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The Early Life of French Singer Edith Piaf: Unregretfully, Unforgettable!Fleas cannot be trained and only the largest and strongest—human fleas rather than those that lived on dogs and cats---are suitable for performing but Aicha, besides singing in her act, presided over her menagerie of circus fleas that she carried about in a small matchbox. She knew the tricks of the trade though and her fleas pulled small carts and wagons having a gold thread weaved around their necks, fought duels and played musical instruments in her circus sideshow. Some were glued to the base of miniature musical instruments and when she placed the metal on a warmed plate the fleas would wave their appendages as if playing. She was by heritage a Moroccan Berber whose parents were acrobats., and her deceased husband, Monsieur Auguste Maillard, was an animal trainer who travelled with circuses that toured France. Like all other itinerant circus and carnival people, they demanded little respect in the social order often, despite their talents, viewed suspiciously as outcasts. Aicha’s young daughter, Annetta, occasionally sang with her mother and one day while selling confections on a fairground outside of Paris met a diminutive but handsome young man who billed himself as an acrobat and contortionist. Louis Gassion was an ‘antipodean’ who performed by twisting himself into strange shapes while bemused audiences held their breaths; he did head to buttocks bends, pretzeled himself into human knots, awed spectators with extreme splits and walked perilously balanced on his outstretched hands. His boldness and inner bravado transcended his showmanship into his dealing with the ladies and Annetta was charmed by his flirtatious, outgoing nature. His father, Monsieur Victor Gassion, was a horseman who toured France starring in the family circus based in Normandy. Victor and his wife, Madame Louise-Leontine Descamps Gassion, presided over a large circus family of fourteen children, many of whom including Louis performed—he had four younger sisters who were trapeze artists. Louis and Annetta were married hastily before the Great War on September 4th, 1914 and before he was shipped off to the trenches dug into the farmland of eastern France she conceived. With Louis away soldiering, Annetta delivered her baby daughter at the Tenon Hospital in the Belleville section of Paris on December 19, 1915. The child would have a different recollection years later: “My mother nearly gave birth to me on the street.” The presumably apocryphal account often told by her in later life, had a considerate Parisian gendarme laying out his cape to prevent the birth from happening on the bare pavement at the given address of 72 rue de Belleville. Nonetheless, the newborn was named after an English nurse, Edith Cavell, who Annetta saw as a war heroine for her being dispatched by a Nazi firing squad for organizing the escape of wounded French soldiers through Belgium. Annetta was forced by poverty to sing in the streets while her mother Aicha cared for baby Edith. Annetta took the stage name Line Marsa and, at age twenty was more enthused about performing than mothering. She found appreciative audiences who threw coins at her feet while she sang in the French style called la chanson realiste. Sultry ballads and drinking songs reflectively sung that resonated with the hard lives of those who scraped out living in Belleville. Men and women coped by tippling throughout the day, especially during the hardships of the war years, drinking the cheap, red wine called the gros rouge. Wine was cheaper than many foods and kept one warm when heating was lacking—it was not that unusual to spike a child’s baby bottle with wine mixed with sweet sugar to help it fall asleep. When Louis returned from the front in 1918, he learned that Annetta had rewarded his valor by leaving him, and their daughter was being cared for by her mother. Louis and his younger sister Zaza—one of the trapezist—found his mother-in-law Aicha--who now spent most of her wages earned as a cleaning lady imbibing in the local cafes while the toddler was home alone, and took the sickly and malnourished girl away to Bernay where her Gaisson grandparents had settled after retiring from their nomadic circus life. Having first trying to upgrade themselves as shopkeepers by selling groceries, coal and hardware in Caen, they relocated to Bernay, Normandy to escape the gossip about them being lowly circus people where Madam Leontine Gaisson found work as the house-manager at an upscale local brothel. One can imagine that such questionable work did little to upgrade the Gassion family status. Maman Tine, took her sickly grandchild into la maison de tolerance which offered separate quarters for her family, and the decorum was discrete where visitors after socializing in the downstairs parlor, often listening to music cranked out by a player piano, smoking pipes and drinking absinthe to relax, were escorted with their chosen fille to her private bedchambers on the second and third floors for sex. Most of les filles were quite fond of Edith, treated her kindly and she remained innocent of their ongoings; her youth prevented her from grasping the true nature of their transactions. Only about a half-dozen resided permanently and the