comédie-française. She got in at first try and became famous under her middle name of Rachel.
When she died of tuberculosis, aged 37, she was a rich woman, living in the very exclusive Place des Vosges, one of the oldest districts of Paris. She never forgot what it was like to be poor and feared all her life that she’d lose her money and go back to the slums.
The language of success
The Felix family spoke Yiddish and German, but Jacob thought that opportunity awaited if the family switched to French. As a result, Sarah and Rachel didn’t speak Yiddish and couldn’t read it.
Not that they could read at all, at least before Rachel took comedy lessons. Her music teacher Mr Samson saw that while she was an apt musician, her true talent lay in acting, and paid for her…
