The Book of the Courtesans

by Susan Griffin

  But the work an actor does on the stage, what Grotowski calls a “ penetration into human nature,” offered another solution to the conflict. Along with her loneliness as a child, her tantrums and her rages, her powerful will and her bitter knowledge of defeat, each conflict she had suffered only made her performances more faithful to reality. All that she witnessed, all that she felt—her mother’s transgressions, the passion of the nuns, her dreams of piety, her great talent for seduction, the triumphs of her spirit together with its humiliations, all the pleasures of her body and the purity of her soul—could exist side by side, undiluted and uncompromised, in her voice.

  As an actress, she had extraordinary powers. The incantatory powers at her command redolent with the liturgies of church and boulevard alike, gave a new life to the role of the dying courtesan. As Marguerite flirted and laughed, cynically dismissed Armand’s proposal of love, then succumbed, fell more deeply in love, and finally sacrificed herself for him, Sarah’s great voice would have conjured the real story that lay beneath the sentimental narrative. Had we been in the audience, we might have heard it all: the ferocious strength of a young woman trying to survive, the odds arrayed against her, the fate of all those who had failed to escape, worked to an early old age, begging in the streets, carted off to a prison or an asylum for indigence, her defiance, and all she saw as she fought to live, the backsides of the grandest men, the betrayals of others and herself, audible in the undertone, along with the unexpected kindness she encountered, and the tenderness, even her own, would have been there too as all the while the voice would have wooed us, taking us deep into the territory of desire, so that as we listened, we would have known for certain that the sound of all we heard was, in its own inexorable way, holy.

  DETAIL FROM MUCHA’S les saisons

  Afterglow

  (THE SEVENTH EROTIC STATION)

  When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a book or a picture; she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed.—Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

  THE REVERIE COMES later. Perhaps he has left her sleeping so that he can walk home through the park in the cool morning. Or perhaps a few years have passed. Either way, the shadows under the trees are fresh with memory. More than once, he strolled with her here. They came to the edge of these trees after their first lunch in the café under the arcade. Even then he must have known, without being able to say it in words, what it was he wanted. He was so taken with the hem of her skirt and the froth that curled at its edge as she walked. That and the playful rhythm of her gait, the intense green of the braid lining her collar, the blush in her cheeks that was nearly unacceptable, the shock of her frankness, the dazzling speed of her responses, and the way her hand would gesture with countless small enthusiasms, all swept him past reason. He was charmed. But now as he hears the sound of a slight breeze carrying a leaf to the ground and is reminded of the way her voice whispered in his ear, he is beginning to understand his own desire. Remembering the way the soft vibrations of her whisper moved through his body, he suddenly knows. The petals of the flowers in the beds here, still wet with the morning dew, the way they open now to the sunlight, remind him. It was this that drew him, not just to imagine how she felt but to feel what she did, as her body responded, opening like ruffled petals, like a sea creature widening in a wave.

  The water of the fountains beginning to arch, and ripple, the waiter’s low laugh as he places the first table outdoors, the sudden flap of a bird’ s wings, all converge on the desire he is startled to claim as his own, though it makes him laugh too because he cannot help but see now that the feeling is reflected everywhere—in the gardens, the clothes of the ladies strolling here, the curling ornaments on the columns, the splendor in the shop windows—all spreading a sweetness through the atmosphere along with a subtly raucous invitation to move past boundaries which, he knows now, are only imagined as real.

  ALICE OZY

  Epilogue

  In the End

  WITH A COARSELY wrought tale, the end of the story often serves as a simple morality lesson. Those who are good, the narrative seems to say, will die well, just as those who have been bad will meet a bad end. But, as with a well-told story, reality is far more complicated, filled with surprises and ironies, rises and falls, sudden turns, descents and ascents that seem to occur somewhat independently from justice. If in the nineteenth century working-class girls were warned that the life of a courtesan ended in sorrow, the truth is that in the end cocottes seem to have flourished or floundered at about the same rate as anyone else. Yet the dire prophecies of the self-righteous could at times be self-fulfilling.

