Demimonde whom Captain Rawdon Crawley lusts after in his younger days. Becky Sharp is perceived as a demimondaine before she is presented at court, and then becomes one when she travels through Europe after her husband abandons her. Possibly the most famous portrayal of the demimonde, albeit from before the word was coined, is in Verdi's opera "La traviata" (1853). The opera, in turn, was inspired by Alexandre Dumas the younger's "La Dame aux Camélias;" Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of the book and subsequent play, was based on Marie Duplessis, 1840s Paris courtesan and mistress to a number of prominent men,
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas his use of the name "Alexandre Dumas" is his entry in the registry book of the Queen's Dragoons, which he joined on June 2, 1786. (It was known in his platoon that this was "not his real name.") He used the simple form "Alex Dumas" starting in 1794. General Dumas used the full name "Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie" on his son's birth certificate. The enlistment roll-book for the 6th Regiment of the Queen's Dragoons, which Dumas joined in 1786, described him as "6 feet tall, with frizzy black hair and eyebrows... oval face, and brown skinned, small mouth, thick