Life in 19th Century Paris

by Iva Polansky

  In our day, such enablement of sex commerce in a prestigious cultural institution would be unthinkable. Welcome to the 19th century for a taste of life without women’s rights and women’s education, where a career choice outside marriage was limited mainly to servitude or prostitution. In a world made by men for the men, the Opera direction facilitated the meetings between wealthy men and the ballerinas by providing the former with access to the backstage and, above all, to the dance foyer, where they could observe the dancers at a close range and, eventually, make a choice. The access was available for a substantial subscription fee.

  In the 19th century, the ballet was more than the high-brow entertainment that makes today’s real men yawn. It was the height of erotic experience. In an age, when an accidental glimpse of a female ankle could send a man’s heart into overdrive, the spectacle of exposed legs and nude arms in a variety of alluring positions would beat the Stanley Cup in attendance. (Also, and this may be somewhat important, there were no sports matches to watch.) A man’s prestige mattered as well. To maintain a Paris Opera ballerina, or at least to be seen dining with one, meant that you have arrived socially and economically.

  Now back to Edgar Degas and his suffering little dancers. Since the profession was morally disreputable, the recruits came from a disadvantaged socio-economic background. A pretty daughter with a dancing talent was a God-sent gift to a struggling family. It was on the frail shoulders of this 12- to 13-year-old that the future of the family rested – it was her duty to provide them with a better life. Dancing alone would not bring the riches, the riches would come from the admirers; the girls knew that from the very beginning.

  For the dancer, the road to success inevitably comes through men. First, there is the ballet master with his close touch while straightening a waist, repositioning a leg, or stretching an arm. The girl surrenders to the inescapable in order not to compromise her professional ascent. Then come other men, who all, one way or another, hold her career in their hands: the librettist, who gives her a role – or not – in the next ballet and the director who renews – or not – her contract. If she really wants to break out of the anonymity of the dance corps, she must quickly seduce a wealthy protector, who would pay for advanced dance classes.

  To maintain a pretense of respectability, the direction allowed chaperones to be present at all times. These women, whether they were a mother, an aunt, or an older cousin, were the driving force behind each dancer and the unavoidable intermediaries between the girl and men. Other lessons were needed and provided: how to be desirable was taught with the same importance as the pas de danse. Théophile Gautier notes the results of this licentious education: “The young ballerina is at once corrupt as an old diplomat and as naïve as a good savage. At the age of thirteen, she could teach a courtesan.”

  The “mothers” then negotiate the charms of their daughters and they can be quite tyrannical. Is the interested party old and ugly? Too bad, he’s got money so the daughter better be nice to him. Prices are agreed upon and, if a long-term liaison is in the making, a contract is signed at the notary’s office. A skillful mother can make herself included in the monthly allowance.

  Those, who are not urged by their mothers to give themselves to a man do so on their own will. Without the protection of a wealthy man and, if possible, a titled one, they have no access to professional recognition. It’s a man’s world and, in this profession, the masculine element holds the power. The only weapons in the arsenal of the ballerina are cunning and seduction.

  The Fortifications Whore

  The following text by Octave Uzanne comes from the book The Modern Parisienne, published in 1910. Although Edwardian instead of Victorian, Uzanne’s book describes Paris that had hardly changed since Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. The writing is superb:

  Our next subject is the sinister and somber queen of Paris by night—the prostitute. She is a wandering creature who appears in many forms: she murmurs her solicitations at the street corners; she brushes by you on the boulevards, you meet her at cafés and hotels; she signs to you from her window; she awaits your arrival at the railway stations; she watches you from behind the curtain of a shop where the goods displayed are not those which she means to sell. Or, again, she lies immured in some dark house, where she offers to all comers her passive lips.

  At the very bottom of the prostitution ladder is the woman who haunts the fortifications. She is an aged, battered, exhausted being, who hides herself by day and comes out only when it is dark. She is to be seen wandering along the ramparts, her eyes alert with fear of the police. She is usually of enormous size, clad in a patched black jersey which ill contains her flabby bust. No one could define the precise shade of her skirt, which an impressionist painter of our acquaintance justly described as “the colour of a very dusty spider’s web in a corner of a yellow wall”. She wears an apron, stops her wrinkles with brick-dust, “does her eyes” with the burnt end of a match, and flattens out her grizzling hair with rose or jasmine pomade at two sous a pot. Such jasmine and such roses! She dawdles about, waiting for customers, hardly daring to solicit, for she is afraid of being too closely inspected, knowing full well, poor thing, that if a man looked twice at her he would at once take a flight. Some of her customers are navvies, who are themselves very poor; but she caters chiefly for soldiers in barracks on the bastions or in the outskirts of the city.

  The soldiers do not even know her name: they call her “la paillasse” (mattress) , “Marie-mange-mon-prết” or “the ammunition loaf”. The last name arises from the fact that in order to pay for her favours, they sell the ration of bread that is served out to them and give her the five or six sous they get for it. She asks no more. She cannot afford the rent of a room in a disreputable hotel, so she takes for boudoir the embankment of the fortifications.