number swelled to a dozen ladies on the busiest nights. One, ’Madam Gabby’, was quite close to Edith and when her father Louis had another daughter with another woman in 1931, she stood as godmother for Edith’s half-sister. Edith, as a child did remember somethings, mostly impressions, for she would later say amusingly that: “I always thought that if a man held out his hand to a woman, she had to accept and go with him.” Her health improved except that she suffered from a lingering case of keratitis that inflamed her eyelids that could at best be only opened part way. Without antibiotics, acute keratitis causes blurred vision, inflammation and sensitivity to light so at times she walked around with her hands outstretched to prevent bumping into things. She was cursed with poor eyes from age 3 to age 7 and once the prostitutes pooled their monies to take her to the shrine honoring Saint Therese of Lisieux—Edith always believed that her recovery was spurred by this holy pilgrimage. Edith later said, “My fingers and hands were sensitive; I recognized fabrics by touching them, people’s skin the same way---…for I lived in a world of sounds.” Sounds that included her own voice for she liked to sing. Her voice was strong, pleasantly unique especially for a child. “When I wanted to understand, to ‘see a song’ ----I would close my eyes.” She visualized songs long-after her eye infection finally cleared up, and her better eyesight allowed her to practice music so as she sang, she could accompany herself on the piano. People knew that she was from a family of artists so when the word spread of her talent, even the neighbors who would stop by to listen. On special evenings, her grandparents, Victor and Maman Tine, would take her to the Café de la Gare where she was often lifted to a tabletop by enthused patrons who encouraged her by shouting: “Sing, little one, sing!” In school, although she was at times taunted early on by classmates for her poor eyesight and as she grew older as the ‘child from the devil’s house, she was a good student and her teachers remember her as being especially proficient in memorizing everything quickly and fully. Louis, by now an experienced busker, came back for his daughter and after borrowing money from his mother to purchase an old trailer. He had signed on with the Caroli Circus, and he headed with his young daughter in tow with the troupe to Belgium. He also knew that his endearing daughter would help his act and promote generosity when they performed on the street. While his missing wife Annetta [aka Line Marsa] with their son---Edith’s younger brother, Herbert---was on her own singing escapade performing in faraway Turkey, the charming and shrewd Louis never lacked for companionship. When people asked if his daughter had a mother he would smartly reply, “More than she needs!” He placed advertisements in the local news journals where he recruited for young woman to assist in Edith’s childcare while travelling. As an incorrigible womanizer, he never was alone for long for he displayed a subtle charm that ingratiated himself with woman who were searching for love, adventure or both. New mistresses and a new mother every three months taught the young girl that a father’s love was enduring while mother figures came and went. It also reinforced her painful sense of abandonment by Annetta, who she had never known. The Bohemian lifestyle besides being novel, reinforced her beliefs that her life would always be a sojourn, that she needed to meet every situation as it arose, forced her to accept all types of people and imprinted within her soul that every abode where she resided was akin to her own personalized horse-drawn wagon in a gypsy caravan that never stopped wandering.Piaf said little about the reasons her father left the circus and returned with her to Paris sometime in her early adolescence. Unknown to them, her mother Annetta and brother Herbert also had left Turkey after 4 years of performing, and returned to France. One evening Louis and Edith visited a small bistro where entertainers often socialized before their gigs at the neighboring cafes and cabarets. They were leaning against the bar when a strange woman with dark hair, thick bangs and rather large earrings asked Edith if she could hug her. Startled, she responded, “My father doesn’t allow me to kiss people I don’t know.” Her father, smiled, and told her that it was fine because this woman was your maman, ‘the real one.’ She had returned to Paris in the mid-1920s close to when her daughter and Louis had left the circus. According to her son, Annetta found occasional gigs again under the stage moniker Line Marsa at mostly working-class dives where she belted out songs in the traditional style of chansons realiste, where the singer had to play the part, as if it the ballad was truly connected with their soulful existence. The most accomplished interpreters sang the way they lived. The sung pieces were often maudlin, nostalgic, melancholy tunes where the most sorrowful part of the song was played in a minor key, but they were always sung from the heart. Herbert later would state that his mother was ‘badly adrift’ but considering that she abandoned him soon after the bar-side family reunion in Paris, he showed kindly restraint. Herbert was left at first with family friends and later