The Mistress of Paris

by Catherine Hewitt

  Locals in Ville-d’Avray whispered that she had continued involvement in her former profession, and that unofficially she had become an entremetteuse, a kind of madam who would coach young girls to become femmes galantes and match them with clients whose payment included her own hefty commission. But nobody could prove the rumour.

  Still, for all the visitors, life in Ville-d’Avray was never going to match Paris for diversions and entertainments. And Valtesse’s mind had always thrived when it had a project to occupy it. Nowadays, all the fashionable creative types seemed to be dabbling in the theatre, and Valtesse concluded that writing a play would be a marvellous distraction.58 Cintho drew on Valtesse’s interest and knowledge of culture in the Far East. It told the tale of a tragic love affair between a Japanese man (to be played by a female) and a Parisian woman. Cultural loyalties spur the besotted Asian to strangle his beloved as they drift in a boat on a lake surrounded by lotus flowers. Eventually, justice is done and the man is made to pay for his crime.

  Once satisfied, Valtesse shared her work with friends. ‘It stars a woman dressed as a man,’ Valtesse told them, ‘that is always original, and this one is Japanese, too!’59 When Sarah Bernhardt expressed a fleeting interest in playing the part of the Japanese man, Valtesse began to wonder whether the Comédie Française might even stage her play. The ever-loyal Jules Claretie assured her that he saw considerable promise in the piece, and tried to persuade the dashing young actor-cum-theatrical impresario Firmin Gémier, as well as Detaille’s former mistress, the actress Réjane, to lend their support. But not even Claretie’s coaxing tones could win Réjane round, and eventually Sarah Bernhardt also refused to take a role. The play never reached the stage, but Valtesse did not mind. It was too late in life to become unduly attached to any particular project.

  Apart from one. The most worthwhile project of all: herself. She had just one more appearance to prepare for. It would be the performance of her life.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Final Act: Preparing a Legacy

  Valtesse had long been conscious of her own mortality. She shared Isola’s stoical attitude towards death. Pious men and women died with their desperate hands outstretched towards divinity; not Isola. Valtesse’s heroine had sworn that whenever the final hour struck, ‘I will go to sleep quietly in a bed from which one never rises […] I will sleep without nightmares, the great slumber of eternal nothingness.’1

  In 1909, Valtesse fell ill with vascular complications and her doctor advised an operation. At the end of November, she travelled to Paris to undergo surgery. The surgeon emerged from the procedure satisfied, and Valtesse’s friends were relieved when she appeared to be making a good recovery.

  Her convalescence was lightened by the presence of friends, not to mention some unexpected joys. Valtesse was thrilled to learn that Liane, now 41, was to be married to the Romanian prince Georges Ghika.2 It gave her indescribable pleasure to know that her protégé had scaled society’s hostile walls and reached its summit. Her new position – a princess, no less – would bring her immediate respect. Liane’s status and security were now assured.

  But Valtesse’s joy at her friend’s good fortune was short-lived. In the middle of 1910, her health began to deteriorate again – and this time, it did so rapidly.

  Valtesse sensed her outlook to be bleak. Her response to her worsening health was unsentimental and practical. Conscious of the need to think ahead, she began to prepare for her final departure.

  Valtesse carefully selected an optimum placement high up in the sloping cemetery of Ville-d’Avray. Then, she ordered a beautifully crafted coffin, as well as a set of elegant notecards from the fashionable engraver Appay to be sent to her nearest and dearest when she passed away. The date was left blank.3

  One night towards the end of July, the staff at La Chapelle-du-Roy were awakened and the household thrown into uproar; Valtesse had had a bad turn.4 The doctor issued morphine and her pain began to ease. But when he learned of the drama, Detaille could not dismiss a terrible sense of foreboding. On 25 July 1910, the artist noted in his diary:

  Morning in Ville-d’Avray. The illness has got worse – her veins have ruptured. I feel the most terrible grief, and I have to hide it from V who can see, despite being extremely weak. I returned to Paris traumatised, sick to my stomach […] I do not know how I did not succumb to the heart attack I felt sure I would suffer.5

