The Mistress of Paris

by Catherine Hewitt

  Throughout his appeal, Valtesse had been listening quietly and watching closely. The criticisms were harsh, but she maintained her composure. This was essential, however much turmoil and anxiety she might be suffering inside. She had been planning her defence with her lawyer and friend Lucien Jullemier for weeks. It was a delicate situation. Her very livelihood was at stake. She needed to play it carefully. But then performances were her forte.

  Valtesse’s whole case hinged on eulogising motherhood and the mother–child bond. But in so doing, she would be challenging her own mother, thereby scuppering her own defence. It was a fine line to negotiate.

  Jullemier rose to his feet. The challenge before him was significant, but he was prepared. He began his defence, delivering carefully-chosen phrases in a solemn, matter-of-fact tone.

  The woman sitting before the court today was one of the most excellent people – and mothers – he knew. He pointed out that Valtesse had generously bestowed thousands of francs on her mother for the sole purpose of raising Pâquerette. If his client had left her daughter in the grandmother’s care, it was because she had sincerely believed her mother to be too old to repeat the dubious acts which had so scarred Valtesse’s childhood. Clearly, Jullemier continued, his client had been grossly deceived on this account. Mme Delabigne had not dedicated the time she should have to surveying her daughters when they were young; how could she now criticise her child’s conduct when she had been the one to encourage it?

  Jullemier’s defence was gathering momentum.

  Before the hearing, Valtesse had firmly instructed him that reserve was of the utmost importance. She had been just as adamant that this request should be made known to the court from the outset. But after such a scathing character assassination of his client and friend, it was difficult to remain composed. ‘I should like to point out,’ Jullemier fumed, ‘that the appellant may well have decided not to marry, but she did a fine job of embracing maternity. She had seven children! […] She called my client ‘The Union of Artists’, but you could just as well call her ‘The Union of Bankers’.14

  The case was heating up. Valtesse sat listening attentively. She did not utter a word, nor did Mme Delabigne. But the mother and daughter were destroying each other nonetheless through the mouths of their lawyers. The audience was gripped.

  Jullemier continued:

  this cautious and pious grandmother was taking Pâquerette to visit her daughter Marquès [sic] whom my esteemed colleague assures us was a simple laundress. A strange kind of laundress who writes her letters on scented blue paper – like this – decorated with birds opening their beaks as they prepare to leave the nest!15

  A murmur ran round the courtroom. If this was reserve, what might the results of a full-scale attack have been? The audience sat on the edge of their seats.

  That, Jullemier declared, was the reason Valtesse had taken her daughter back. This grandmother’s conduct was shameful. And, he added emphatically, she had no right to prevent a mother from exerting her natural rights.

  As Jullemier uttered these words, the foundations of Napias’s defence suffered a potentially fatal blow. Mme Delabigne and her lawyer knew that this line of attack posed the ultimate threat to their case. It was a shrewd argument, for it tapped into a very contemporary concern.

  The natural quality of the mother–child bond was the aspect most eulogised by contemporary discourse promoting motherhood. People enthusiastically approved sociologist Paul Janet’s view when he wrote that nature had established between a mother and her child ‘a bond so precious that nobody would think to question its validity’.16 These ideas had secured a strong hold on the public’s imagination. Maternity had become fashionable. Jullemier knew exactly what he was doing. Why, this natural mother merely wanted her daughter to receive the good education that she herself had been denied. Could she be refused such a natural request?

  And this novel that his honourable colleague insisted was an accurate portrait of his client? ‘I have no way of confirming whether my client is the author,’ Jullemier ventured slyly, ‘but in any case, can we condemn her based on the actions and conduct of her heroes? If that were the case, no novelist would be able to keep his or her children.’17

  Jullemier’s defence was becoming stronger by the minute. But had his outburst been too much? Had he gone a step too far?

  Valtesse need not have worried on this account. She had a trump card. Now, it was time to use it.