  She leads a melancholy life, the prostitute of the fortifications: she neither laughs nor sings. She is too repulsive and earns too little to attract a souteneur; but for all that she is often beaten, and sometimes thrown into the ditches by the marauders who hover about the barriers, and who rob her of the few sous she has earned by the sweat of her old body.

  When she has done very well and made as much as two or three francs, she gets drunk on cheap brandy or absinthe, and staggers to her lair in some wooden shed open to all the winds, where she sleeps off her potations on a heap of noisome rags. If business is brisk, she subsists on scraps bought from low-class eating houses. If not, she rakes the rubbish heaps. She is humble and uncomplainingly resigned to her fate. So long as she can walk she gives herself to whomsoever will have her, or cannot find better. At sixty or seventy she is found one morning lying dead, or half dead, on the slope of some earthwork. If she has the good fortune to be picked up by a night patrol of the police, she does not die in the open; she ends her days in the hospital or in some local police infirmary.

  La Gigolette

  A much more formidable species is the gigolette, who is also to be found on the outskirts of Paris. She is the mistress of the garroters of La Vilette or the stabbers of Grenelle. She it is who beguiles the passer-by, decoys him into an ambush, and she whistles for her souteneur, who rushes up with his companions “ to do for the cove”. She frequents the evil places known as bals musettes, a sort of dancing halls, where the habitués empty salad bowls of mulled vine à la française and where every dance costs a penny. The dancers are workmen who have fallen into evil courses, souteneurs, garotters, and thieves of all kinds, servant girls and work girls on the spree, the vilest prostitutes, and “police narks”.

  The gigolette is almost always young, and often pretty or else she has the fascinating ugliness which in many Parisiennes is a more deadly bait than beauty. She evades the vigilance of the police as much as possible and tries as long as she can to avoid being “put on the list”. If she is arrested as a result of some robbery with violence: or taken up in the course of a police raid, she regards her term at St. Lazare as a disagreeable experience: but she i
s not in the least reformed when she is discharged, and the very severe regimen of this prison has no effect on her except to breed ideas of vengeance, in which she is sedulously encouraged by her amiable friend and bully.

  So long as she is not registered she wanders hither and tither, following her “p’tit homme” from lodging to lodging: for owing to the attentions of the police, with whom he has often a crow to pick, he is frequently obliged to change his address. As soon as she gets on the list, a definite space on the side of such and such street or a certain beat on a boulevard is assigned to her. There she “does her turn” and walks backwards and forwards hooking her arm into those of passers-by. If she transgresses the limits set by the police, she is liable to a fine: but when their backs are turned she does so all the same, and this leads to terrible quarrels with her colleagues who are in possession of another part of the street—quarrels which end in blows and are conducted after the fashion of the dog-fights of Constantinople. When she secures a customer she takes him to a room at some low hotel.

  Meantime, her souteneur sits at a table at a neighbouring wine-shop or hides in the recess of a door, keeping a close watch on her movements. If she lets slip an opportunity he abuses and beats her; he insists that she shall “give her mind to her work”. When he thinks she has made enough he fetches her back to their headquarters at Belleville or La Vilette, or in one of the streets in the Clignantcourt Quarter which are affected by this class. She surrenders all her money to the souteneur, and if she attempts to divert any and is awkward about concealing it he gives her a sound trashing. When times are good and she has got hold of some “oofy Johnny” or cleaned out a drunken man, her lover allows her a night off, and then they go together to the dancing-hall. As a rule she spends most of the night drinking, so she sleeps late, rises about eleven, has her absinthe, and she spends the day in taverns with her bully and his friends, who for their part are accompanied by their women. She is usually faithful to her man. If he goes to prison for a short term she is not unfaithful to him and does not join forces with another “type” unless her original master is sent to penal servitude. In such a case it is not unusual for the bully to choose one of his boon companions whom he indicates his successor.

  However constantly she may be beaten and maltreated by her petit joyeux , she continues to adore him, and even if he ends by stabbing her she dies heroically without peaching. If by exception she does denounce him she very rarely escapes the vengeance of other souteneurs. She may change her quarter as much as she likes, she always ends by being knocked on the head. With the women of her own class she has frequent disputes , especially if they try to take her man away from her. Then follow battles in which the knife plays its part. The happy man who is the subject of the quarrel watches the fray as a gratified spectator, and awards himself to the conqueror as the prize of victory. The fortune of these women are so closely linked to those of their souteneurs that if by any chance, such as the passing caprice of some rich protector who sets up house for her, one of them rises a step in the ranks of prostitution, she does not leave her bully, but installs him in some corner of the flat. From which he emerges if the miché is not generous enough.

  Prostitutes of this type pursue their occupation so long as they are not too old or too much exhausted by debauchery, drunkenness, or disease. The older they grow the younger are their souteneurs. I heard of prostitutes of forty or fifty whose souteneurs were only from sixteen to eighteen years of age. Of course, as they age and become faded their takings diminish, and instead of walking up and down the pavement, they hire a room at a franc a night in some house of ill-fame, where, half-invisible in the shadow, they call for custom.

