The Book of the Courtesans

by Susan Griffin

  Thus the word for a woman working in the garment industry, the most common form of employment for women, grisette, which derived from the dull gray of the muslin dresses she wore, acquired a second meaning. Even into the mid- twentieth century, dictionaries still defined the grisette as “a woman of easy virtue.” Earning 1 to 1.5 francs a day for work that was seasonal, the garment worker had to turn to other sources for her income. Some walked the streets; some lived with casual lovers, oftentime students, who helped to pay the bills; others attended the many public balls that were popular then in Paris to search for wealthier men who might pay for their favors for a night.

  It was for this reason that so many courtesans began as grisettes. If they were lucky enough or extraordinary in some way, they could climb the rungs of a ladder that could lead them further and further away from penury and a grueling schedule of hard work. At a public dance hall, a young woman might meet a man who would set her up in an apartment. A woman who had this good fortune was called a lorette, the word for a would-be courtesan, a woman who was kept only modestly. She did not habituate the elevated circles in which courtesans traveled, though she was a social fixture of the bohemian world. Mimi in Henri Murger’s Scènes de la Vie Bohème was a lorette. But the story is better known as Puccini’s opera La Bohème.

  Only the few who were the most talented among lorettes would ever become courtesans. The heroine of another famous opera, Violetta Valéry in Verdi’s La Traviata, was modeled after Marie Duplessis, a real woman who started as a grisette, became a lorette soon after, only to ascend with remarkable rapidity to the rank of courtesan. Her story is typical of the rags-to-riches ascent that was both as desirable and improbable then as is the dream of becoming a sports hero today. Born to near poverty in Normandy, Marie’s mother died early. After a period in which her alcoholic father, an itinerant salesman, hauled her with him about the countryside, offering his daughter at least once as merchandise, and after being abandoned by the same father to distant and unwelcoming cousins in Paris, she began work as a grisette. That she was poverty-stricken during this period is verified by the testimony of Nestor Roqueplan, director of the Opéra, who spotted her a year before she became famous, on the Pont-Neuf, dressed in dirty, ragged clothing, begging for a taste of the pommes frites that were sold on the bridge. It did not take her long to meet a restaurateur who established her as a lorette in her own apartment. But this tenure was equally brief. She rose quickly to become one of the highest-ranking courtesans of her time. Well fed and housed, considered to be the best dressed woman in Paris, the woman known as “the divine Marie” had acquired great fame, not to speak of a title, before her death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-three.

  Class is an essential ingredient in the history of courtesans for many reasons, including the dramatic transformation that occurred in the life of a woman who was elevated thus. According to accounts from the eighteenth century, Madame du Barry, who herself experienced a spectacular rise from grisette and sometime prostitute to become the favorite of Louis XV, spoke far better French than his previous mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Since the celebrated Pompadour had been educated by her bourgeois family, she spoke a French that was at least passable at court. But because Barry’s working-class language was entirely unacceptable, she was compelled to learn an upper-class grammar that was far more correct than that of her predecessor.

  Still, the plot thickens. The issue of class cannot be understood apart from issues of morality. For several centuries in European cultures, with some variations, it was thought that a woman should be chaste before marriage, and if not absolutely faithful, she should at least behave with enough discretion to protect her reputation. The requirement was not uniform. In certain periods and places, especially those in which the poor were driven to desperate measures, a woman’s chastity had less significance among working people than it did for the aristocracy. But this division of sentiments was not consistent. The peccadilloes and open liaisons of nobles, kings, and emperors were known to incite wrath from the less privileged public.

  What remains relevant to this history, however, is another condition that fostered the tradition of courtesans, the simple fact that as with Edith Wharton’s character Lily Bart, a wellborn woman could fall, and in falling not only lose any chance for marriage but be shunned by society as well. In that case, one of the better options open to her would be to become a courtesan. There were so many women who chose this solution in Paris at the turn of the century that a special word was used for them: they were referred to as demicastors. Because of a scandal that had ruined her reputation, one such woman, Laure Hayman, was ostracized until she made her way back into society in another role, as a courtesan. She counted among her lovers many powerful men, including Louis Weil, the uncle of Marcel Proust. It was probably because Proust had known her since he was a boy that he took Hayman as a model for Odette Crécy, the fictional courtesan whose story threads through A la recherche du temps perdu.

  The tangled skein of double standards regarding both sex and money, gender and class, creates an interesting controversy over whether or not certain historical figures ought to be classified as courtesans. Agnès Sorel, favorite of Charles VII of France, is generally not considered a courtesan, nor is Alice Keppel, longtime mistress to the Prince of Wales, though both were given financial aid by the monarchs who loved them. One might answer that they did not take money from any other lovers. Except that Pompadour, who took remuneration from no other lovers either, is called a courtesan by almost everybody, probably for the sole reason that she came from the bourgeoisie. Rather than probe the justice of this reasoning, the hope is that these controversies might be resolved by the chapters to follow, which in general use the term “courtesan” as a favorable designation.