  It came in the form of a letter she had asked to be read. Resuming his composure, Jullemier began. It opened with a response to a crucial question: was Valtesse’s mother responsible for her daughter embarking on a life of prostitution?

  ‘Sir, I should like to give you the answer you request, and it is true I cannot, I am embarrassed.’18

  As her words resounded round the courtroom, Valtesse brought her delicate hands to her face and hid her eyes. When she uncovered them again, onlookers were startled; her huge blue eyes were moist with tears and she swayed a little, as though she might be about to faint. The court was transfixed, moved by her emotion. As the lawyer continued, people looked from Valtesse to the speaker and back to Valtesse again. With Jullemier narrating, Valtesse was free to perform to her own script. It was a masterfully acted scene.

  ‘My mother may accuse me, treat me badly, insult me, if she wishes […] But if she forgets that I am her daughter, I cannot forget she is my mother, and a mother is sacred […] As for my conduct towards my daughter […] In the irregular situation in which I find myself, never, outside this hearing, has her name been mentioned. I have friends I have known for ten years who do not even know that I have a daughter. I raised her. My daughter is twelve today. If I have removed her from her grandmother’s care, it is because I have discovered things concerning the child which have made me afraid. That is to say, that if as a daughter I cannot judge my mother, as a mother I must protect my daughter.

  ‘Do not ask any more of me Sir, and if, in front of the judges you require material proof, tell them this: that the grandmother, who has a secure existence and is not needy, was going to spend days and nights with my daughter with Emilie Tremblay, otherwise known as Marquesse, in Rue Blanche.

  ‘Tell the judges this too, Sir: my daughter is in a convent, saintly, innocently; please ask that they do not disturb her. She is my daughter, I want her and her grandmother is not fit to look after her. I implore you to give her to me. Save her, I beg you.’19

  A murmur rippled round the courtroom. Valtesse was back on familiar territory and she was working her magic. ‘The title mother is so sacred, and from the lips of a woman, it becomes so moving,’ commentators observed.20 All that Jullemier need do now was cement its effects with some final, hard evidence against the opponent. Mme Delabigne’s continued contact with her granddaughter’s objectionable father was the perfect source of material.

  Richard Fossey had failed to impress either lawyer, and his name, a homophone of the French word fossé or ditch, made him an easy target for ridicule in the press.21 When he learned of the forthcoming trial, his priority had been to ensure that his name be kept out of any ensuing scandal. A few letters sufficed to illustrate the surprisingly familiar tone Fossey took with his daughter’s grandmother and his shortcomings as a father.

  ‘Dearest Maman, I am counting on you for 400 big ones. Oh, do not get yourself worked up, I need them! Say hello to my little Pâquerette.’

  The lawyer was determined that his defence should have a powerful conclusion. And so in the final minutes, he took a dangerous gamble which could have cost Valtesse the case. If the court would not give the natural mother custody of her child, they were implored to designate someone else – anyone but the grandmother – to care for her.

  It was a risky closing shot. But Jullemier had already disproved Fossey’s paternal capabilities. Valtesse only hoped that they had done enough to convince the court of Mme Delabigne’s unworthiness.

  The jury retired to deliberate. As she sat in that chilly
courtroom, dressed in her restrictive court attire, waiting to hear the verdict, Valtesse could only feel tense. Which way would things go? All around her, the spectators sat expectantly, transfixed.

  Eventually, the verdict came. Prosecuting attorney Robert began to speak.

  Pâquerette, he announced, was to be entrusted to the woman most fit to care for her, the one to whom nature had assigned this role: Valtesse.

  The audience drew breath, the unbearable tension finally broken. To Valtesse’s relief, her performance had worked: she had won the case. Mme Delabigne was incensed, furious – and distraught. She broke down in tears: tears of genuine despair, sympathised some papers; tears of fury that she had lost, according to others. But as Valtesse had hoped, her fierce determination, her ability to command an audience and her linguistic eloquence gave her the advantage over the child’s grandmother.