  Throughout the following week, Detaille travelled mechanically back and forth between Paris and Ville-d’Avray, dazed, numbed by pain and desolation.6 The doctors Bosviaux and Huguet, as well as Valtesse’s faithful lawyer, 63-year-old Jullemier, and three of her close female friends including Gabrielle Dupuy, hovered close to the patient, united by their common concern. At times, Valtesse’s condition appeared to worsen, and the household were alerted that the end was surely close. Then she would pick up, to the delight and disbelief of the anxious faces around her bedside, not least those of the doctors. Her resilience was astounding. The moments of respite were encouraging, but Detaille knew that they could not last.

  On 29 July 1910, Valtesse’s doctor came to her, his expression grave. He explained that it was now certain: she had only a few hours to live. Weak and vague, weary from her fight, Valtesse struggled to focus on the words being spoken. Slowly, she began to digest the prognosis. Once she understood, she accepted the news calmly. Summoning all her energy, Valtesse called for the announcement cards she had had printed to be brought to her. Taking her pen and steadying her hand, she proceeded to write the date of her own death on each and every single card.7 Then, she carefully inscribed the names and addresses of all her friends and associates on the envelopes she wished to be sent. And she lay back and waited.

  Just before 10.45 that evening, Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne closed her bright blue eyes for the last time.8 As she lay in her grand bed, her face wore the expression of one at peace, and she appeared not to be suffering.9 Then, like the guttering flame of a dying candle, Valtesse slipped away. She was 62 years old (though her death certificate declared her to be 48).10

  The notecards she had so painstakingly addressed were swiftly dispatched. All across Paris, doors were opened, post was received, and maids and footmen came to their mistresses and their masters with a small envelope. In their respective homes, Liane de Pougy, Richard O’Monroy, Jules Claretie and other recipients opened the envelope in their hands to find a crisp white card framed by a black border. The card was stamped with a crown, a logo people had come to associate with Valtesse. In Gothic lettering, the message read:

  Madame

  Valtesse de la Bigne

  Died on the 29 July 1910.

  Remember.

  Valtesse’s friends were aghast. Liane was inconsolable. Claretie, stunned, thought it a joke: no doubt the card was a coded message sent only to close friends to inform them that the writer had resolved to disappear, to start again, to assume a new identity, like the heroine of a novel. That was Valtesse’s style after all.

  But the card was no hoax. That familiar, confident, cursive handwriting from beyond the grave was the last communication the addressee would receive from Valtesse.

  On 31 July 1910, Valtesse left La Chapelle-du-Roy for the very last time. She was setting out for her final home: the cemetery of her beloved Ville-d’Avray.

  The residents of Ville-d’Avray awoke that morning to find the sky heavy, grey and oppressive.11 Shopkeepers were obliged to light their premises, and a persistent rain matched the overriding sense of gloom. Everything seemed eerie and unnatural. For the height of summer, it felt like a winter’s day.

  Outside La Chapelle-du-Roy, Valtesse’s four white horses assumed a sinister, ghostly appearance as they stood in their ornate funeral tack. At the driver’s command, they lifted their hooves and the stately funeral hearse began its solemn journey. Slowly, the carriage wound its way down the steady slope leaving La Chapelle-du-Roy, its wheels crunching over the gravel. Once outside the gates, the sombre procession attract
ed reverent stares as it passed through the streets.

  The coffin transported was crafted from highly polished wood, and locals whispered that it had a cost a fortune. It was chilling in its austerity. There were no elaborate flower arrangements to adorn it, no brightly coloured bouquets; instead, merely a handful of violets in an effort to soften the uncompromising lines of the coffin’s dark-veneered surface. It was just as Valtesse had wanted. ‘No flowers, no garlands,’ she had firmly instructed those with her at the end.12 Only violets. As usual, her request was granted.

