Fedora

Summary

Gaslight waltzes and guttering candles illuminate the Café Chantant where Lord Herstell, velvet cloak slung like a noose of privilege, learns through a scrap of paper that the mill-girl Nellie—his discarded paramour—has perished in childbirth, bequeathing a daughter christened Fedora. The note, arriving amid champagne fumes and can-can kicks, detonates a chain-reaction of guilt that ricochets across three decades: Herstell’s frantic dash through fog-choked alleys arrives too late; Channing’s lodgings are boarded, the cradle empty, the scent of sour milk still clinging to bare floorboards. Half a year later, a foundling’s wail on a rain-lubricated quay offers the peer a macabre bargain: he will raise this anonymous orphan—Robert—as penance-shadowed proxy for the vanished Fedora, stitching a false lineage while the real heiress grows up in provincial obscurity, her birthright buried like a cracked locket. Twenty-five winters fray the Herstell coffers; the once-dashing lord, now a haggard gambler, plunges his last banknotes on a spavined colt and loses. Creditors, talons sharpened, reveal themselves as anarchist provocateurs who demand his aristocratic seal as entrée to their bomb-plotting cell. One ink-smeared signature, a police raid, a rooftop scramble, and a seal left glinting in the gutter—this trifecta of mischance hurls Herstell into the Thames, then into self-slaughter, his confession letter the flimsy raft on which Robert drifts toward the truth. Meanwhile Fedora—stage-name Carlotta, flame of Europe’s footlights—commands bouquets and diamond-bright spotlights, her past a costume she has never worn. Robert, cub reporter with ink under fingernails and Herstell’s falsified nobility in his pocket, interviews the star, igniting a love that feels ancestral yet electric. John Dormer, platinum-plated magnate spurned by Fedora, unmasks Robert’s paternity at the Rivoli Club; steel flashes, honor stains crimson, and a duel leaves Robert bleeding but alive. Fedora, believing their passion incestuous, resolves to transmute melodrama into tragedy: during the third-act poisoning scene she will swap prop phial for genuine toxin, her final curtain call a suicide both public and poetic. A servant’s blotted memorandum, a mis-mailed letter, a theater awash in gasps—Robert bursts onstage, severs the fatal gesture, and utters the liberating clause: “I am no blood of Herstell’s.” The lovers flee to a sun-drunk Neapolitan villa where oleanders nod above their honeymoon, the Mediterranean itself washing the last ink-stains of ancestral sin from their skins.

Synopsis

Lord Herstell is seated in the Café Chantant with his friends watching the famous dancers, when a note is brought to him, saying that Nellie, the daughter of John Channing, a commoner, whom he has abandoned, is dead, and that she had left a child named Fedora. John Channing writes to Lord Herstell that he does not want aid from him, and that he is leaving the city at once, taking little Fedora with him. Lord Herstell overcome with remorse, bids his friends good night, and starts for the house of John Channing, which he finds deserted. Six months later, while coming home from the club, Lord Herstell hears a cry of a child. A baby is discovered with a note pinned to its dress asking whoever finds the child should take care of him, for the sake of his unfortunate mother. Lord Herstell decides to adopt this baby in the place of Fedora. Twenty-five years later, Robert Herstell, grown to manhood, is ignorant of the fact that he is not Lord Herstell's son. Lord Herstell, in financial difficulties, risks the remainder of his banknotes on a horse race, and loses all. He is threatened that unless he agrees to join a band of anarchists, he will be ruined by parties holding his notes for a large sum of money. Lord Herstell consents to join the band. He is taken to the meeting-place of the anarchists. After Lord Herstell has signed and taken the vow of allegiance, the place is attacked by the police, and a terrific battle takes place. A number of anarchists escape, Lord Herstell among them, but as he is running away, he loses his seal. He climbs over a roof and jumps down into a boat in the river, and finally arrives home. The police, in the meantime, have found the seal. Lord Herstell discovering the loss of his seal, writes a note to his adopted eon, telling him of the circumstances, of his adoption, also enclosing the note which was pinned to Robert's dress when he was found. As the detectives arrive to arrest Lord Herstell, he ends his life. Robert changes his name, and becomes a reporter. In the meantime, Fedora, grown up, becomes a famous actress. Robert goes to interview her in the capacity of a reporter, and falls in love with her. He becomes a frequent visitor at her house and theater. A very wealthy man, John Dormer, is also in love with Fedora, and one night John Dormer is refused admission into Fedora's dressing-room, while Robert is admitted. At a meeting of the Rivoli Club. John Dormer denounces Robert and tells the guests that Robert is the son of lord Herstell, who was mixed up in the anarchists' plot, and committed suicide. There is a bitter quarrel between the two rivals, and Robert slaps Dormer. A duel is fought, and Robert is wounded. In the meantime, Fedora, knowing that she is the daughter of Lord Herstell, believes that Robert, the man she loves, is her brother. She hears that he has been wounded, goes to him and tells the doctors that she will nurse him. In his room she finds some papers, and is convinced that Robert is Lord Herstell's son. When Robert is nearly well, she is so much in love with him that she decides to take real poison in the act where she is supposed to take poison, to end her unhappiness. She writes a note before the show starts, telling Robert that she is the daughter of Lord Herstell, and being that a brother and sister cannot marry. She is going to end her life at the show in which she is playing tonight. On the envelope of the letter she puts a memorandum for her servant, telling him not to mail this letter until the next morning. As the servant enters and arranges his desk, he spills ink on the desk, and over the letter, blurring the memorandum and leaving the name and address only. The servant, thinking that the letter has been forgotten, mails it. When Robert receives it and reads its contents, he immediately goes to the theater where Fedora is playing. As she is about to take poison, Robert staggers to the stage and is in the nick of time to prevent her from swallowing the drug. When the excitement is over, Robert tells Fedora that he is only an adopted son of Lord Herstell's. The production closes with Robert and Fedora enjoying their honeymoon in a villa in southern Italy.