The Mistress of Paris

by Catherine Hewitt

  For a young girl, the work environment provided a very particular form of education. Older girls could be doubtful teachers. In L’Assommoir, the jokes shared among the girls are frequently crude, and Nana soon becomes well versed in sexual double-entendre. Like Nana, Louise was exposed to the life experience of the girls around her. Zola’s acerbic view of such establishments was shared by many: they provided ‘a fine education’, with girls gathered together ‘one on top of the other’, so that, just like a basket of apples containing a single overripe fruit, ‘they rotted together’.11

  Years later, Louise wrote a novel, Isola (1876), based on her childhood experiences, in which she denounced the corrupting influence of the workplace on a young girl. But it was not her colleagues’ tales that shook her confidence. The place was:

  one of those workshops where young girls learn, among other things, to defend their honour. Uneasy about what I sensed, not daring to confide in anyone, unaware of good as of evil, I spent three years in this way. When, without respect for my childhood, a man spoke words to me which I suspected to be indecent, I left the workshop, occasionally regretting the company of the woman whose husband had insulted me; and when I was alone, I asked myself what it could possibly be about me that made men harass me in this way.12

  But for contemporary social observers, it was the employee’s walk home that gave most cause for concern. The journey to and from work was riddled with danger, not least because it provided an opportunity for men and women to meet. Louise’s contemporary, Suzanne Voilquin, also began work at a young age to help her family. She described her anxiety about walking home late after work: ‘I had a horrible fear of meeting on my return one of those contemptible men who make a game of accosting young women and frightening them with disgraceful remarks.’13

  As she walked to and from work, Louise would come face-to-face with the city’s less glamorous side and its full cast of disreputable characters. For all that the capital glittered and dazzled, poverty and corruption simmered below its surface. It was a city tainted by alcohol and prostitution. While the bourgeoisie and the upper classes revelled in their new-found luxury, the poor were growing poorer – and increasingly resentful. The areas inhabited by the lower classes remained squalid. Living where she did, Louise could not escape the capital’s more sinister face.

  Looks could be deceiving, too. As the century progressed, it was becoming harder to make judgements based on appearances. ‘Vice is seldom clad in rags in Paris,’ wrote an English visitor to the capital.14 ‘These days, one can no longer tell if one is dealing with honest women dressed as good time girls, or good time girls dressed as honest women,’ warned Maxime du Camp.15 Even age and experience offered no shields against deception. But then Mme Delabigne never queried the company Louise was keeping. When a girl arrived at the Delabigne residence one day introducing herself as Camille and asking if Louise was free to go out, she assured Mme Delabigne that she was a friend from the shop.16 Camille seemed harmless enough. It did not occur to Mme Delabigne that two girls together might get up to more mischief, encourage each other and attract more male attention than one. She allowed Louise to accompany the stranger out into the street.

  Years later, in her semi-autobiographical novel, Louise drew on her encounters as a teenager:

  The people around me whispered strange words in my ears which made me blush without knowing why. I did not understand, and look at the terrible consequence of my ignorance. I was embarrassed not to understand.

  I wanted to see, so I drew nearer to this world which was spinning around me and to which I did not seem to belong.

  I was swept up in the terrible chain.

  Carried away, dazed, not seeing clearly, I let myself go, mad, stupid, laughing so as to show my teeth and hide my tears.

  I continued in this way until the day when, coming to my senses again, I realised that I was lost.17

  Like Zola’s Nana, Louise caught the eye of an older man. Any man could pass himself off as a gentleman if he knew how to present himself. Louise’s mature admirer gave her her first sexual experience. It was brutal.

  Why is he protected by the world, the man who led me to that place, and who knew where he was leading me? Why does society have indulgent treasures to offer the wicked person whose good fortune and gallant adventures people talk about behind their fans?

  Yes, in that first journey, I saw what I did not suspect, the illusions, the naive aspirations, the dreams and hopes of my childhood, it was all gone in an instant because a brutal passerby had taken advantage of my gullibility, and society, which owed me assistance and protection, became my cruellest enemy.18

  The experience lifted a veil for Louise, revealing the harsh reality of life for a working-class Parisian girl. She had known poverty and hunger. She had also seen luxury, felt the rich textures of expensive fabrics, watched women of fortune as they left the shop with their colourful dresses and chic bonnets tied with ribbons. As a child on the streets and as a teenager in the workplace, she had overheard whispered tales of sordid affairs, and she had passed shady figures coming and going on visits to her mother. But a glimpsed silhouette and a second-hand tale lack the bitter edge of first-hand experience. Now, her innocence had been irreparably shattered.

  All at once she could see clearly: happiness came at a price. Tenderness and emotional warmth were conditional, unreliable, untrustworthy. And material pleasure required money. Louise was poor. To taste the luxury those elegant ladies enjoyed, she must have something else to offer, something the keyholders to all that splendour desired. All around her, in her neighbourhood, on her route to work, there were girls just like her whose innocence had been destroyed. Often, as their naivety vanished, girls began to realise that they had the means to escape poverty. To satisfy their material needs, they had only to respond to men’s physical urges. They would give men exactly what they wanted: their bodies.