  BEFORE MOGADOR MARRIED Lionel de Chabrillan, he had already lost his own fortune and been disowned by his family. To save his estate, he planned to marry a wealthy woman. But instead, still in love with Mogador, he sailed to Australia to join the gold rush when he lost what little he had left. After he returned to Paris to marry Mogador, the couple sailed together to Australia, where this time Lionel would serve as the French consul general. Yet his salary was meager. Though the couple were not destitute, they faced severely reduced circumstances. Thus in order to supplement their income, Mogador took up a new career; in the course of four years she wrote three bestselling novels. Severely ill, however, she was forced to return to Paris. After Lionel joined her in Paris, he tried to obtain a diplomatic posting in Europe. But the scandal of their marriage shadowed them both. When he sailed for Australia again, stricken with a sudden illness, he died.

  Penniless and mourning for her husband, she revived her career on the stage. Though the first night was a brilliant success, the show was terminated when a series of articles appeared, reminding the public of her notorious past. But calling once more on her formidable determination to survive, she took the play that Dumas had based on her novel Les Voleurs d’Or on tour, making a small fortune. And once again she took up writing, producing altogether twenty-six plays, twelve novels, and seven operettas. Always generous, she moved her mother to her châlet at Vesinet, founded a women’s ambulance corps during the Prussian War, and no doubt remembering the terrors of her own childhood, offered to build a home for war orphans on her land. But because of the scandal that followed her until her death, she was forced to hide behind a tree as she watched the girls at the orphanage hand bouquets of flowers to the more respectable patrons. Finally, after moving to an old people’s home in Montmartre, she died at the age of eighty-five.

  WHEN CORA PEARL faced a different kind of scandal, the consequences were far worse. Shunned by the demi-monde as well as society, she was eventually financially ruined, too. She had become an object of scorn after a former lover, Alexandre Duval, son of a famous restaurateur, wounded himself severely. He had intended to aim his bullet at Cora but the gun went off in his hand instead. While he hovered for several days between life and death, the story of what transpired between them circulated through the city. He had spent all of his fortune on lavish gifts for her. But when the money was gone, she dismissed him coldly.

  Neither the fact that he had planned to murder her, nor his subsequent return in full health to his old life on the boulevards, mitigated public opinion. No longer able to find protectors, slowly all Cora’s resources dwindled. Once known for receiving as much as 10, 000 francs a night, she was grateful now for 5 louis. Yet she never lost her spirit. Before she died at the age of fifty-one from stomach cancer, she spent time promulgating an invented universal language, and she wrote and published two versions of her life story, books that are still being read today.

  MARIE DUPLESSIS DID not die as utterly alone as La dame aux camélias portrayed. Though the crowd of suitors thinned considerably, her maid stayed with her until the end, as did some loyal friends, among them her erstwhile husband, Edouard Perregaux. She died well cared for, in the comfortable surroundings of her luxurious apartment. The physician, whom Liszt had sent to care for her, was the doctor most h
ighly esteemed among society women of the day. Yet ironically he probably hastened her death by giving her experimental doses of arsenic. The loyalty of her maid came as much from friendship as from employment. Having been born to the working class herself, Duplessis was known not only to be kind but also inordinately generous to working women. Her estate was auctioned after her death. Even after all her bills were paid, there remained a considerable sum, which she gave to her sister in Normandy.

  ARETINO DID NOT depict the death of his character, the first fictional Nanna. We only see her as she grows older, passing on her knowledge to her daughter Pippa. The Nana we know best now, the heroine of Zola’s novel, was supposed to be based on the life of Blanche d’Antigny. After seducing and ruining a string of lovers, Nana dies of smallpox alone in a room at the Grand Hôtel in Paris. Describing her suffering vividly, Zola gives the impression that she is getting a just reward.