he was made worse off because he was abandoned to the vagaries of foster care and French welfare before he chose to make the best of things by enlisting in the army as soon as he was old enough to qualify. Louis, in turn eventually filed for divorce and the court decree was finalized on June 4th, 1929. His daughter was 13 and he was approaching age 50, but that did not stop him from recruiting a mew mistress who was just 5 years older than Edith. Yeyette became pregnant and gave birth to Edith’s half-sister, Denise, on February 8th, 1931 but despite the stigma of unwed mothering she refused Louis’s proposal to marry. The family had moved back to Belleville close to where Edith had lived as a newborn, only half-way up the hill from the down city square at the bottom of their street. A 15-minute stroll brought you to the social heart of Belleville where musicians played waltzes and rumbas outdoors along with other street-side performers. It held a magnetic charm for Edith, who unruly at home, ran away from strife several times only to be retrieved by her upset father. She settled down though into a routine where she would memorize a song simply by hearing it played several times and then perform at the square; and, whenever she teamed up with the young accordionist their duo became a local favorite. Vendors hushed their cries to listen, housewives peeked from open windows to gawk and many stopped to listen to her strong voice. She learned not only to sing but she would easily give-and-take with her street audience in a witty, frank repartee, what Parisians refer to as la gouaille. She sang in her Titi accent as she spoke, exhibiting a saucy charm as she projected loudly to be heard over the bustling noise of the street. Her voice coming forcefully from her chest and then resonating through what musicians referred to as her mask that gave her tunes a nasal tone that carried far over the din. Coins would be flung at her feet but she never looked down or up rather maintaining a straight-ahead stoic gaze as if the music entranced her. The noise of the street would quell, all became quiet to hear the young mademoiselle with the astounding gift—her God-given voice. French singers linguistically are unique compared to those that sing in many other tongues worldwide including other European languages. There exist 16 phonetic sounds in French, 15 in English, 14 in German and only 7 in the Italian tongue; English speaking singers in particular often struggle in singing French lyrics with the whole group of vowels as well with the resonating velar or nasal sounds that are characteristics of French vocalists. Growing independent, Louis agreed that she could use her wages to rent a room in Belleville. Her father had a circus friend who could support himself doing a handstand on his thumbs, Monsieur Camille Ribon, who taught gymnastics and acrobatics to neighborhood children who would assist him in keeping and eye out for his daughter and to whom Edith could check in with occasionally. One day, while she watched him finishing giving instructions to a young, plain-looking but talented young lady who at just 14 also worked shifts in a nearby factory, she struck up a conversation with the young athlete. Simone Berteault, known by her nickname---Momone---was influenced by Edith’s tales of earning a living by performing on the street, and surprisingly Edith found herself offering the younger girl a job as a sidekick as she herself had worked for her own father. Momone could take up the collection, pass out sheet music and the duo would project an air of a bonafide act rather than that of a solo beggar. “I was bowled over…I’d have followed her to the ends of the Earth,” Berteault would later pen in her memoirs. Edith would later call Momone her mauvaise genie, who sometimes would bring out the worse in her, but at 16 she was glad to have a spirited, enthusiastic partner. Edith would pay her 15 francs a day to be turned over to her mother who demanded compensation for her daughter’s lost factory wages and she would pay the younger’s girl share for room and board. The two girls shared a room at the Hotel de l’Avenir and Edith chose her performance venues according to the time of day, and the day of the week in order to maximize the potential take at each chosen site. They always performed far away from police stations because street singing for money was illegal. Occasionally, they got nabbed and they claimed that they were sisters whose parents were destitute and were usually let go from the station. They also performed their act at local army barracks surrounding Paris where they flirted with the young soldiers, Momone did a gymnastic routine and Edith sang risqué songs to the delight of all who watched. Afterwards they would meet some of the soldiers at local cafes where they felt they had a free pass to joke and fool around without consequences. For Edith, it all changed when she met a young man in Romainville, just northeast of Paris, where that day she was performing. “He looked me straight in the eye, whistled with admiration, and with a regal flourish put a five-sou coin into my cup.” For the next several days he appeared at her every performance, and in no time at all he joined her and Momone in living at the Hotel de l’Avenir. Monsieur Louis Dupont, known to his friends as P’tit