Charles became a Doctor of Medicine (professor of physiology)
and a Doctor of Literature graduating at Université de
Paris. He was a celebrity in his own right in the fields of
medicine, botany (he studied the medical properties of plants)
and phisiology. He was referred to as "Dr Saffray"
tout-court.
He was also a great traveler, one of the first explorers of
Colombia (then New Grenade) where he lived between 1860 and
1862.
From Colombia he went to Panama and from there to New York where
he arrived in 1864. In 1865 he worked as an Assistant Physician
in the Lunatic Asylum of the Corporation of New York. He returned
to Colombia around 1869. In 1870 he was in Louisville (Kentucky)
where he became Professor in the local Medical College and Professor
of French at the Louisville Female College. His reputation was
such that in February 1871 he was proposed by the U.S. Representative
E. W. Shore to Ulysses Grant personally as Professor of French
in the Military Academy of West Point to fill the chair made
vacant by the death of the incumbent. In 1876 he attended the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese he was a translator and wrote
near to sixty books, almost as many as his sister. Was made
Officier de l'Instruction Publique.
Returned to France around 1880. In February 1885 he married
Marie (Martiale) Molin de Teyssieu widow of Guillaume de Roberthie
and a cherished friend of Pierre Loti. Dr Saffray died at home
in Paris Avenue des Ternes 102 (XIV) the 17th Febr.1890.
Eugénie
Saffray was educated by the Dames du Sacré-Coeur in Vannes:
large part of the school curriculum was taken by history and
classical literature. Eugénie showed a literary talent
from an early age which was encouraged and nurtured by her teachers.
Her quiet demeanour hid a strong willed personalitiy, but she
enjoyed the convent years and later declared they had been the
best of her life. She did very well in her studies receiving
many prizes, which she kept with books and girlish trinkets
in an old trunk.
Upon her father's promotion to the position of Receveur Principal
and Entreposeur des Tabacs, the family moved to to Argentan
(61) rue du College. There on the 23rd of November 1846, to
escape her oppressive domineering mother, de Navéry consented
to marry Eugène Jean Baptiste Chervet, rédacteur
à la Prefecture d'Ile et Vilaine, born in Paris (IX)
15th January 1815.
Saffray starts her career as a poet with Le Testament de Jésus
poème évangélique, by Mme Eugénie
Chervet 16 pages printed in 1850 by Imprimérie Julllien,
Falaise, and available in Argentan chez M. Pesnel and chez Mme
Lefoyer, libraires. This was most certainly printed at her own
expenses.
Afterwards
she used the names S. David, Marie David and Marie Saffray;
in 1853 the lyrics for a sérénade Si tu m'aimais
are signed Mme Marie Saffray, musique de F. Ponchard.
Followed Les Marguerites, poésies, par Mme Marie Saffray,
E. Dentu, 1854. Though she continued to write poetry receiving
many mentions and winning a Carnation and (1875) a Violette
d'Argent in Jeux Florals de Toulouse for her poem La Saisie,
poetry was not bringing in any money and around 1860 she switched
to the historical travel genre which made her famous under
the name Raoul de Navéry. For the next twenty years
her books will be constantly, regularly and immediately reviewed
by the Parisian and provincial press.
Saffray separated from her husband (who died 14 July 1871
in Rennes) and apparently took refuge in the Convent of the
Sacré-Coeur in Metz. She was there In 1856-1857 where
she published Souvenirs du pensionnat. Drames et mystères
dédiés aux élèves des maisons
du Sacré-Coeur, by Marie David, C. Douniol, 1857. This
is not the story of her convent life but a collection of plays.
She spent some time (1861) at la Prieuré de Basses
Loges Fontainebelau-Avon, at the time a private country house
where she composed Le Chemin du Paradis
But to become somebody one has to be in the capital "[
...]...Il fallait courir à Paris, forcer l'admiration,
enlever le succés ...; il fallait défier l'indifférence
, la jalousie, voir le monstre en face [....] "(in La
Clé de la cassette, feuilleton Le Mémorial d'Aix,
1883)
Thus
three years later, in 1864, Marie is in Paris where she will
live all her life. She reinvents herself as Raoul de Navéry
(1) soon becoming a feature in the Parisian society. It is
a tiring carousel of receptions, balls, concerts, theaters,
matinées littéraires, soirées de musique,
«cinq à sept», dinners weddings and funerals,
culminating with the opening of Exposition de Beaux Arts,
knwon as "Le Salon" (Raoul de Navéry writes
Le Salon de 1868).
