Discovered five years ago in the cellar of a lunatic asylum, the psychiatric files concerning Camille Claudel, mistress and aide of Auguste Rodin, have finally been released on September 15th 2000. After separating from Rodin in 1898, Camille Claudel progressively became paranoid and was confined in the lunatic asylum of Ville-Evrard, near Paris, on March 10th 1913.
Camille, who was somewhat protected by her father was the victim of a plot engineered by her mother after the latter died on March 2nd 1913. She had been mentally ill for several years, notably feeling persecuted by what she called «Rodin's gang».
After Rodin left her, she only created one single sculpture, «Niohide wounded», which she only completed in 1906. She was already living as a recluse in her flat of the quai Bourbon in Paris but as long as her father lived she had managed to eschew her mother's attempts to have her sent to a lunatic asylum.
Her mother considered Camille as a disgrace for her family while her brother Paul, a diplomat and also a famous writer, did not try to come to her defence.
As soon as her father died, her mother got in touch with a doctor to order a confinement in an asylum.
According to French law, the signatures of a doctor and a relative on a document was enough to have Camille placed at Ville-Evrard provided the renewal of such order every month.
Camille's mother was aged 73 when she decided to confine her in that lunatic asylum from which she was sent in 1915 to another institution, in Montdevergues, near Avignon, southern France, where she died in 1943.
There were some 2000 patients in the asylum of Ville-Evrard and the doctor in charge of Camille's dossier, noted on her arrival that she was paranoid, notably feeling persecuted and victim of «criminal attacks from a famous sculptor» (Rodin).
Camille was 48-year-old when she was sent to Ville-Evrard where she was described as suffering from paranoid madness. She was then weighing 73 kilos, a fact suggesting that she might have been a heavy drinker.
Camille first managed to send letters to her mother and some relatives and expressed surprise on learning her father's death. She asked her if such «silly joke» (her internment) would last long and during the months that followed her arrival at Ville-Evrard the staff of that asylum noted that she was quiet though she often used to wake up in the middle of the night. Camille's mother then gave strict orders to see that no one could visit her and stated that she should be prevented from sending letters because she was capable of writing stupidities. Mme Claudel notably wrote to the ward-sister stressing that she could not do otherwise than to order Camille's confinement.
«She was in the muck up to her neck. All the more she was sending ignoble letters denouncing people she did not even know, seeing enemies everywhere and making threats at random,» Mme Claudel pinpointed in a black bordered letter as if she was symbolically mourning the death of her daughter. Attendants at Ville-Evrard noted that Camille had a bizarre way of combing her hair in which she placed leaves and flowers and that she did not care to make her toilet. Camille's mental condition did not improve and always felt persecuted moaning about Rodin's theft. Still, Rodin used to send her gifts without her knowledge. She never touched a pencil spending days doing nothing but asking to leave.
Camille's mother never visited her while Paul only came once to Ville-Evrard. After the outbreak of the First World War, the lunatic asylum was evacuated and Camille transferred temporarily in a hospital in Enghien before she was placed in Montdevergues. She died on October 19th 1943 and was buried in a mass grave.
The files were discovered in a cellar of the asylum of Ville-Evrard among thousands of forsaken dossiers in March 1995. The Claudel family asked for their return but the discoverer working for the SERHEP, a historical research association, refused to yield to such demand.
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