  SUPERFICIALLY, BLANCHE D’ANTIGNY, whom Zola used as a model for Nana, suffered a similar death. Some say she died of smallpox, some typhoid, some tuberculosis, which she would have caught while nursing Luce, the man she loved. But due to the kindness of another courtesan, Caroline Letessier, Blanche was well cared for when she died. And in stark contrast with Zola’s cold and unfeeling heroine, since Blanche’s spirits as well as her economic health had been broken by her lover’s illness and death, it is not unreasonable to say that she died of love. After her death, Théodore de Banville, who had always admired her, wrote touchingly: “Blanche d’Antigny has taken with her one of the smiles of Paris.”

  APOLLONIE SABATIER WAS thirty-eight years old when her chief benefactor, Alfred Mosselman, suffered financial ruin. He offered her 500 francs a month, but she declined, trusting her independent efforts instead. She took up painting—four of her miniatures were shown in the Salon of 1861—as well as restoring the paintings of others. Unable to make a living doing this, she auctioned some of the valuable objets d’art she had been collecting for years, raising 43,000 francs. Moving to a smaller apartment, she began to do her own cooking. Yet we would be mistaken here to think that because she was aging, Sabatier’s career was over. Beauty was not her only asset. Even in reduced circumstances, she was spirited. As Judith Gautier described it, she sang as she cooked. In the same year she began a new liaison with Richard Wallace, natural son of the marquess of Hertford, who promised that if ever he became wealthy, he would take care of her. True to his word, when at his father’s death he inherited a fortune, he gave her 50,000 francs and a monthly income. She spent her last years at Neuilly, in very comfortable surroundings. Having outlived many of her companions, she was lonely for them. Yet this is always the price for having had many beloved friends. She died peacefully on the last day of 1889, at the age of sixty- seven.

  JEANNE DUVAL HAD many other lovers in addition to Baudelaire, one of them a woman who lived with her for many years. Over several years she held a lively salon in her own rooms. But she struggled with a degenerative illness, which eventually paralyzed her. After they parted as lovers, she and Baudelaire remained friends. During the last years of her life and through her hospitalization, he continued to support her.

  FLORA, A VERY successful and wealthy courtesan in ancient Rome, was eventually made into a goddess and as such is still alive and well today.

  THE DAUGHTER OF an army officer, Liane de Pougy married a naval officer herself. When, because she was unhappy in this union, she left him, he shot her; she had two bullets in her thigh until her death. For a short period she taught piano, but her life as a courtesan was launched when she appeared in an open carriage with the marquis de MacMahon at Longchamps. Her career as an entertainer was launched when the Prince of Wales became her fan, introducing her to his friends who were members of the Jockey Club. During her years as a courtesan she had many protectors, including Prince Strozzi in Florence, Maurice de Rothschild, Roman Potocki, Baron Bleichroder in Berlin, and Lord Carnarvon in London. In her thirties, she retired from this life to enter a Dominican order of nuns in Lausanne. As a postulate, she took the name of Sister Anne-Marie Magdalene. But she was back in Paris again after a year.

  One of her lifelong friends was Jean Lorrain, the acerbic critic, known to be gay, who went about the boulevards wearing rouge, his hair dyed blond. Because he had given her a bad review, when they met by coincidence in the Bois du Boulogne, she went after him with a horse whip. But he admired her fortitude and they became good friends. For many years one of her most ardent supporters in the press, finally he wrote a play for her. That they were both gay must only have deepened their rapport. When the American heiress Natalie Barney came to court Pougy dressed as a Renaissance page, the two women became lovers, and remained amorous friends for many years.