Louis soon was sharing a cheap, furnished room with Edith with no pantry or stove so they often heated tin cans on an electric hotplate. He was 18 and she one and one-half years younger when she found herself expecting. He did not want her working on the streets when pregnant and Edith took a sedentary job in a factory that made boots. Her stint was brief for the foreman let her go when her pregnancy showed, but it taught her that she was not cut out for typical manual work. She knew that she must strive to be an artist who could succeed at making financial ends meet. On February 11, 1933 Edith gave birth at the same hospital where she was born 17 years previously. Marcelle, was their baby girl and P’tit Louis was proud to recognize her as his daughter as he greeted the Gassions who showed up at Tenon Hospital with baby gifts and presents. Yeyette, would later donate Edith’s half-sister’s outgrown clothes and when the new family moved in with Louis’s mother, she visited to help teach her step-daughter how to care for the newborn. Edith adored her daughter, and was proud to breast-feed her in a ritual that she took so seriously that no one with her felt comfortable in even smiling. But she missed the life on the streets and her earning power was more than that of P’tit Louis. “Edith wouldn’t have left the baby behind for anything in the world,” Momone explained. She nursed Cecelle on her ample bosom while lugging her all around Paris on the Metro then stopped to sing, and she used her strong lungs to sing anything from popular songs to the classics. Momone picked up the coins but despite the earnings P’tit Louis still was still not pleased. Edith would later say that he was to her like another child and she always felt that something that should have been there just wasn’t. She longed for “the protective strength of a man, a real man.” By the winter of 1933 into 1934, she was performing with the acrobat Camille Ribon---Momone’s gymnastic instructor--- and his wife, as they toured the army basis and given Edith’s propensity for men in uniform, she found a handsome blonde soldier that projected the supportive masculine strength she craved. While she was set to perform at the Colonial Infantry barracks he asked if he could pay for his ticket with a kiss. She agreed to have him seated, but coyly added: “As for the kiss, we’ll see about that later, provided you behave yourself.” She was probably clueless that the remark hit home for he was a soldier that often landed in the brig. He apparently did behave himself at least while she sang, for that night she was swept off her feet and considered immediately leaving P’tit Louis for him. He went AWOL to be with her, they spent the night together, then when realizing how hopeless their situation to stay together was, they parted. Edith later said that she was shattered because having believed she had found happiness it just vanished. One thing though, now for certain, she realized that she no longer loved P’tit Louie. And despite his pleas for her to stay with him for Cecelle’s benefit and the advice of her father and Yeyette, she was determined to go. Denise, her half-sister would later write: “And when Edith decided on something, there was no point in trying to make her change her mind.” With Momone, who was eager to return, she went back to singing outdoors. Exploring Montmartre, where some her friends performed at nightclubs, she performed near the Place du Tertre and at Lapin Agile, near the cabarets where the chanson-realiste style originated. Other singers were impressed with her musical interpretation and the intensity of the music that listeners that heard her arrangements always felt. Since Edith still did not read music then, she relied on her skill in memorizing songs that she heard and ‘borrowed’. If accompanied by a piano, the player would improvise to complement her voice and strangely the arrangement usually worked out. She knew things instinctively especially how to vary the tempo to enhance the music’s emotional impact. She gave everything that she had and her’ intense, velvety vibrato’ highlighted her chosen repertoire of songs that expressed the pain of her childhood. When she sang it was said by those who knew her, ‘she was a great lady’; but afterwards not so much because she caroused having a good time with the men who surrounded her, all acting out while drinking and smoking. One day she and Momone met a woman who dressed like a man who owned a nightclub down the hill in neighboring Pigalle. Lulu auditioned them because her clientele liked girls who appeared as they were just off the cobble-stone pavement, and pleased, she booked them to play at her club. But P’tit Louis objected because he knew that Lulu’s establishment catered to lesbians, crooks and hookers. She must refuse he declared in an ultimatum or he threatened that despite their daughter their relationship would be done. Edith, already set on leaving, packed her things and took her toddler to join Momone in Pigalle. Pigalle already was known to represent almost mythically the lower depths of Parisian culture but unlike Belleville the community itself played an integral part of the nightlife setting. Its many small hotels and inns offered rooms to let by the hour as well as the night, week or month. Edith, moved from one small hotel to