Today July 10

Today we could celebrate various saints, but we really must not neglect Eve Lavalliere, (1866 - 1929). This famous light-comedic actress who had it all -- money, fame, lovers -- retired from life in the midst of World War I, after performing many shows for the Allied troops. While she was summering in the countryside in Chanceaux sur Choiselle, she had a profound conversion.

Poor Eve (born Eugenie Fenoglio) was the adult child of an alcoholic, an unfavored child, daughter of a poor stone cutter and a seamstress. She was baptized Catholic, but fell away from her faith after her father killed her mother and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide (he was the alcoholic). She went to live with relatives, but in their insensitivity, which I would term "evil," they constantly reminded her she was the daughter of a murderer. At 18, she ran away and as she was walking aimlessly along the streets of Toulon, she was plagued with thoughts of suicide. Coming upon the scene at that moment was a man who took her in and introduced her to a traveling theatrical group. She had a natural ability for the stage, and so she joined the group. She traveled with them to Paris, became the mistress of the Marquis de Valette (did I mention she was devastatingly attractive?), then the mistress of the promoter Fernand Samuel, who made her famous. They really loved each other but never married and were never faithful to each other. You could say she had "multiple partners," though she would probably prefer to say, "I date"! Her many male admirers gave her money, jewels, clothes and furs. She had a daughter with Samuel, a girl named Jeanne, who later broke her mother's heart.

Though a comedienne, poor Eve was subject to depression and suicidal thoughts still followed her. She came very close to killing herself at least three times that we know of. On the surface she was happy; she was at the height of her fame, fashion, beauty and wealth. She had it all, or so it seemed. All of which makes her conversion -- or reversion, as it were -- the more unexpected and more deep. A priest noticed her in town and realized she never came to Mass. He approached her and remarked that he hadn't seen her in church, at which she brightly retorted, "You haven't invited me!" He did, of course, and thus began a deep and lasting friendship. She took lessons from him, and finally went to confession and promised to turn from sin and believe everything the Catholic Church teaches . . . . and she was admitted to Communion. She renounced her former glory, her wealth, even her cosmetics and hair dye (that was the last and hardest to go, I can tell you!).

She desired to be a Carmelite nun, but each Carmel refused her, both because of her poor health and her daughter. She settled in to become a holy laywoman. Her original plans of being a (lay) missionary in Tunisia (she even went there as a nurse) were ruined because her health was so bad and compounded by her contraction of a fever. She had to return home with the archbishop's kind words: "Mademoiselle, you are going to help this mission, not by your deeds, but by your sufferings."

And suffer she did! She was always ill in her later years, and it just got worse. Her teeth fell out and her face swelled up until her eyes were about to pop out of her head; the doctors had to sew her eyelids shut to prevent that from happening. She suffered peritonitis, fever and pain. Plus she was addicted to cocaine! The biographers go to great trouble explaining that her addiction was not due to concupiscence but to the actions of her daughter who either genuinely wanted to ease her pain or to get her hooked so she'd be more tractable. In addition to all these physical sufferings (which she accepted and offered back to God in expiation of her past sins), she had to endure the pain of a daughter who not only didn't go to church -- any church! -- but broke her mother's heart by coming out as a (sexually active) lesbian!

Eve's lifelong protegee, a war orphan named Leona (who later married, after Eve's death), and Eve's physician had to cast Jeanne out of the house for Eve's own sake. The doctor had to keep her on a maintenance dose (of cocaine) all the rest of her life, which wasn't long. She passed away quietly in 1929, not long after reiterating her constant motto: "Abandonment, love, [and] trust" -- which she exemplified in her own life to a great degree.