Lucie Dumas
by Katherine Mezzacappa
London, 1871: Lucie Dumas of Lyon has accepted a stipend from her former lover and his wife, on condition that she never returns to France; she will never see her young son again. As the money proves inadequate, Lucie turns to prostitution to live, joining the ranks of countless girls from continental Europe who'd come to London in the hope of work in domestic service.
Escaping a Covent Garden brothel for a Magdalen penitentiary, Lucie finds only another form of incarceration and thus descends to the streets, where she is picked up by the author Samuel Butler, who sets her up in her own establishment and visits her once a week for the next two decades. But for many years she does not even know his name.
Based on true events.
Thank you for featuring my book Lucie Dumas on your blog today.
Characters are what makes a story. The writer, in my opinion, has to know who they are before a plot can advance very far. In writing this book, I had one character pretty much fully-formed, because Samuel Butler existed and was such a prolific, if sometimes eccentric, author. By contrast, his mistress Lucie Dumas, we know not that much about. She is mentioned by Henry Festing Jones in his biography of Butler, describing her role in Butler’s life, but Jones is completely silent about also having been one of her gentleman callers, in an arrangement brokered by his friend.
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| Alfred Cathie in 1898, painted by Samuel Butler Wikimedia Commons: St John’s College, Cambridge – Art UK |
Interviewed many years later, Butler’s manservant, Alfred Cathie, adds to the picture of a woman he, Alfred, clearly liked and respected (he did not care much for Mr Jones).
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| Samuel Butler Wikimedia Commons: photographer J Russell & Sons |
But to a significant degree, Lucie exists in the shadows. There is no known image of her, although Butler was also a photographer and artist. When I started writing her story, I thought Samuel Butler would occupy much more space in it than he in fact does. Her character takes over, which is as it should be, though their lives are entwined. Much of her life was about survival, physically and emotionally; she was a mother compelled to leave her little son behind in France. Yet, with Butler’s help, she was able to make the step up from the street to discreetly receiving gentleman callers in her own lodgings. I wrote the novel not only in homage to her but in remembrance of the hundreds of women in Victorian London who were both shunned by the respectable – and sought out by them when it suited them.
It is also in part the story of a doctor, Louis Vintras. He too existed. There is no evidence that he knew Lucie (and he doesn’t in the novel), but his father was director of the French Hospital near Leicester Square, where Lucie died of tuberculosis. I used Louis initially as the conduit for Lucie’s story being told, as in the novel Louis inherits her manuscript when his father Achille dies, and sets about translating it. But as I delved into the story of the real Louis, it was apparent that Louis himself had an interior life that was worthy of exploration. His parents were not married at the time of his birth, which in English law of the time made him illegitimate (a stigma that could not be cancelled out by marriage until much later). He was also the author of three novels and some poetry, but abruptly stopped publishing (I read his reviews; he could not have been other than deeply hurt by them). He did not marry until his father was dead. There was a whole backstory and dynamic to explore there, then, and I have intertwined it with Lucie’s story. Louis comes to admire her and to recognise a talent for words greater than his own.
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| Louis Vintras, 1904, by Alphonse Legros Wikimedia Commons: Boston Public Library |
The character of the brothel Madam is an invention, but in a way she is representative of a ruthless, exploitative class in which female solidarity is hard to find. Her counterpoint is Mother Magdalen Taylor, foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, who established a Magdalen refuge (to which I send Lucie), also the head of a community of women, but with a very different aim in mind. Mother Magdalen existed, and was a nurse in the Crimean War. I read biographies of her; as she appears in my novel, she is principled and astute, but perhaps doesn’t quite grasp the nature of the challenges facing the women she rescued.
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| Frances Taylor, afterwards Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, nurse and foundress. Wikimedia Commons: Poor Servants of the Mother of God |
All of the characters have different motivations that entwine: Lucie, to find a life of some dignity, Butler to his physical needs met in a predictable and habitual way, Mother Magdalen to rescue. For her, a woman who was a mistress of one man was as fallen as one who walked the streets, but one who was probably easier to save. At the end of the book, Louis Vintras is helped by the dead Lucie’s story to make a decision in his own life.
Katherine Mezzacappa
Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’Association Gold Crown award in 2025 and has also been published in Italian.
Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.
Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story and novel competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.
She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She is lead organiser for the Historical Novel Society 2026 Conference in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.
Katherine has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church.