another—with or without Momone—but spent some time at the Hotel Eden because it had an adjacent cheap restaurant. Eventually, she took up residence at another hotel, the Regence, where she left Cecelle when she performed at Lulu’s club. It was a good place to learn the local mores for among other things it was the meeting headquarters for the local French mafia—le milieu. Newcomers saw that to survive, they needed to abide by their codes and expectations. Edith’s odd status, sharing a room with Momone and P’tit Louis showing up trying to lure her back with his daughter offered some protection, but their emancipation was an anomaly and drew unwanted notice. After all, most of the streetwalkers were controlled and provided cover by the pimps who were themselves drawn from the same poor districts as the working girls. Prostitution in Pigalle compared to Belleville offered a girl some cachet, it was a step-up. Edith’s life at the Regence blended imperceptibly with the darker human element of Pigalle and she at age 18 might not have been astute enough to understand that she was being drawn into a closed world of entanglements. Men and women cynically were made to be compromised so that they could not easily escape from the criminals’ clutches. But at Lulu’s the two young girls got along well with the hookers as they waited for their clientele and an empathetic garcon would save for them the best remains of his patron’s meals. The partygoers at the club appreciated the juvenile, nubile look of the two; they were petit, slim, underfed but rather sensual waifish looking girls and sometimes Lulu would dress them in eye-catching sailor suits. Despite admitting that she lacked a bosom and behind, Momone at times would strip and perform her gymnastic routine nude. But Lulu was a tough taskmaster, and she often cheated them of wages deducting 10 francs when they arrived even just 5 minutes late. One early morning at dawn when they returned after working the night at the club, the hotel-keeper told Edith that her ‘husband’ had come and taken Cecelle. P’tit Louis had left her a message, that if she wanted their child she would have to come back home. Edith refused to do so and never spoke to or of him again, although she would remit money to him for her daughter’s care. Momone later wrote, “We missed her at first. We didn’t say it to each other but there was an emptiness that would haunt [Edith] for the rest of her life.” The manager of a dance hall, the Petit Jardin, heard Edith singing street-side and booked her to perform and soon his patrons had a soft spot in their hearts for her because she sang songs that emulated the ‘smell’ of the streets---the poverty, neglect, hunger, violence and suicide. Hookers wept and quietly dried off their wet tears, and pimps enthusiastically greeted her as she finished on the stage. One evening, an 18-year-old, the writer Auguste le Breton, was watching Edith drinking wine with a local hoodlum who was amusing himself by getting her drunk at the Petit Jardin bar. “Her shoes were down at the heels, but her shapely legs were sheath in silk stockings, a jarring note given the rest of her.” He tried to intervene suggesting that she would be better served if she was bought a meal, and a quarrel broke out; the boy pulled out a knife and the gangster flashed his gun. A milieu boss stopped the fight, telling le Breton to take the drunken singer elsewhere. “I left with the woman who would become the great Piaf, who, like myself, didn’t even have decent shoes. We devoured ham sandwiches and beers at Place Clichy.” The emptiness that haunted Edith when Cecelle was taken was soon filled by a gang member who became her protector. He went by various names including his gang name, Ali-Baba, but she preferred to call him Albert. Momone identified him as Henri Valette, and his appearance may have predated her daughter’s departure and could be the reason she never went back to her and P’tit Louis. He and his cohort known as ‘Tarzan’ were men in the milieu, were regulars with the addicts and homosexuals who frequented the tavern next to the Regence called the Au Clair de la Lune. Edith spent her spare time listening to the orchestra which played on until 3 am while Valette and his cronies presided over deals and planning capers to obtain money by hook or by crook. Most of the money came from the earnings of their women. Edith, was dismissed as too scrawny to interest Valette but he reconsidered when he realized that she was becoming besotted by his cagey charm and dodgy, streetwise demeanor. Beguiled, when she was told she would have to earn money for him, she answered that she would get the money by working the streets in her own way. She became his accomplice in petty thievery. She frequented dance halls always on the search for an easy mark to victimize. “I had to look out for dance halls where there were well-dressed women wearing necklaces and rings.” Tipped off, the handsome Valette would come dressed up in his best suit exuding confidence. Usually, he and the lady would end up melded together in hot embraces in some alleyway where he would surreptitiously pilfer her valuables; Edith awaited him in some nearby night café. The staff at the Auclair de la Lune were mystified why Edith stooped so low in accepting the codes of Pigalle but perhaps they did not know