The Book of the Courtesans

by Susan Griffin

  Neither modern literature nor the modern sensibility would be the same had courtesans not existed. They people the poems of Baudelaire, the novels of Balzac, Dumas and Dumas fils, Zola, Flaubert, Colette. Proust’s great novel, A la recherche du temps perdu, the work that more than any other has defined the aesthetic of his age and perhaps also our own, places a courtesan at the center of the narrative. A whole repertoire of plays, operas, and films has been based on stories and legends of cocottes, including Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow; much of Offenbach’s work; Verdi’s La Traviata, of course, and the great film by George Cukor from the same plot, Camille; Pierre Renoir’s Lola Montes; and Howard Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

  The great fame of Maxim’s, where the second act of Lehar’s light opera is set, is due in large part to the fact that this was once the restaurant favored by the grandes horizontales and their escorts. The fabled Grands Boulevards of Paris took their sparkle from them. They invented the cancan at the Moulin Rouge and provided the most celebrated acts at the Folies- Bergère. From these women a dazzling lineage can be traced that leads from the cafés chantants, public dance halls, and music halls where they performed, to cabaret life, and the modern French song as it came to be sung finally by Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, and Maurice Chevalier. Indeed, the wonderful singer and comedienne Minstinguett, who was Chevalier’s partner, was encouraged at one point by the Second Empire courtesan named Alice Ozy. Fréhel, the working-class singer who preceded Piaf as a great favorite in the public eye, wore a gown in her first performances that was given to her by La Belle Otero. Laure Hayman introduced Marcel Proust to contemporary artists and gave him an education in worldly ways at the salon she hosted in Paris.

  The lineage continues. The good timing and cheekiness of courtesans, the graceful way they leaped and slinked and kicked their way past boundaries, their implicit and explicit androgyny, their wit, their luminescence, their aesthetic sensibilities, their capacity to fascinate and enchant, all have been continued by a lineage of actresses, film stars, comediennes, singers, dancers, who though not courtesans, studied and learned their virtues. Josephine Baker, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Gracie Allen, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sarandon, Madonna, and Chloë Sevigny reshape and continue what is even now a living legacy, an inheritance which has been handed down to all of us.

  If the role the great courtesans were supposed to play was to please the lovers who sustained them, within the seemingly narrow compass of that task they discovered a kind of magic. In the unpredictable realm of eros, that which pleases most is not simple submission. The secret they discovered is a paradox: Those who would dominate are soon bored by their own powers. And correspondingly, desire is excited by the presence of a spirited soul— independent, unpredictable, incandescent with the mysteries of a separate being. Perhaps in this way desire mirrors the incandescence of life, which is by nature submissive only to an inner order, an order quickened by changes of every kind, tuned to a mandate of transformations beyond our powers to fathom or command.

  Here, then, are the virtues.

  MARIE DUPLESSIS

  Flirtation

  (THE FIRST EROTIC STATION)

  I assisted at the birth of that most significant word, flirtation, which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world. —Earl of Chesterfield

  WE CAN SEE all the elements of timing, not only rhythm but also a talent for both comedy and fashion, at work in flirtation. This is an art that relies far more on good timing than one would ordinarily suppose. Let us go to still another party, the one held in 1841 at the old opera, la Salle Peletier in Paris, on the night that comte Edouard de Perregaux met Marie Duplessis (the courtesan on whose short life both La Traviata and Camille were based), to illustrate the process. Though Duplessis was born to a poor peasant family and, like Chanel, had worked for a short while as milliner’s assistant at wages too low to keep anyone alive, she was at this moment already a kept woman. She had learned how to dress and do her hair, how to speak correct French with a Parisian and not a Norman accent. She was popular with the Jockey Club, that aristocratic organization devoted both to horse races and to chasing women. But she was yet to achieve the even greater heights of elegance and luxury which for a great courtesan was both the mark of having arrived and her reward.

  Of course, once again we can only try to imagine the scene between Duplessis and the count, the man whom, just five years hence, in 1845, she would marry. History has not given as much detail here as the observation of the courtesan’s skill requires. But that is why fiction exists—so we may see the undocumented moments that would otherwise pass out of history, and thus out of our understanding, unwitnessed.

  Yet good fiction also requires much that is accurate surrounding it. Thus, it is important to know that a few years before this period in Paris, a ball at the Opéra was a very exclusive event, which only members of aristocratic or very wealthy families attended. They were dazzling affairs at which one looked forward to being seen and to seeing. To remain au courant (or as we say now, in the swim), one had to attend. But during the reign of Louis Philippe, that ruler who, while trying to be both a monarch and a democratic man, was called “the Citizen King,” the balls were opened up to every level of society. And now that almost anyone could come, this particular party was no longer so prized. Many upper-class ladies stayed home. But the courtesans came, along with hopeful lorettes looking for a chance to inch their way higher into society or find a new protector. There were still plenty of successful entrepreneurs in attendance, as well as barons, and, as we have already mentioned, at least one count.