  ‘How many young girls I have seen fall,’ lamented Jeanne Bouvier, ‘because they earned such miserable wages. I have seen them go down into the streets. Poverty is an insufferable situation, and those who do not escape into suicide escape into prostitution.’19

  In Louise’s case, the shock of losing her virginity coincided with the natural curiosity of an adolescent impatient to grow up and the hunger to taste the pleasures she had watched the rich girls enjoying. Once her purity had been sullied, there was nothing left to lose. Added to which, Louise lived dangerously near Notre-Dame de Lorette, an area known for its flourishing sex trade. Her fall into prostitution was perhaps inevitable. ‘A fact worth noting,’ observed A. Coffignon in his study of corruption in Paris, ‘is that the worker who later submits to prostitution has almost always been deflowered by a man of her class and her immediate entourage.’20 Louise’s example was typical.

  Her new career was a well-established profession, and there were always opportunities for new recruits. In 19th-century Paris, the industry was thriving as never before, largely due to the extreme contrast between rich and poor. The capital boasted one of the most highly regulated systems of prostitution in the world. While other countries sought to eradicate it, the French system worked from a simple premise: prostitution was unfortunate but inevitable. Fighting it was futile. It was better to control it.

  To this end, Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet’s Prostitution in the City of Paris (1836) sought to record the state of the industry and assess the scale of the problem. His findings gave rise to countless stereotypes and revealed the rigorous methods of control that officials attempted to put in place.21

  As far as the authorities were concerned, girls working in the industry could be grouped into two categories: filles soumises or filles insoumises.22 A fille soumise was a prostitute who had been officially registered. A girl could register herself, or she would be registered by an official. Either way, she would have to adhere to strict rules and regulations. Besides being forbidden to appear in public outside specific hours or to live within a certain distance of a school,
she would have to undergo regular health checks. These were universally dreaded. An unsatisfactory report (usually a diagnosis of a venereal disease) could lead to forced admission to the fearful prison-hospital, Saint-Lazare. Girls whispered that you could be locked up and even have your hair cut off if you were detained.

  Being registered as a fille soumise brought frustrating restrictions. But the alternative was far worse. An unregistered prostitute or fille insoumise led an even more precarious existence. She was constantly on her guard for fear of being caught by the police. And yet to the irritation of rigorous information-gatherers like Parent-Duchâtelet, clandestine prostitution continued to thrive uncontrollably.

  When Louise first turned her hand to the profession, unregistered to begin with, she joined thousands of girls in a complex social hierarchy.23

  The lowest status was that of the common prostitute. Such a girl would walk the streets soliciting potential clients, or work in a brothel, and usually lived in a state of abject poverty. If a woman had not sunk to this lowest of stations, she automatically joined a superior category: the demi-monde.

  Demi-monde provided a convenient umbrella term for an indefinable, shady ‘half world’ and all those who occupied it. It was a place hovering between destitution and respectability, and within it were further categories and gradations of sex worker.

  At the bottom of the hierarchy was the grisette. Young, lighthearted and coquettish, the grisette often worked in the clothing industry or sometimes as a florist, and used prostitution to supplement her meagre income. The synonymy between the garment trade and prostitution became a cliché that aroused knowing smirks, but the stereotype was based on statistical fact. So frequently was it proved accurate that it gave this class of prostitute her name: grisette derived from the inexpensive grey material from which working-class women’s dresses were made. A grisette was still achingly poor and had to live a frustratingly modest existence. But she could hold her head higher than the common prostitute. According to popular perception, when the working week was done, the grisette loved nothing more than to have fun, to go to dances, cafés and student balls, and she adored the theatre. But more than anything – more than parties, pretty trinkets or a hunger-relieving supper – the ambitious grisette dreamed of becoming a lorette.

  Taking her name from the area of Notre-Dame de Lorette where her kind were found in abundance, the lorette was still a relatively new class of prostitute when Louise started working in the industry. Initially identified by Nestor Roqueplan in the 1840s, the lorette was proud to be able to distinguish herself from the grisette. Crucially, she would have secured the protection of a man of considerable income, who would often set her up in her own apartment, turning her into a femme galante or kept woman. And this source of income enabled her to enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle than the grisette could ever hope for. A grisette would make do with a handful of practical shirts, skirts and bonnets; a lorette spent every last sou on the latest dresses made of fine silk and rich velvet, trimmed with delicate lace, and she would purchase sumptuous hats and accessories. A grisette would gratefully accept what she was offered; a lorette would expect the best and always want more. However, the lorette mixed in relatively lowly bohemian circles. She knew she had not yet reached the summit of her profession.

  The highest echelon to which a girl working in the sex industry could aspire was the title of courtesan. Known variously as les grandes horizontales, les grandes abandonnées, les grandes cocottes or les lionnes, with the top ten or so leading courtesans referred to as la garde, these were the women who commanded Paris. The courtesan was worlds apart from the common prostitute. The difference came down to two simple factors: the degree of choice a girl had, and her level of earnings. A courtesan had the luxury of cherry-picking her lovers, and the material benefits could be outstanding. Courtesans lived in palatial hôtels particuliers, and would be seen riding like royalty in gilt carriages through Paris’s most fashionable parks and gardens, dressed in furs and velvets, glittering with jewels. But a courtesan had to know how to promote and present herself. She must dress exquisitely, be well-mannered and cultured, have read widely and possess an innate understanding of the appropriate protocol for every occasion, for she would be mixing in elegant society. A courtesan commanded prestige. She was a celebrity.