that as a child traveling and scraping by with her father—their lifestyle—had set her up to have a man dictate her behavior and take a portion of her earnings. She soon was jolted by a tragedy that began when her friend Nadia came to her in tears because one of Valette’s henchmen who was providing protection for her threatened assaulting her if she did not work the streets. She had tried to comply but she did not entice any customers and now the pressure was on. Several days later, her body was fished out of the Seine River for she had drowned herself. “I realized just how low I had sunk,” Edith recalled. She now was determined to leave Valette and when he showed up at the Au Clair de la Lune she told him that he was to leave her alone. A few days later, his cronies forced her to his room. He could kill her, she told him, but she had made up her mind. To her disbelief, “the tough guy threw himself [facedown] on the bed and wept.” Then later, Edith was summoned to a café by Valette and she found some of his henchmen waiting who threatened to shoot her unless she obeyed. She defied them to go ahead and a shot went off but a bystander helped deflect the gunman’s aim so the bullet just grazed her neck. His pride satisfied he finally left her alone. Trying to prove to herself she was desirable she took up with three men simultaneously. She became adept at maintaining the illusion of doing what was expected while doing as she pleased. “I accomplished miracles to see all of them.” She felt “ugly, wretched and all but unlovable.” Toward the end of her life, she confessed insightfully, “I had a desperate, almost morbid, need to be loved.” One of the core reasons for her lowly feelings was her abandonment by her mother as an infant and painfully the scars were reopened by her destitute mother’s reappearance now that Edith was making a name for herself. “She took strength from her love of singing,” a friend later wrote. Between engagements she sang on the streets of Pigalle but her mother who sang for glasses of wine in low dives where most patrons ignored her also lived there. When not performing Annetta, who as you remember went by the stage-name Line Marsa. eked out a meagre living by selling fresh herbs at the market. Once she knew how to find her daughter, she would turn up at Edith’s hotel or where she performed to ask for money. Edith gave her what she could but at times her earnings were erratic and she had to help pay the caregiver for Cecelle while P’tit Louis worked. The bartender at the club once described how her mother manipulated the girl’s weaknesses. “When she tried to reason with her mother, they quarreled and her mother hurled curses...to calm her, her daughter would get her another glass of wine, which never helped. Then the mother would start crying and complaining. Matters would only get worse.” Eventually, as she became the great Piaf, she would send her mother a stipend every month until in February, 1945 when she learned that Line had died of an overdose and her corpse was left on the sidewalk by the man who she was living with; arrangements were hastily made and she was buried at the Thiais Cemetery but Edith did not attend the funeral. She felt little for the woman who left her as a baby only to repeatedly reappear destitute to exploit her. Leaving Belleville, she was able to live better working in Pigalle, although she like most others was just getting by; she was mostly penniless in savings like many others she knew because she spent money as fast as she earned it. Yet she was confident her luck would change. Momone wrote of the time in 1935 about Edith, “People have the wrong idea about Edith. She wasn’t sad. She loved to laugh. She used to split her sides all the time, she was sure she’d make it.” In October 1935 she was singing with Momone in the rue Troyon, close to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a grey overcast day and she stood there performing. A well-groomed man with silvery hair listened to her as she sang among the lyrics of many other songs, the foretelling verses:Comme un moineau!Elle est nee comme un moineauElle a vecu comme un moineauElle mourra comme un moineau[Like A Sparrow!She was born like a sparrowShe’s lived like a sparrowShe’ll die like a sparrow]The bystander remarked that she would ruin her voice if she kept strenuously vocalizing songs that way, and she replied she sung to be heard because she had to eat. He introduced himself as Monsieur Louis Leplee, gave her five francs and asked her to audition at his cabaret, Le Gerny’s—an elegant nightclub close to the Champs-Elysees. Momone said of the tryout, “We were so petrified we couldn’t talk.” Leplee after hearing Edith, said he had two requirements, she had to wear clothing more presentable, and she promised to finish the sweater she was knitting. And, she had to learn a repertoire of new songs. He offered her 40 francs a night and she accepted on the spot. Another thing had to change, he emphasized almost as an afterthought, she must have a stage name because Edith Giovanna Gassions wouldn’t do, her name had to mesh with his feelings as he watched her performing. She wasn’t a foreigner, Russian or Slavic so Tania wouldn’t work—he tried various female French names but no he found each choice lacking. He liked La Mome Moineau, but that stage name was already