  As was usual for such gatherings—and still is—at the sidelines of the ballroom floor the crowds settled into small groups and chatted. During the conversation, as also was and is still usual, the eyes of those who conversed would wander the crowd. Ladies would be scrutinizing each other’s dresses. Everyone would be curious to know who arrived on the arm of whom. New faces were being scrutinized. And of course, by means of a glance or a stare, whether with subtlety or flourish, countless flirtations crossed the elegant rooms, filling the air with excitement.

  It was thus while Marie Duplessis was no doubt chatting with a group of friends and acquaintances that she began to feel the heat of attention fall across her shoulders like a light cloak or a hand brushed in passing against her spine. Just as in the song written almost a century later about a similarly enchanted evening, comte Edouard de Perregaux was standing across the crowded room, or rather, the crowded Grand Salon (a salon which everyone in Paris complained lacked elegance), when his gaze chanced to settle on her.

  Here is where her timing transformed chance to good fortune. Aware that she was being scrutinized, Marie did not turn quickly, as someone too eager might have done. Though of course we are forced to fill in this part of the narrative, the story is true to the many accounts that we have of her character, all of which, with only one fleeting exception, describe her as refined and kind, two qualities that together would have prevented her from turning abruptly away from the conversation in which she was already engaged.

  And of course there was another element that should have slowed down her response—the precise quality of her gaiety. She loved to laugh and laughed often, but her smile had an intriguing chiaroscuro not unlike the mysterious mood of the Mona Lisa’s smile, a trace of a rather sad boredom just beneath the surface, as if she were saying, “I’ve seen it all.” And this is how the story unfolds further, toward the great complexities of timing together with the many histories that can be sensed at the fringes of frivolity.

  First, because she was suffering from tuberculosis, the courtesan believed she would die young. On the one hand, this gave her a great and unceasing appetite for life. And yet, in the strange way that contradictory emotions marry in experience, every morsel of life she tasted was seasoned with the knowledge of death that can give the soul of even one so young—she was just seventeen when she met Perregaux—a philosophical wistfulness. Fe
eling his eyes upon her, she waited to turn, waited attentively while the moment seemed to expand inside her infinitely.

  Second (since there are always many causes for any virtue), she had known desperation. And while desperation causes the kind of hysteria that can make you fall out of step, it can also give you the blessedly carefree attitude that leads to perfect timing. I have seen the worst life has to offer and nothing surprises or frightens me, is the mantra. I have nothing left to lose.

  Which brings to mind the single exception to the many descriptions we have of Marie Duplessis as refined. We have already told the story. It occurred when she was still just a working girl, probably no more than fifteen years old. She stood on the Pont-Neuf on her one day off from the sweatshop where she worked every other day for at least sixteen hours, for starvation wages. That was why she was hungry and that was also why she was standing so near a stand that sold fried potatoes and why she did not buy what she wanted. But as luck would have it, a gentleman happened along the bridge at this moment who responded to her wish and answered her wish. The man who did this, Nestor Roqueplan, would come to know Duplessis later in her life when she had become the best-dressed woman in Paris; they traveled in the same circles. But what he noticed on this first meeting was that she was unkempt, dressed in filthy ragged clothing, and that she grabbed and devoured the frites he gave her without any delicacy at all.

  To have experienced extreme deprivation before her ascent to luxury would also have given her a covert assurance beneath her refinement, a confidence that came from having survived on the streets, which not only delayed the advent of her decision to turn toward whoever was staring at her but gave the gaze that she did finally return the leisurely air of a queen. She did not bat her eyes. She was neither rushing to please him nor slipping away from his eyes in modesty. She simply stared back.

  You can see that look today in the many portraits of courtesans that riddle the history of art. Sometimes they are dressed in clothes more risqué than proper ladies and sometimes not. But what usually gives each woman away is the frank quality of her gaze. Staring directly out of canvas after canvas, the eyes do not flinch or shrink or apologize but instead meet you with unremitting candor.

  Now meeting such a gaze, is it not possible that the count lets out an almost involuntary laugh as his attention is discovered and returned? He has been startled to see that this young woman places herself on an equal plane with him. That she is a woman born to a lower rank vanishes in the fresh air of her presumption. The count laughs at himself, at the rules he has grown up with and at the delightfully casual way that this stranger is breaking them all.

  Immediately, and in a pace that is at this instant appropriately quick, she grasps the humor, lets him see that she has gotten the joke with a brief smile, and then—but this is what will capture his heart forever—she turns away. And here it is important to note that although this makes him want to follow her, to know more of her, her retreat is not motivated by the false modesty that society requires of women, but from the depths of the character she acquired over a childhood full of loss, including at an early age the disappearance and death of her mother, the profundity of experience that in almost every public situation compels her to reserve part of herself.

  The example is inspiring, even now. Knowing that the count will invite her with him to a private party at the Café Anglais and that she will accept, that they will become lovers. That (along with many other men) he will contribute to her support, that they will eventually enter a brief marriage a year before her death, and that he will accompany her body to her last resting place on earth. Still following Marie’s exemplary reticence, let us reserve the rest of her story for a later time.