  Robert had some final cautionary words for the grandmother, too. Mme Delabigne had been seriously misguided when she had accused her daughter of being a fallen woman, incapable of raising her child in a moral environment. With elation running through her veins, Valtesse had cause to radiate one of her quietly confident smiles when Robert issued his closing observation: ‘Courtesans, for the most part, give their children an even stricter upbringing than other women.’22 Now she knew for sure: she had won.

  The case might have been over, but the following days were critical. The repercussions of the hearing in the papers would determine the state of her reputation. For all the self-assurance she projected at the hearing, once safely home at 98, Boulevard Malesherbes, she could surrender to her natural anxiety as she waited for Schwab, her footman, to bring the morning papers up to her the next day. What would the impact be?

  As she opened the papers, at least one of her expectations was immediately confirmed: all of Paris, it seemed, had an opinion to give.

  Her professed maternal instinct was viewed with suspicion. ‘What day, at what time and why was Mlle Valtesse taken with this sudden desire to see her little Pâquerette and have her close to her?’ one journalist asked maliciously. ‘No one knows. The writer presumes, however, that it was a rainy day, when her closest acquaintance of the moment had declared that thanks to her, his pockets were now as empty as his mind.’23

  But such comments missed a crucial point: in allowing her past to be made public, Valtesse had risked the very thing she considered most precious – her reputation. For the sake of her daughter, the mother in her had compromised the courtesan.

  Valtesse found that much of the press coverage maintained that she and her mother were as culpable as each other. Valtesse was not wrong to seek custody; she should only have done it sooner. ‘I would issue her with a substantial fine for having agreed to separate from her daughter in her tender youth,’ one journalist complained.24

  Mme Delabigne might have lost the case, but for many, there could be but one ultimate loser: Pâquerette herself. With such a family, another critic exclaimed, ‘this little girl has much to complain about!’25

  The reports can hardly have surprised Valtesse. She knew that the tabloids were always going to be her harshest critics. But her plight received support as well, and from the most unexpected sources. Albert Wolff’s biting irony was renowned, but his acerbic remarks paradoxically worked in Valtesse’s favour. She could not be blamed, he declared. She was the product of her background. Of all those involved in the case, it was ‘undoubtedly the courtesan’ who emerged the most worthy figure.26

  A journalist like Wolff carried weight among the public. And it was the public’s opinion that mattered most to Valtesse. People had seen that she had behaved with dignity and decorum. She had been careful to remain cool-headed in court, proved how articulate she was and had given the impression that her critics’ snide remarks were of no consequence to her, that she was above idle gossip. For all the criticisms, Valtesse’s public could not help but admire her. She felt increasingly reassured, as the following weeks confirmed that her reputation had emerged untarnished. At last, she could relax. She still wore her crown.

  The court hearing would be valuable preparation, too. She had rallied Paris to her cause and defeated her mother. But there were further problems in store. The hearing would not be her last brush with the law, nor had her involvement in the government’s dealings with Indochina passed unnoticed. Within months, Paris was to witness the mysterious death of a high-profile public figure, an embittered legal battle, a revolutionary art exhibition and a scandalous novel – and Valtesse was to be at the centre of them all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Slander, Scandal and Sun Queens

  The courtesan was a creature with a limited lifespan. Culture could be acquired and etiquette learned, but physical appeal was essential. A tired and aged body was an indisputable obstacle to the profession. But if old age formalised the end of a career, infinitely more difficult was the transitional phase that preceded it. It could break a woman if she resisted it, secure her future if she embraced it. Eventually, every courtesan found herself there: middle age.