taken, but it fit her well—a true Parisian sparrow. How about the Parisian slang for sparrow-piaf? The singer years after said, “I was baptized for life.”Her little girl, Cecelle, had never been baptized, and a few months earlier during the early summer of 1935 she had fallen ill. P’tit Louis had come to her at a cabaret and frantically told Edith that their two-year old girl had meningitis, then considered incurable. She was rushed to children’s hospital on the Left Bank for a lumbar puncture but it would be days before the physicians would know if Cecelle would survive. For eight days Edith prayed to Saint Therese hoping for a miraculous recovery and on July 6th she walked from Pigalle to see her daughter open her eyes for the last time. She was told the next morning that Cecelle was dead. Momone, who had come back in Edith’s life when Valette was banished, helped her raise cash for the burial. Edith’s friends took up a collection but they were ten francs short. That night Edith claimed that she was accosted by a man who propositioned her wanting to know what it would cost to be with her. Hastily, she answered ten francs, which was a piddling amount for sex with a stranger. They went to a hotel room, and she told him why she was there and burst into tears. Accounts vary, but Momone tells that the man got what he paid for but feeling sorry for her he gave her more than they had negotiated. Edith had the downsized coffin blessed at Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, the small church near Sacre-Coeur cathedral and she and P’tit Louis buried their daughter at Thiais Cemetery in a pauper’s grave. They were certain she would ascend to heaven despite never being christened in the Church. “It was a very dark moment in our lives, one of the rottenest times we ever went through…but to tell the truth it didn’t last long, Momone later wrote. Adding, “We were only kids, and we didn’t give it another thought.” Momone was wrong for she may have forgotten the little child but Edith Piaf never did, she never stopped thinking of her although later in life she rarely mentioned her name.Years later after barely recovering from a coma caused by liver damage, having struggled to regain her voice, the housekeeper heard a knock on the door of Piaf’s Parisian home on Boulevard Lannes. It was October 24, 1960 and, earlier in the day after a session with her physician, Piaf had cancelled all her appointments and taken to her bed. On the doorstep were lyricist Michael Vaucaire and the young composer Charles Dumont, who were unaware of the postponement, and due to the awkwardness, they were let in the house by the unsure housekeeper. Piaf, was dismayed by their appearance, but having rested and unexpectedly having been told the composers were downstairs she irritatingly agreed to meet with them. She demanded that she would only listen to one of their compositions. No more! In the past she had rejected material submitted to her by Dumont who had written for Juliette Greco but Piaf felt he wrote just standard fare. She did not hide her impatience but gestured to Dumont to set himself on the piano bench. Nervously, in quiet voice, he set himself down and he spoke the words, no, nothing of nothing.: “Non, rien de rien.” He hesitantly began singing, at first softly, “Non, je ne regrette rien,” emphasizing the accent on the long repeated negative, non. Piaf listened to his rendition attentively and when he finished the penultimate line, “Je repars a zero” [I start again at zero] she interrupted him asking him to please repeat the song. Halfway through, she showed her jubilation. The song’s defiant opening which echoed her sentiment about having no regrets despite the torrent of hardships that she had endured since her birth that still gnawed within her despite her worldwide success. Despite her suffering, she swore: “If I had to live my life over again, I’d do it just the same.” Dumont played the song some twenty times as Piaf summoned her professional intimates to hear it. They stayed up talking until dawn, and Piaf’s friends realized that it could be the springboard for her recuperation through music. Dumont was incredulous. “My life changed overnight for it was just as Edith said: my song conquered the world.”Non! Je Ne Regrette RienNo, nothing of nothingNo! I don’t feel sorry about anythingNot the good things people have done to meNot the bad things, it’s all the same to me.No, nothing of nothingNo! I don’t feel sorry about anythingIt’s paid for, removed, forgotten,I’m happy of the pastWith my memoriesI lit up the fireMy troubles, my pleasuresI don’t need them anymoreBroomed away my love storiesAnd all their trembleBroomed away for alwaysI start again from zeroNon! Je ne regrette rienNi le mal, tout ?a m’est bien égal!Non! Je ne regrette rienBecause my life, my joysToday, they begin with you.--------------Dumont & Vaucaire--LyricFindBy R. Anthony Saritelli 10/31/2020Dedicated to my Aunt, who too loved to sing and perform: Mrs. Anna Maria Saritelli-DiPanni.References: Burke, C. No Regrets: The Life of Edith Pilaf. Alfred A. Knopf Publisher. New York. 2011. *Edith Piaf-WikipediaNon! Je Ne Regrette Rien: Charles Dumont & Michael Vaucaire; LyricFind* Main source, heavily indebted to this excellent source. ................
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