  CORA PEARL

  Chapter One

  Timing

  Ripeness is all.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  IT IS ALWAYS wise to begin with a mystery. Translucent, invisible, continually in motion, timing is difficult to discern and just as hard to describe. Nevertheless, the appeal of anyone who possesses this virtue is certainly palpable. Let us suppose, for example, that in the bare beginnings of the twentieth century, in say 1906, you chance to attend a party given at the country estate of Etienne Balsan. You may find yourself smiling at a woman who passes you on the stairs. And though you have not met her yet, you realize you are wishing that you will soon. Later, when you see her talking with a small group across the room, you are almost embarrassed at how often your eyes wander in her direction. What is it about her? She is good-looking but not extraordinarily so. No, it is something else that draws you. An air of indefinable excitement that seems to radiate out in waves around her.

  You see that her presence affects those who are standing near her. The atmosphere in that part of the room is distinctly electric. The way she is dressed gives you a clue. She is wearing what looks like a man’s riding jacket, only cut to follow the lines of her small body. Though the look is eccentric, the style seems to place her at the very edge of the present moment. And the look in her eyes, almost mocking, gives you the intriguing impression that she is seeing just past the precipice of what is happening now, that she is, in fact, fully aware of (and more than ready for) the moment which has not quite arrived yet. Still, she has not given herself to the future. Fully here, her movements and gestures are perfectly syncopated with the soundless rhythm to which you suddenly realize the whole room is moving. As the air fairly crackles around her, you begin to believe that she is helping to bring new possibilities into being, including the new worlds that seem to have emerged in your own imagination since the first moment you laid eyes on her. Only at the end of the day do you learn that she is your host’s lover, a young woman named Gabrielle. When, later, you hear her name spoken all over Paris, you are not so surprised. What was it about her that was so extraordinary? Her timing was brilliant.

  Still, as compelling as a woman with good timing is, the question remains: Why should this virtue be placed first in our catalogue? Asked what could make a woman so attractive that a man would be willing to spend a small fortune to keep her, one might in all likelihood think of beauty first, to be followed quickly by wit, or that talent indispensable to the art of seduction known as charm. As appealing as it is, timing may not even be on the list.

  Yet, of all the virtues a great courtesan had to possess, good timing was perhaps the most crucial. Indeed, her very existence depended on it. Had she not been able to move in perfect synchrony with history, no woman would ever have been able to enter the profession. Whether it was poverty or scandal that she faced, her genius was to turn difficult circumstances to immense profit and pleasure. She did the right thing at the right time.

  Regarding survival, the best choice to be made at one moment will, in another period, not even be a good choice. All things considered, it would not be a wise choice for most women to become courtesans today. Indeed, the ingredients required to become one no longer exist. A courtesan occupied a precise place in society; as independent as she was, circumstance defined her. If, in the middle of the twentieth century,

  Helen Gurley Brown, future editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, was kept by a wealthy movie producer, she was not called a courtesan. Like the atmosphere that created the tradition, the word had already become an anachronism.

  Just as Venus arose from the sea instead of a lake or a river, the courtesan emerged from a very particular medium. The waters of her birth, salted by the bitter tears of women who were condemned to penury and by those of wealthy and poor women alike who lamented the rules that limited and constrained their erotic lives, were made up of a perfect blend of injustice and prudery. The genius of the courtesan was in how she turned the same ingredients to her advantage. Considering the distribution of power between men and women in the times during which she lived, to say that she turned the tables would be an understatement. If we ponder very long the fact, for instance, that La Belle Otero, the famous courtesan of the Second Empire, successfully demanded fro
m one of her lovers the priceless long diamond necklace that had once belonged to the former queen, Marie-Antoinette, we may begin to appreciate the dimensions of the reversal. Yet exactly how this stunning victory was achieved remains a mystery.

  Some clues are given to us in a story that Colette tells about a conversation she had while she was still performing in music halls with La Belle Otero. Thinking the young woman somewhat green, Otero offered her some advice. “ There comes a time,” she said, “with every man when he will open up his hand to you.”

  “But when is that?” Colette asked.

  “When you twist his wrist,” Otero replied.

  Like many courtesans, Otero was known for her wit. Doubtless, that is why Colette remembered the dialogue. Indeed, the key we are seeking to the mystery is less in the content of Otero’s answer than in the way it was given. She delivered her last line with consummate timing. And looking further at what she told her young protégée, it becomes quickly evident that the crucial phrase in her advice is not in the last line but in the first phrase, “ There comes a time.” The secret of her success was that she chose exactly the right moment to twist her lover’s wrist.

  We cannot know, but only surmise, that Otero would have been glad to tell Colette exactly how to recognize the right moment for doing anything. But those who have this talent rarely understand themselves how they know what they know. Rather than a technique that can be analyzed, the ability for good timing must be the product of a particularly intense relationship with the present. To speak of having an awareness of the present moment may seem strange, as if such an awareness should be commonplace. But in fact, since most of us, much of the time, are focused more on the past or the future than on what is here now, the ability is unusual.