  Valtesse had insisted that she did not want a great commotion when she died.13 Nonetheless, friends were welcome, and a glittering cortège of mourners dotted with celebrity faces walked soberly behind the funeral procession, their heads bowed respectfully. But Jullemier had been charged with a special responsibility: family were to be kept at a distance. Valtesse may have maintained contact with Pâquerette, but so many of her family had brought her shame, not least her sister Emilie (or Marquesse). And who knew what scandalous scene a disgruntled relative might cause, or which shady individuals might try to use the funeral as an opportunity to claim a connection with the late courtesan – and her fortune? To Valtesse, her reputation was her most precious bequest. Exercising a veto on all blood relatives had seemed the safest policy. Jullemier saw to it that Valtesse’s stipulation was respected.

  For all the funerals they had witnessed in recent years, few townspeople could recall a tomb so awe-inspiring as the one the mourners now stood before. On a square-based plinth, a tiered circular mounting supported an enormous marble structure which resembled an inverted tripod. The three legs were mounted on clawed feet, and they rose up to the sky at steep angles, the space between them growing progressively wider. On top of each leg, a golden eagle spread its wings and hovered imposingly like a triumphant gargoyle, well above the height of an average man’s head. At the eagles’ backs was a vast, acorn-shaped urn. The urn was gripped firmly in the tripod’s centre and topped with a bronze flame, which gave it the appearance of an Olympic torch. The whole structure was finished with intricate floral decoration and a bold letter ‘V’. At over 3.5m tall, proudly overlooking the more modest gravestones below, the tomb that would soon receive Valtesse’s remains was impossible to ignore.14

  As midday struck, Valtesse’s friends and loved ones stood contemplating the awesome structure, each lost in private reflection.

  ‘With this wonderful woman, a whole era has disappeared,’ Claretie philosophised, ‘a fleeting moment in the history of Paris.’15

  Liane was devastated. ‘That charming woman’s death has left a hole in my life which no one else has yet filled,’ she would write in her diaries, years after the event, while Detaille would change his will, an indication that Valtesse had been a key beneficiary.16

  Suddenly, as mourners stood around the tomb, they noticed that the rain had eased. Then all at once, the clouds parted and the sun appeared. It was as though nature had been choreographed just to Valtesse’s taste.

  When the secular funeral ceremony was over and people began to filter away, Jules Claretie moved closer to examine the collection of wreaths and floral tributes which had been left at the base of the tomb. He was struck by one particular offering. To a simple wreath, a note had been pinned. The uncertain handwriting betrayed the concerted efforts of a child: ‘To Mme de la Bigne, in memory from her family.’17 Moved, Claretie realised that the tribute had been offered by the poor schoolchildren whom he had seen peppered incongruously among the well-dressed celebrities in the funeral procession. Their unassuming little faces showed no awareness of Valtesse’s past. They knew only that she was very beautiful. They knew too that she had shown them great charity since she moved to the town.

  But on closer inspection, there was something else about the tomb which was peculiar. Claretie was not the only one to spot it. Carved into the marble on either side of Valtesse’s name, there were two others: ‘L.M. Auriac’ and ‘E. Una’. The names bore no date, and there was no further explanation. The enigmatic Ego had triumphed: she had left one final mystery. It would keep her audience guessing. This was her greatest riddle yet.

  Epilogue: The Legacy

  Valtesse’s tombstone left her friends perplexed and her public enthralled. Who were E. Una and L.M. Auriac? A triumphant society gossip claimed to have the answer.

  ‘A woman has recently died in Ville-d’Avray, whose name used to be well known,’ began an anonymous article in Paris-Journal, just a few days after her funeral.1

  E. Una and L.M. Auriac were two of Valtesse’s lovers who had killed each other fighting over her, the author insisted. Valtesse was so moved that she arranged for them to be buried with her in her tomb. ‘Between them, she will sleep her last sleep, having spent twenty years [sic] forgotten in her splendid villa with its immense park and which one of her admirers gave her,’ gushed the writer.

  Within days, Jules Claretie reprimanded the author for his romanticised, yet erroneous account: ‘How much truth is there in this legend? Absolutely none, as in most legends.’2 E. Una and L.M. Auriac, Claretie insisted, were merely men to whom Valtesse had extended the hand of friendship. One had no family, the other passed away in a monastery. She was goodness itself.