  In the early 1880s, Valtesse was approaching her 35th birthday. She knew she was considered beautiful, but she entertained no illusions: before long, her looks would fade. Fresher, younger faces were appearing all the time. ‘Valtesse,’ Gil Blas reported, ‘whom people have baptised the Union of Artists, because she has been pleasing the laureates of the Salon for more than 25 years, has just encountered a rival in the beautiful Anna Vauthier, who a breakup with a high-ranking Egyptian has just put in circulation.’1 Competition was everywhere.

  A courtesan’s security depended on more than her appearance. She must profit from her looks while she could, and nurture her reputation and investments in anticipation of when she could not. With foresight and pragmatism, Valtesse had always saved diligently while making a trademark of her more durable, non-superficial qualities: her cool reserve, her wit, her intelligence and her impressive cultural knowledge. The public were receptive to her efforts.2

  Now that she was no longer in the first flush of youth, it was time to capitalise on these intangible assets to ensure her continued sovereignty. Valtesse needed Paris’s respect and support more than ever, for as the 1880s unfolded, a chain of unexpected events was going to test her in public as she had never been tested before.

  The first challenge arose at the start of 1882, just weeks after Valtesse’s triumph over her mother in court. One crisp January morning, Valtesse’s usual routine was interrupted when an anxious Meldola came to her, insisting that they speak. The women were sworn confidantes, so when Meldola announced that a horrific incident had befallen her, Valtesse urged her friend to explain what had happened. Meldola began.

  She told her mistress that she had been out walking with her husband on the outskirts of Montmartre, when she had had a terrible shock.3 As the couple made their way, Meldola spotted a pair of figures approaching them. She felt sure she recognised the women, and as the two sets of walkers neared each other, Meldola’s suspicions were confirmed: it was Emilie Delabigne, and beside her, Valtesse’s sister, Marquesse.

  Meldola realised that her enemy had seen her.

  The old woman’s demeanour flushed first with recognition and then with rage. ‘You sold my daughter!’ she screamed.4

  Gripping her husband’s arm, Meldola quickened her pace. Only a few weeks had passed since the court case. Emotions were fresh and wounds were raw. Catching up with the couple, Mme Delabigne seized M. Meldola’s walking stick and passers-by watched aghast as she raised her arm above her head. With a horrifying swish, the stick swiped through the air, and came crashing down just millimetres from Meldola’s head, catching her earring. The piece of jewellery clattered to the ground, and the terrified couple began to run.

  As the housekeeper’s story unfolded, Valtesse grew furious. Were there passers-by, witnesses who would corroborate Meldola’s tale? Meldola confirmed that there were: a young man named Georges had witnessed the attack. He was only nineteen, but he would
surely support her. Valtesse felt doubtful. Young men were easily swayed when there was a tempting incentive – a favour from the madam of a brothel, for example.

  But Valtesse saw her friend’s distress giving way to healthy determination. She could probably claim for damages. The earring alone was worth at least 300 francs.5 Meldola was decided: Mme Delabigne had insulted her in public – she must be made to pay in public, too.

  So it was that that March, Valtesse’s personal life resumed its position on the front page of the Parisian newspapers, as Meldola and Mme Delabigne found themselves face-to-face in court once again.

  On the day of the hearing, the lawyer, M. Lébre, arrived to defend Meldola, while a familiar face appeared in defence of Valtesse’s mother: Napias. And he was determined not to be beaten a second time.

  Mme Delabigne had been seen holding the walking stick, denial was impossible. So the lawyer’s argument was pragmatic: she had seized the stick in defence. It was Meldola who had issued the insult, and the old lady had grabbed the walking stick off M. Meldola to prevent him hitting her.6

  ‘Old Mme Delabigne resented my client,’ Lébre countered, ‘because of her ongoing friendship with her daughter, Valtesse.’7

  ‘Mme Meldola is still bitter that the role she played and continues to play in the house of the famous courtesan known as “Valtesse” and “The Union of Artists” was exposed during the last hearing,’ Napias shot back.

  All Meldola’s hopes were pinned on the young witness, Georges. He stepped forward to speak, but seemed confused. What was his profession?