La Presse (10 May 1864) reports her presence vetue en écossaise
at a reception given by Mme O'Connell (2) together with Nadar
the photographer and "l'élite de la littérature
feminine" which included Comtesse Dash (3) .
August 1865: le beau monde littéraire is "en masse"
in Ems, watering-place in the Prussian province of Hesse-
Nassau, for the opening of Valse et Minuet opera by Méry
et Deffès; the musical and critical Tout-Paris is there:
Armand de Pontmartin, Raoul de Navéry, Houssaye, Frédéric
Béchard and "un parterre des princesses: 3rd December
1868: dinner Société des Gens de Lettres ("la
très aimable Mme de Navéry" was wearing
a "robe de moire bleu); 23 November 1872: Théâtre
Parisien opening of Les Fils aînés de la République,
drame en 5 actes et 9 tableaux, par MM. Michel Masson et Raoul
de Navéry; May 1881: annual meeting of La Societé
d'Encouragement au Bien; January 1882: osbèques de
Mme Michel Masson in Batignolles. Then there are her comings
and goings to and from "les vacances: in the last years
of her life she spends a lot of time at the château
de Rueil which at the time belonged to the Baron de Fleigny.
In
1864 E. Dentu published anonimously in Paris the saucy Mémoires
d'une femme de chambre, avec Portrait photographié
de l'Auteur (4) , a chronicle of the amourous adventures of
a society lady. The critics were unanimous in attributing
the book to Marie David and, as such, it appeared in some
bibliographies as late as 1868. She never denied nor confirmed
but the company Mme de Navéry kept in her first Parisian
years was decidedly beyond the pale for a Catholic writer.
( see 2 & 3). Indeed it may have been her inspiration.
Many
periodicals made specific reference to de Navéry's authorship.
To quote just one, between 1864 and 1865 Journal pour toutes
wrote:
"Une femme d'ésprit qui pourrait bien être
pour quelque chose dans la rédaction des Mémoires
d'une Femme de Chambre, Mme Raoul de Navery a été
recemment couronnée pas la Societé d'Encouragement
au bien. On connaissait de cet auteur des poésies habilement
tournées qui ne lui eussent pas valu le prix de vertu.
Les Baisers Lesbiens, La Grappe et les Oiseaux, à la
picorée, sont au dire des connaisseurs du genre risqué
des chefs-d'oeuvre d'audace. Sans doute Mme de Navery commence
sa seconde manière et MM de l'Encouragement au Bien ont
pu dès lors la couronner" ( 1864-1865 pag 368)
".... Après ça, de nos jours, qu'est ce qui
n'a pas son roman ou ses mémoires des sommités
sociales à la loge du portier? Telle s'est inspiré
du boudoir, telle autre de l'antichambre; demandez à
Mme de Navéry" (1864-1865 pag 527) (5)
|
|
|
|
Portrait
photographié de l'Auteur.
Is this woman really Marie David?
Possibly
by Nadar (1820-1910), whose name appears frequently
at the same social functions de Navéry attended.
|
|
|
Twenty
years later La Presse was still wondering at the audacity
of some of her writing in their issue n143 (1881) they wrote
: "la vue de cette dame maintenenant d'âge respectable,
(she was 49!) fait faire des reflexions amusantes. Mme de
Navéry a publié des livres et des vers d'une
morale austère et c'est à juste titre si on
en a recompensé l'auteur ; mais elle a publié
des choses excessivement erotiques et osées...étrange!..."
Yet
the matter had been settled once and forever, without mincing
words , in 1866 by La Revue du XIX Siêcle (pag 294,
tome III): "Mme Raoul DE NAVERY est poëte, journaliste,
romancière profane et romancière sacrée"
Thus de Navéry could be the character depicted by Josephin
Péladan (he of the Rose+Croix) in Femmes Honnètes,
1888, in the short story Edelburge-Nina (he does manages to
include a réference to de Navéry, who had been
dead for three years). It is the portrait of a Jekyll-Hyde
authoress who writes saintly books as Edelburge and pornography
as Nina sometimes mixing by mistake the two genres in the
same book.
An example of such an occurrence can be found in de Navéry's
L'Autel et le foyer, Dillet (6), 1860 a novel about the New
World. In the introduction de Navéry stresses and laments
the shortage of suitable chaste and moral books for young
girls describing the habits of the Indians of the New World.
chastising even the famous Atala by Chateaubriand "qui
porte les traces ineffaçables d'un esprit maladif et
d'une âme inassouvie".