  Yet it should not be construed that The Book of the Courtesans attempts to argue that its subjects were virtuous in a moral sense. No effort will be made here either to defend or condemn their behavior. Rather, the virtues in the title take their definition from an older usage—one that was once applied exclusively to men, but which, though it has been out of fashion since the Renaissance, this book revives and applies now to women. In this older definition, virtue has nothing at all to do with chastity. It refers rather to the strengths and attributes that characterize as well as distinguish a person.

  Though circumstances must and will be summoned so that these stories can be better understood, the emphasis here will be on the creative response each woman showed to the conditions she confronted. For this phenomenon to be entirely explained, we must explore the considerable magic of human ingenuity here. There are so many kinds of genius to be found in these stories that were we not to place our focus on virtue, we would be squandering a treasure that belongs to all those who are the inheritors of this history.

  For history it is. Although the many virtues that courtesans possessed were employed to defy circumstances, the role they played depended on the same circumstances over which they triumphed—conditions which today, fortunately for modern women, no longer exist. At least within modern European cultures women are not expected to be virgins before they marry, nor do they have to be dependent on husbands, brothers, or fathers for their economic survival.

  And there is still another reason for the disappearance of this tradition. The temper of the times has shifted, too. Technically speaking, many women today do what courtesans did; it is quite common still for a married man to support his mistress, and a whole population of highly cultivated and elegant women serve today as escorts, call girls, and modern hetaerae. But just as surely as the role of the courtesan was created by historical conditions, she was also inextricably linked to a historical mood that had come to an end by the third decade of the last century. In 1948, after visiting La Belle Otero, Anne Manson wrote: “When Otero departs there will depart with her the last symbol of an epoch, superficial, light and at the same time virtuous and cynical, covetous toward others yet madly extravagant in its pleasures, f
ull of faults but not without its splendors.”

  To become a courtesan, a woman required a setting. Though she was center stage, she was not alone. Nor was she hidden. Almost by definition, she was surrounded by scintillating activity. She was inseparable from the demi-mondes she inhabited—slightly rebellious, risqué, or naughty worlds, alternate societies where a certain sophistication, including carnal knowledge that was banned from proper society, was allowed to thrive. The Belle Epoque, the period that Otero symbolized, was famous not only for its writers, artists, playwrights, and actors but also for the glittering social scene which was staged almost continuously on the Grands Boulevards in Paris, the epicenter of the atmosphere, and the stage on which the courtesan played a vital and charis- matic role.

  In this, she was part of a tradition that stretches back over centuries. The Belle Epoque may have been the last period in which the courtesan reigned, but it was by no means the first. For at least a hundred years before the end of the Belle Epoque, Paris had been a magnet for courtesans, would-be courtesans, and men seeking the magic of their company. Indeed, the Second Empire, earlier in the century, was so dominated by this presence that Balzac seemed almost to be stating a simple truth when he wrote, “Paris is a courtesan.”

  But what took place in the Second Empire was also a continuation. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the alternative life with courtesans that aristocrats, princes, and kings conducted at the courts, places, and fine houses of France was called galanterie. Several famous courtesans from this period are still remembered, among them Ninon de Lenclos and La Pompadour. And in turn, French galanterie was inspired by an even earlier history. Venice during the Renaissance is the only place and time that can be said to rival nineteenth-century Paris for its courtesans. Just as Balzac likened Paris to a courtesan, the seventeenth-

  century English poet James Howell took this figure as the metaphor of Venice. “Syren-like on Shore and Sea, Her Face,” he writes, “Enchants all those whom once she doth embrace.” The reputation of Venice’s courtesans was once one of its chief attractions. “So infinite are the allurements of these amorous Calypsos,” another Englishman, Thomas Coryat, wrote of the courtesans he encountered when he visited the city, “that the fame of them hath drawn many to Venice from some of the remotest parts of Christendom.” At one point among scarcely more than 100,000 inhabitants, there was said to be over 10,000 cortigiana, or 10 percent of the population, though only a portion of these would have been courtesans for whom the honorific title cortigiane oneste was used. Among those who were honored in this way, 210 women were listed in a catalogue (Catalogo di Tutte le Principali Pià Honorate Cortigiane di Venezia) available for the more affluent visitor.

  The antecedents for the word “courtesan” first appear in fourteenth- century Rome, where cortigiano, or “courtier,” evolved into a female form with a somewhat different meaning. It was from this Italian word that the French courtisane developed, the term that finally inspired the English “courtesan.” But by a different name, centuries before courtesans appeared in early Renaissance Rome, the tradition of the hetaera was a fixture in ancient Rome and Greece.