  Along with Emilienne d’Alençon, who was also at one time her lover, Pougy spent much of her time in the informal society that surrounded Barney, women who loved women or poetry or art. And usually all three. The circle included Renée Vivien, Anna de Noailles, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Marcel Proust, Dolly Wilde, niece of Oscar, and Colette. Along with her extensive journals, she wrote and published several popular romans à clef about her amorous pursuits, including the popular Idylle sapphique, a novel whose heroine is based on Natalie Barney. Barney hoped to rescue her from courtesanry, but instead, at the age of 39, Pougy became the lover of Prince George Ghika of Romania, who was at the time 24 years old. Within two years they were married, and except for a short separation when George had an affair with his secretary, the prince and princess lived happily together until his death. Known for her good works in the later part of her life, she never forsook her religious feelings. At the age of seventy-three she joined the third order of Saint Dominique (a lay order) as Soeur Anne-Marie de la Pénitence and began to devote much of her time to good works. After Georges died, she spent hours in her rooms at the Hotel Carlton in prayer, prompting her spiritual guide, Mère Marie-Xavier to comment, “La soeur à pénitence a devenu la soeur à prière” (The sister of good works has become the sister of prayer). She died in 1950 at the age of eighty.

  BY THE TIME she was in her forties, having lost her beauty, and since doubtless her audacity was less becoming in maturity, Harriet Wilson had fallen from her position as a favorite of high society. No longer able to make her living as a courtesan, she became a writer instead. Yet she was reaping profits from her former trade. Before the publication of her memoirs as well as several subsequent works, she would blackmail former lovers with the material she had written about them. Though she herself must have turned a good profit, apparently her last novel, Clara Gazul, suffered so much from the resulting cuts that it was too boring to sell more than a few copies. After 1832, history records almost nothing about her; she is said to have died in England, in 1846, at the age of fifty.

  ESTHER GUIMOND KEPT entertaining way past her prime, giving her dinner guests ample portions of wit along with their food. She is said to have served as an unwitting inspiration for La Dame aux camélias. Having known kindness from Guimond as a child, Dumas fils was sitting by her bed while she was suffering from an episode of typhoid, when suddenly he jumped up, declaring, “Now I have my fifth act! ” But unlike his heroine, Esther did not expire. She died several decades later, of cancer. The day after her death, her good friend Girardin, who along with many of the men she knew feared exposure from the extensive papers she kept, spent hours alone in her library. It is thought that he destroyed the eight hundred letters she had preserved. Given that she tried to blackmail him with these letters, we cannot blame him. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate for us that his own history as well as hers is now lost.

  LANTHéLME WENT OFF with Misia’s husband. But the affair did not last long. While on a pleasure cruise, she either fell or was pushed from the open window of her stateroom. Her body was recovered hours after she had drowned.

  SINCE LA BELLE Otero blew her fortune at the tables on the Riviera, she would have been destitute had not the owners of the casinos where she lost all her mone
y given her a pension. But then again, if we were to make a list of all the disasters that might have befallen her during her lifetime, it would be very long. She lived simply but comfortably in Nice until her death. She never lost her style. Even in an altered, elderly shape, when she entered a room, heads turned.

  AFTER PAïVA HAD her marriage with the penniless marquis who had given her a title annulled, she married one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Henckel de Donnersmark. The ostentatiously resplendent Hôtel Païva, which still exists today on the Champs- Elysées (now the home of an exclusive men’s club called the Players), was a gift from him. He also bought her the Château de Pontchartrain, situated on the route from Paris to Dreux, the palace made famous two centuries earlier by the amorous visits of Louis XIV and his favorite Louise de la Vallière. Since Henckel was a Prussian count, however, with the advent of the Prussian War, the couple was forced to leave France and settle instead on a family estate in Silesia. When Païva died at the age of sixty-one, she had amassed the largest fortune ever owned by a courtesan.

  IT HAS BEEN supposed by some that Veronica Franco repented late in life, but most scholars agree that the evidence for this is slim. In a letter she wrote to a friend who was considering turning her daughter into a courtesan, Franco wrote: “You can do nothing worse in this life . . . than to force the body into such servitude . . . to give oneself in prey to so many, to risk being despoiled, robbed or killed. To eat with someone else’s mouth, to sleep with the eyes of others, to move as someone else desires, and to risk the shipwreck of your faculties and your life—what fate could be worse?”