She then writes (absent-mindedly?) that the saintly heroine,
a nun, is wearing a floating robe "dont les manches très
larges laissaient voir un bras d'un galbe parfait" Later
on "Le capitaine [.....] avait étendu un lambeau
de voile sur la jeune femme. Il la regardait comme Des Grieux
dut regarder Manon à l'heure où la mort la couchait
dans sa fosse de sable" What kind of inopportune curiosities
are these two people going to arouse in the minds of innocents
virgins?
Mme de Navéry must have mended her literary ways enough
to become a member of La Societé d'Encouragement au
Bien and be crowned with its medals. In 1873 Dame Patronesse
(cinquième section: Mme Raoul de Navéry publiciste)
at the Exposition Universelle, in 1879 she received Les Palmes
Académiques awarded to those who had made major contributions
to French education and culture. She was also a member de
la Société des Gens de Lettres.
We
are in 1870 annus horribilis in the history of France. Paris
is under siege. Many families and society ladies transformed
their hotel particuliers in ambulances that is field-hospitals:
women of all walk of life worked infaticably to tend the wounded;
de Navéry was a nurse in the field hospital set up
by doctor Centomani in the foyer of the Théâtre
Italien. During la Commune (of 1871) she was in charge of
the general field hospital rue Condorcet (IX), the street
where she lived at n°59. She gave proof of great courage
saving some Army Officers from the prisons of La Commune.
Saffray travelled extensively visiting Switzerland, Germany,
Italy Spain, all countries which became the background for
some of her stories. In 1876 she was in Spain: the painting
of San Francis of Assisi in the Cathedral of Toledo (at the
time attributed erroneously to Alfonso Cano) inspired her
'Le pardon du moine' a fictional history of Cano's life. A
best selling book it went through ten French and one American
edition: The monk's pardon. A historical romance of the time
of Philip IV. of Spain. New York, Benziger brothers, 1883.
Navéry
was a great admirer of the very unconventional George Sand
( qui avait l'indulgence moins facile pour les debutantes
que pour les debutants). They certainly knew each other; they
were both members of Societe des Gens de Lettres and they
had many friends in common: Gonzales, Claretie, Pontmartin,
H: Malot, et als.
An extremely attractive woman in her youth, in her dotage
de Navéry used to dress either with a peplum or a pourpoint.
She
wrote about 100 novels, and was also a prolific playwriter,
but her enduring work is the PATIRA trilogy (Patira, Blériot
1874, Le Trésor de l'Abbaye, Blériot, 1876 Jean
Canada, Blériot, 1877) a fiction inspired by the adventures
of the powerful Breton family de Coëtquen which has gone
through prints and re-prints to our day.
She contributed to Les Vieillées des Chaumières.
L'Ouvrier, La Patrie, La Ruche Parisienne, La France, La Revue
de Paris, Gazette des Etrangers, Gazette du Dimanche (Editor)
Les veillées Chretiennes Illustrées (Editor-in-chief),
Magazine des Demoiselles, Le Mémorial d'Aix (La Main
quii se cache, feuilleton 1867; La Clé de la Cassette,
feuileton 1883) La Semaine des Familles, La Petite Revue,
Le Rabelais, La France illustrée, Salons de Paris,
Messager de la Semaine (rédacteur) Polybiblion (from
1875) and many many others magazines. She was translated in
English and Italian. : Idols (1882), Captain Roscoff (1899)
The queen confessions (1900) Father Fitzroy(s.d.) The English
translations increased after her death.
De Navery died in 1885 aged 57 at the Château de Reuil-en-Brie
(Seine-et-Marne) near La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. Her funeral
service was held in Paris on the 19th of May in the parish
of Notre Dame de Lorette (IX). She was buried at the Cimetière
de Montparnasse.
Much
popular, a beacon of Catholic rectitude and much respected,
many French newpapers reported her death, headed by Les Veillées
de Chaumières which published a long obituary praising
her artistic and moral qualities.
However the majority (including the Figaro) used a press release
which got her name half wrong calling her Marie de Saffron
Dame Chervet. It was particularly dismissive in a short ten
lines paragraph : "Une femme de lettres qui a beaucoup
produit sous le pseudonyme de Raoul de Navéry et qui
s'appellait de son vrai nom Marie de Saffron Dame Chervet
.... Ecrivaine catholique Raoul de Navéry a eu pendant
un certain nombre d'années une reputation de romancière
de talent". The same week Victor Hugo was seriously ill
and all the front pages were covering his illness. He died
five days after de Navéry; by then the press had forgotten
her.