  The reappearance of this tradition in fourteenth-century Italy was partly a consequence of the revival of antiquity that was so crucial to the Renaissance. A lineage of courtesans can be traced from antiquity through the great masters into the modern period. We might begin, for instance, in Greece, with Praxiteles, whose most celebrated Aphrodite of Cnidus, modeled after his mistress the courtesan Phyrne, initiated the tradition of the female nude in sculpture; then move on to Italy during the Renaissance, when portraits of Venus and other goddesses, for which courtesans often modeled, were painted by Veronese, Titian, Raphael, and Tintoretto; then go to eighteenth-century Paris, where Boucher’s frothy images of frolicking goddesses recalled the rosy likenesses of the Pompadour he painted; and end finally with the famously frank portrait of a courtesan, Olympia, by Manet, which was intended both as a copy and a parody of Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

  Not only did many artists in the Renaissance, among them Cellini, Raphael, and Titian, frequent courtesans, but friendships were often forged between the members of these two professions. Veronica Franco was a good friend of Tintoretto, just as Raphael and Imperia were also friends. The rapport is understandable for many reasons. The revival of antiquity benefited both, restoring an honored place for courtesans at the tables of noblemen and intellectuals alike, at the same time as it elevated artists above the position of artisan to which they had been relegated before. Moreover, since the amorous Greek and Roman gods belonged now to the vocabulary of art, artists found themselves free to explore the erotic life in their images.

  The greater accumulation of wealth that characterized the same period meant that artists could sell their works more frequently and for higher prices. This abundance did not always help women. Since greater wealth meant that the price of dowries was suddenly higher, women from less fortunate backgrounds could not afford to be married. For this reason, more women were forced into becoming courtesans. And yet, paradoxically, the same wealth that had prevented a woman from marriage benefited her greatly once she became a courtesan. And finally, both courtesans and artists, being newly and only provisionally accepted into society, shared an ambiguous terrain, a world of salons and parties, taste and wit that, skirting established power, existed just past the edge of the respectable world. Together, through their association and the connection they were making between art and sexual liberty, they were resurrecting and reshaping the tradition that would lead one day to the demi-monde in Paris, the Gay Nineties, if not to several contemporary movements of a different nature. It is a history that has affected countless lives, in ways both obvious and subtle.

  A catalytic spark travels back and forth between each life and the spirit of an age. The mood of an age affects the choices that those living in it make. What is equally true is that the unique choices made by those who live in any period create a particular atmosphere. No tradition can remain the same for very long. A living tradition is dynamic. Just as with a great epic poem that is passed down orally from one generation to the next, some lines repeated and others slightly changed, so by minor increments of change, gradually major shifts will inevitably occur in every tradition.

  Though courtesans depended on the maintenance of a double standard, as they became more popular, the eventual effect of their transgressions was to liberate women from the strictures that had sexually confined them. At the same time, the economic independence of courtesans served as a model to women, making the feminist vision of economic parity seem more possible. First gradually, and then like a house of cards, the whole edifice of values that had nurtured the existence of courtesans fell. Braving scandal, upper-class men began to marry the women they loved. Soon upper-class women insisted on marrying for love, too. The idea of the virgin bride began to seem antiquated. Finally, when the old way of life had changed forever, a long tradition came to an end.

  But though the great courtesans no longer exist, we still have their virtues. Of course, nominally these virtues have always existed. But if beauty, grace, and charm have long been considered feminine virtues, with creative ingenuity the great courtesans expanded these attributes, sometimes simply adding a new tone or texture to them, at others reversing the meaning of them almost entirely. Indeed, since any movement outside conventional roles can create considerable erotic energy, this reversal accounts for some of the appeal courtesans once had—an appeal that their virtues have for us still. Despite changing conditions, the effect can still be felt in the gritty aura of bravery that surrounds the images and stories, phrases, songs, and dances in which their influence remains.

  That we are remembering courtesans whenever these vestiges of their existence come to mind, however, has until very recently been obscured. The idea of scandal outlived the tradition long enough to erase our awareness of the crucial roles the courtesan has played in history and in art. This amnesi
a is especially strong in America, where, in the first productions of Camille, the heroine was changed from a courtesan into a chaste young woman who was innocently betrothed and cruelly jilted. By contrast, if in mid- nineteenth-century France the first production of Dumas’ La Dame aux camélias was temporarily halted by state censors, by the time of the Belle Epoque, Liane de Pougy was affectionately called “our national courtesan,” as now in countless ways this history is still remembered and honored there.

  It is wise to remember this history. Without it, any reading of our cultural heritage must be somewhat shallow as well as naive. We need only think of the familiar term “Gay Paree” to grasp the significance of this forgotten dimension. At the end of the nineteenth century, the word “ gay” was used to describe women who were courtesans, as “the gay life” referred to the world of the demi-monde that was built around them. Understanding the reference throws light in two directions, past and present, illuminating both Paris at the turn of the century and the homosexual identity for which the word is used now.

  Not only Renaissance art but modern art is filled with images of demi- mondaines. The faces and figures of courtesans appear throughout paintings by the artists who have shaped contemporary vision: Courbet, Manet, Degas, Béraud, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec; they are gracefully present in the posters made by Mucha, humorously depicted in the caricatures by Daumier and Sem; in sculpted form they adorn more than one grand building, and even today dance in a sculpture that flanks the entrance to the Palais Garnier, the old Opéra in Paris.