  Thousands of girls dreamed of becoming courtesans, but only a few would ever scale such heights.

  When Louise began her career, she could not even consider herself a fully fledged lorette. She still lived with her mother and had no wealthy protector. She entered at the bottom of the demi-monde’s hierarchy. But circumstances had set her firmly on a path that could lead her to the top.

  The teenager was soon living the lifestyle of a typical grisette. She considered her appearance carefully – grisettes were experts at dressing to please on a limited budget – and experimented with a little make-up. The goal of every grisette was to attract the attention of a suitor who would, in exchange for the pleasure he derived from her body, treat her to a good dinner, a trip to the theatre, a pretty trinket or some other present. To do this, the grisette had to go where men with spare sous would be likely to see her. Louise would follow her friends to cafés, brasseries and dances around the Latin Quarter and the area of Notre-Dame de Lorette.

  Notre-Dame de Lorette was notorious: ‘Whenever people talk of pleasures, of clandestine love, of ephemeral liaisons, ruined elder sons […] one’s imagination turns, irresistibly, towards Notre-Dame de Lorette […] As soon as you mention the name in the provinces, young girls avert their eyes, mothers cross themselves, and eligible young ladies look at you with displeasure.’24

  With its thronging student population and exhilarating night-life, the Latin Quarter was a magnet for grisettes seeking male attention and fun.25 Many of the students were new to the capital and had come in search of pleasure as much as an education. They often came from good families, and were bursting with newly acquired knowledge and youthful enthusiasm. And they arrived with an allowance. It was small and intended to last the month; but Paris’s wonders and attractions beckoned. The allowance rarely lasted long.

  Between lectures, these young men spilled out onto the terraces of budget-friendly cafés, filling the air with laughter, cigarette smoke and the sound of cheerful banter and chinking glasses. In the evenings, they would swarm towards the Latin Quarter’s brasseries to take a modestly priced meal. The quality of the food could be doubtful, the drinks mediocre; but since most students lived in tiny attic rooms starved of both pleasure and company, the jovial atmosphere and the pretty women more than compensated.

  A grisette was pleased to win the heart of a student. Besides the usual treats she greedily received, a student could also teach her something of the world. These lessons might prove useful if she were ever to progress to the status of a lorette, when she would need to mix in more cultivated society.

  Louise threw herself into the bohemian lifestyle of the Latin Quarter’s cafés and brasseries. She drank, smoked, laughed loudly and began using coarse language.

  But a wise grisette like Louise knew that the café and the brasserie were not the only settings in which she could catch a man’s wandering eye. In the evenings, students and other men flocked to Paris’s numerous bals publiques. This was where a grisette stood the best chance of ensnaring that wealthy suitor who would finally make her a lorette.

  ‘The true Parisian does not sleep,’ boasted one observer, ‘or at least, very little.’26 It was on this premise that the bal publique or public ball was founded. When the Revolution ended the government’s strict regulation regarding the frequency and location of bals publiques, a veritable dancing frenzy rippled out across Paris.27 The public ball swept away the cobwebs of tradition and became a defiant symbol of uninhibited pleasure. Students, foreigners, grisettes and lorettes, society girls and wealthy gentlemen all congregated at Paris’s bals publiques in the evenings. Men would go to admire the prettiest members of the opposite sex – a
nd perhaps find a partner for the night; grisettes and lorettes set out with the explicit intention of attracting a rich benefactor. And both sexes arrived determined to have a good time. It was an explosive combination.

  But the choice of ball would depend on social status and this would determine the kind of person one might meet. Louise had to consider this carefully. The Bal Mabille, with its enchanting garden twinkling with soft gas lights, had become one of the most fashionable balls in Paris by the mid-19th century. It was here that many great courtesans launched their careers. But when she was starting out, Louise would have found the ball at the Closerie des Lilas more to her taste. The entrance fee was cheap and the venue was brimming with students. As one English visitor remarked, this was where grisettes could be seen ‘in full feather’.28

  The Closerie des Lilas was run by a M. Bullier, an enterprising tycoon in the entertainment industry, who had modelled his establishment on the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Granada.29 A superb garden, generously planted with the lilac bushes that gave the venue its name, provided young lovers with leafy corners and shaded groves behind which to conduct their affairs. A swing aroused squeals of delight from giggling girls, while sly members of the opposite sex could sneak a look at the ankle of whichever girl was enjoying the ride. At the end of the garden was a billiard room, and just beyond it, a covered dance space; not even bad weather could stop the frenzied dancing at the Closerie des Lilas. Between the dances, patrons could take a moment to catch their breath and enjoy a refreshment at one of the round green tables, just big enough for two. It was one of the most lively, raucous evening haunts in the area. Every corner of the garden was overflowing with young people chatting, drinking and laughing.