  But the public were not convinced. A little research shed more light on the riddle.

  Commander Louis Marius Auriac was an esteemed figure in the military and an excellent musician besides. Knight of the Legion of Honour, Auriac served as leader of a division of the French cavalry and spent the final part of his career in Tonkin. When he died in 1903 at the age of 48, he was buried in a plot held in perpetuity.3 The full cost of the 1,050-franc plot was met by Valtesse. Was Auriac the concupiscent lover in the train to Ville-d’Avray, people wondered; the man whose name the journalist from Gil Blas had hinted at back in 1900 after Valtesse was overheard canoodling in public? And was he more than just a lover? One woman certainly thought so. A Mme P. confided to Au Pays Virois that she had been at boarding school with Pâquerette and that Auriac had been a regular visitor.4 It was widely suspected at the school that the commander was Pâquerette’s biological father. However, Auriac was only twelve years older than Pâquerette, and few readers subscribed to the notion of Valtesse falling pregnant to a child. The story was soon forgotten, but Valtesse’s particular attachment to the commander was never uncovered.

  Yet more perplexing was E. Una. This man was not yet dead when Valtesse was laid to rest. Some swore that he was originally from the Far East, others maintained that he was Austrian.5 Either way, his corpse joined Valtesse in the tomb just a few years later, with no further explanation as to his identity or their relationship.

  No one could solve the puzzle of Valtesse’s mysterious funereal bedfellows.

  Meanwhile, behind the closed doors of Paris’s fashionable salons, another wave of gossip was gathering momentum. It centred on Valtesse’s connections with prominent men. Gaggles of women chattered in shrill voices, while in corners, well-dressed men leaned in close and muttered shiftily. Valtesse’s involvement in the Dreyfus affair was verbally dissected, her relationship with Gambetta re-examined. Her catalogue of artist lovers was now said to have included the eminent – and much older – painters Gustave Courbet and Eugène Boudin. Meanwhile, her supposed affairs with Napoleon III and Edward VII became the subject of passionate debate. Some people claimed that she was the last of Napoleon’s mistresses; others held that her friendship with Detaille, an intimate acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, was irrefutable proof that she had entertained the future King of England.6

  But the true nature of Valtesse’s relationship with all these men would never be firmly clarified. She had built her career on teasing public curiosity, always hinting at the path she had walked while making certain that she covered her tracks. The lasting speculation ensured that Valtesse was talked about and remembered – exactly as she had wished.

  In the weeks following her death, another question burned on many lips:
what of Valtesse’s last will and testament? Detaille feared that her sudden decline might have prevented her from making one. He was mistaken. Valtesse had given it considerable thought.

  The 40-page document had long been in the trusted hands of her notaires, Girardin and Ch. Champetier de Ribes, in Paris.7 Soon, the suspense was broken as the document’s contents were revealed.

  Nobody Valtesse judged important was forgotten. Her friends and staff were generously accounted for and their loyalty rewarded. Besides monetary gifts, there was a house full of costly furniture and objets d’art to share. Nothing could alleviate Liane’s grief, but an exquisite tea service and Valtesse’s cherished desk brought some comfort and made her feel closer to her late mentor.8

  A sale was organised at the Hôtel Drouot in December to disperse what remained of the house contents. The auction room was transformed into a shimmering treasure trove. There were extraordinary wonders and collectors’ items to be fought for and won, and their association with a great, now deceased courtesan made every lot even more covetable. Highlights included the autograph of Napoleon Bonaparte, Chinese and Japanese bronzes, countless works by Detaille, porcelain, jewels, sculptures (notably a copy of a work by Canova, the sculptor so favoured by Empress Josephine), Valtesse’s two cars, and a magnificent array of antique furniture and fine objets d’art. Like the 1902 auction, the four-day sale drew swarms of people, and by the final day the auctioneers had taken 94,000 francs (over £1 million in modern currency).9