The Irish actress Harriet Smithson is remembered as an extraordinary episode in the life of Hector Berlioz. Appearing in the 1827 English theatre season in Paris, she took the city by storm - lithographs of her as the mad Ophelia were in every prinitshop window. Ladies of fashion demanded coiffure 'à la Miss Smithson' - a black veil with wisps of straw tastefully interwoven amongst the hair. As Peter Raby puts it, in a biography which for the first time gives her side of the story, 'the conjunction of beauty, forlorn love, madness and premature death' was irresistible to the French. Through her, Shakespeare suddenly became a central part of French consciousness and the preoccupation of writers such as Hugo and Dumas. The young Berlioz worshipped her from afar, but so intensely that he nearly had a mental breakdown. She became the inspiration and programme of the Symphonie Fantastique. Eventually he married her. But by the time he was introduced to his idée fixe it was too late. Better that the idée had never materialised. Better still that it had never been matrimonialised.

LRB 30 December 1982 | PDF Download