Clara Bloodgood

Clara Bloodgood (August 23, 1870 - December 5, 1907) was an American socialite who became a successful Broadway stage actress.

Early Life

Clara Stephens was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the daughter of Edward and Annie (née Sutton) Stephens. Her father, a prominent New York attorney, was the son of author Ann S. Stephens. Her mother was one of three sisters once called “the beautiful Sutton girls” by New York’s high society. As a young girl Clara attended St. Johns School in Brighton, England.

At around the age of seventeen Clara attracted the attention of two suitors, William Moller Havemeyer, the son of a wealthy sugar manufacturer and John “Jack” Bloodgood, Jr., whose father made millions in banking over the years following the American Civil War. She married Havemeyer in 1887 and divorced him within a year or so. She went on to marry Bloodgood in 1890, only to see him lose his inheritance and health within a very short period. His death in 1897, that left her in a dire financial situation, led Clara to attempt a career in theater. In 1902 she married William Laimbeer, a New York stock broker.

Clara

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Clara (Mirbeau)

Clara is the main character in the French Novel The Torture Garden ((French) Le Jardin des supplices, 1899), by Octave Mirbeau.

A free woman

Clara, who has no last name or civil status, is an English woman with red hair and green eyes--“a greyish green of the young fruits of the almond tree.” Single, rich and bisexual, Clara lives in near Canton, and leads an idle existence, entirely devoted to finding perverse pleasures. She is fully emancipated, financially and sexually, and freed from oppressive laws and taboos prevailing in the West and which, according to her critique of anarchist inspiration, prohibit the development of the individual. Clara thus claims to enjoy complete freedom. She particularly enjoys visiting the city prison every week, which is open to tourists on Wednesday. Clara delights in watching the death row inmates, many of whom are innocent or guilty of minor offenses, being brutally tortured and put to death.

This protagonist meets the anonymous narrator, a petty political crook, aboard the Saghalien, where the pseudo-embryologist was sailing to Ceylon, as part of an official mission. In reality, his primary goal is just to distance himself from France. She seduces him, awakening his sexual desire along with the need to unburden himself, and becomes his mistress. She takes him with her to China, where both the narrator and Clara share a lover, Annie.

Clara (TV series)

Clara is a German television series.

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