  The Impostor

  Many prostitutes of the lower orders, in order to protect themselves from the activities of the police, pretend to have a trade. This is particularly the case with girls under age. Some of them are as young as fifteen, some even younger. The disgraceful evil of the small flower-girl is everywhere; you see them passing by the terraces of cafés and stopping opposite those whom with their precocious perspicacity they judge to be susceptible to their attractions.

  Others, again, instead of selling flowers, pass themselves off as work girls. You will often meet these impostors in the Avenue de l’Opéra, in the Rue du Quatre-Septembre, or on the boulevards. They dawdle along in couples, with hatboxes or baskets on their arms and their eyes alert. Contrary to the practice of real workgirls, who do not receive such attentions kindly, they accept invitations without any display of annoyance, are perfectly willing to have a drink, and do not require to be pressed to enter a providential cab.

  There are grades and degrees in all this peripatetic prostitution. Better turned out and also older are the bands of women who wear hats with extravagant feathers and loudly coloured dresses, and who are to be seen at any hour of the afternoon, but principally at dusk, on the boulevards and in the adjacent streets. They promenade slowly, or else pretend to be in a hurry, jostle you as they pass, or launch a significant ogle which invites you to follow them. If you mend your pace and overtake them they take you to some squalid hôtel garni in the quarter which extends from the Rue des Martyrs to the Boulevard Rochechouart.

  Since the beginning of the last century they have had their headquarters there, especially in the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, from which comes the obsolete term lorette by which they were still designated so recently as twenty years ago. The Rue de la Bruyère, the Rue Chaptal, and the Rue Bréda are also much affected by them, and there they form colonies which fill whole houses. These places, known as boîtes à femmes, are veritable pandemoniums crowded with women who sleep till near noon, and go about all the rest of the day in frowsy undress, smoking cigarettes and drinking absinthe. Until the hour of business—that is, till about five in the afternoon—they sit playing with each other or with their favourite lovers interminable games of cards, at which they lose the money they have extracted from the passing visits of the previous night. The souteneur properly so-called is rare in these surroundings. He is replaced by the amant de coeur, some shopwalker or clerk who is chosen for himself and his companionship.

  These ladies must be in straits indeed, or their landlord must be unusually exacting on the subject of arrears for rent, food, and drink, before they can be induced to go out before the night, but every evening the man-hunt recommences. Their first care is to dine, and for this purpose they take conspicuous places at a café sometimes accompanied by their favourite female friend. They reckon up the men present with a glance, question the waiters, with whom they are on good terms, and talk and laugh loudly. If a gentleman, excited by their manoeuvres or by the number of his drinks, yields to the temptation, all is well; the evening’s amusement is provided for and also the earnings of the night. If not, there begins a long pilgrimage through the cafés. They go from one to another, making the circuit of the tables, brushing by the customers and looking well in their faces in order to sound their inclinations. If by ten o’clock they found nothing they try to get around the waiter in order that in exchange for their favours he may pay for the two or three sandwiches and the glass of beer which will be all the dinner they will get. If even this fails they do without food and go to a place of amusement, and if no one comes to the rescue they try the night clubs; and she who toward three in the morning succeeds in getting the offer of a modest choucroute garnie sups and dines in one.

  The prostitute always hopes to meet some generous person who will take a fancy to her and launch her on a great career, but this happy chance rarely occurs. She prays for it daily, and the fortune-teller has no more devoted client. If it does not come to pass she continues the same vicious circle of the daily hunt.

  The Jolie Madame

  If we are to believe the adroit matrons, the distinguished old ladies, the venerable grandmothers who preside over the destinies of certain houses of recreation which are famous in the gayer circles of the capital, which evolve about the boulevards or the elegant quarters near the A
rc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, every woman in Paris has her price. These ladies have at their disposal a floating staff which can be mobilised at any moment; they produce albums of photographs faithfully rendering the features, the smiles, and the attitudes of the actress, the fair unknown, or the disguised lady of the middle-class, for benefit of clients who have a well-lined purse. But beside all this, these agreeable and well-bred procuresses, whose gestures are as unctuous as their tongues are smooth, will tell you that—given a little patience—they are ready to bring to the arms of the sighing swain any woman whom he may happen to think particularly desirable.

  They have an organization, they declare, which can “bring to reason” any woman in Paris whose fortune does not place her beyond the reach of temptation of certain character. They have, in fact, a troop of female agents or canvassers who have a prodigious address in these matters. They start out on the quest at an early hour and begin visiting the large shops, where they mark down the prettiest saleswomen or the most modest and attractive of the customers who appear to their experienced eyes to possess the necessary qualities. Then they visit and consult with their various accomplices – ladies ’ maids, fortune-tellers, perfumers, and hairdressers. From them their learn all necessary particulars about their intended victims. They dress with great elegance, and in the afternoon they frequent the grands couturiers, scrape acquaintance with the customers, and thus discover all about the jolies madames who are deeply in debt. All this they note down in the register of the exploitable part of Tout Paris. In the evening they go to the theatres, see the fair performers, and find out from their dressers all about the financial crises which oppress these charming creatures.