(1)
Raoul was her grandfather name but Raoul de Navéry
is also the King's Page in the novel L'Épée
de Suzanne, histoire du temps de François Ier, par
Emmanuel Gonzalès - L. Hachette (Paris) - 1865.
Emmanuel Gonzales, a Frenchman of Spanish extraction, was
a well-known novelist, president since 1863 of the Societé
des Gens de Lettres founder of La Revue de France Director
of Le Siècle. De Navery had known him since her arrival
in Paris. She attended the funeral of his daughter Eva the
10th May 1883, who died in childbirth at 34, together with
political an litérary personalities such as A Dumas,
de Claretie, Tony-Robert Fleury, Hector Malot, Nadar and Dentu
the publisher, Alphonse Daudet, and als.
Eva, Mme Henry Guerard had been a pupil of and a sitter for
Edouard Manet.
(2)
Mme Frédérique-Auguste O'Connell a fashionable
portrait painter (portrait of Dumas fils, Rachel, the actress,
Théophile Gautier & als) born in Berlin had married
a man of Irish descent who workshipped her and fought many
duels for her: she was part of the set of comtesse MacMahon
who used to keep a salon under the reign of Louis Philippe.
Comtesse MacMahon was very close (like sisters) to the writer
Comtesse Dash. After a life of successes, ( she exhibited
at the Salon ) triumphs and wealth following the end of a
long love affair with a working class younger man Mme O'Connell
lost the will to work , her mind and her considerable fortune
and had to be committed to a mental institution. The last
blow was, in 1870, the German siege of Paris, where she had
lived all her life. She died in 1872.
(3)
Comtesse Dash pseudonym of Gabrielle Anne de Cisterne de Courtiras
viscountesse de Poilloüe de Saint-Mars (Poitiers 1804-Paris
1872). Wife of a Cavalry man she turned to writing after she
separated from her husband, to support herself . A successuf
prolific writer friend of Dumas, the real author of some of
his books, friend of Gérard de Nerval and all the Parisian
glitterati that counted. She chronicled society life from
the First Empire through to the Second in Mémoires
des autres published after her death (Paris: Calmann Lévy,
1895), According to Le Gaulois de Navéry recited her
first poem as a child on the knees of Comtesse Dash
Countess Dash's love life was no less romanesque than O'Connell's.
Aged forty she fell in love with Grégoire Sturdza (1821-1901)
the young son of the hospodar of Moldavia , a youth half her
age she had met in Paris and though she was still technically
married, albeit living apart from her husband, she followed
the prince to Moldavia where if not the forgiveness of the
hospodar she obtained a local divorce and married the prince
in 1845. They were exiled to Jassy by the hospodar and the
marriage was promptly declared nul by the Othodox Metropolitan.
Still she had the time to acquire a taste for all things Moldavian
especially furs. Her temporary husband gave her one as a parting
gift on her inevitable return to Paris in 1847. She cherished
it to the end of her life. Surdza served in the Ottoman forces
under the name of Mukhlis Pasha and died in 1901.
(4) Nouveau dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes,
avec le nom des Auteurs et Editeurs Accompagné de notes
historiques et critiques par Louis Charles J. de Manne, Conservateur
Adj à la Bibliothèque Impériale, N Scheuring
Libraire Editeur, MDCCCVXIII (1868) - Page 236
The book was later attributed to Henry Le Pène (1830-1888)
journalist writer, founder of Le Gaulois
Not to be confused with Journal d'une femme de chambre by
Octave Mirbeau, 1900.
(5)
" ...this woman must have some skeletons in her sentimental
closet..." (cit "The forgotten ones" by Rosemary
Barr, Virgin Press, London 1985, ; out of print)
(6)
Dillet (Constant-René), Libraire Imprimeur, Editeur,
Passage Sainte-Maire, 2bis (in 1856) then rue de Sèvres,
was bought by Henri Gautier ( in 1889?). In 1885 Gautier had
bougjt Blériot's catalogue. Blériot was the
major publisher of de Navéry religious literature,
thus de Navéry became and is mainly known as a Blériot-Gautier
author.
(source: Archives Departementales Ile et Vilaine & Archives
de Paris & Dictionnaire des Romanciers de Bretagne by
Bernard Le Nail, & Le Figaro, & various periodicals
in Gallica2)
Special thanks for her contribution to Mme Françoise
Godet Entraide FGW77
