24.Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont, Paris inconnu (Paris, 1861). Cited in Richardson, La Vie Parisienne, p. 102.
25.Maurice Barrès, Le Quartier Latin; ces messieurs, ces dames (Paris, 1888).
26.Henry de Père, Paris Guide, par les principaux écrivains et artistes de la France (Paris, 1867), p. 1,000.
27.Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945: Taste and Corruption (Oxford, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 312–15.
28.Charles Augustus Cole, The Imperial Paris Guide (London, 1867), p. 13. Cited in Richardson, La Vie Parisienne, p. 157.
29.Alfred Delvau, Les Cynthères parisiennes (Paris, 1864), pp. 59–68.
30.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 264.
31.Félicien Champsaur, Paris, le massacre (Paris, 1885), p. 268.
32.Maurice Barrès, Le Quartier Latin; ces messieurs, ces dames (Paris, 1888), pp. 27–9.
33.Barrès, p. 27.
34.A. Coffignon, Paris Vivant, La Corruption à Paris (Paris, 1889), p. 99.
CHAPTER 3
1.Valtesse would have known that people would interpret the character of Leys as Fossey when she wrote Isola. The meeting she describes in the novel was undoubtedly designed to shape people’s opinion. Ego, Isola (Paris, 1876)
2.Ego, p. 174.
3.A letter written by Emilie describing the couple’s first meeting was quoted in the papers. ‘L’Enfant de Mme Valtesse’, Le Rappel, 16 November 1881, p. 3.
4.Ego, p. 173.
5.Ego, p. 175.
6.The Théâtre de Cluny finally closed its doors in 1989.
7.Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945: Taste and Corruption (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 361.
8.Zeldin, p. 361.
9.Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution: The French 1799–1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2008), pp. 177–8.
10.Catherine Naugrette-Christophe, Paris sous le Second Empire: Le Théâtre et la ville (Paris: Librairie Théâtrale, 1998), annexe 4.
11.Naugrette-Christophe, annexe 4.
12.Gildea, pp. 178–9.
13.‘Parisian Actresses’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc., 17 November 1880.
14.Adrien Desprez, ‘Petites scènes’, Gazette Littéraire, Artistique et Scientifique, 32 (10 December 1864), 324.
15.Naugrette-Christophe, pp. 90, 120.
16.Joanna Richardson, La Vie Parisienne 1852–1870 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), pp. 264–73.
17.Richardson, La Vie Parisienne, p. 264.
18.Richardson, La Vie Parisienne, p. 266.
19.Albert de Lasalle, Histoire des Bouffes-Parisiens (Paris, 1860), p. 116.
20.Peter Gammond, Offenbach: His Life and Times (Kent: Midas Books, 1980), pp. 37–8.
21.Nestor Roqueplan, ‘Les Théâtres’, in Paris-Guide (Paris, 1867), pp. 829–30.
22.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 254.
23.Gammond, p. 47.
24.Gammond, pp. 47–8.
25.Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone Books, 2002), p. 190.
26.Kracauer, p. 241.
27.L’Orchestre, 2 February 1866, p. 1.
28.Le Monde Illustré, 10 February 1866, p. 83.
29.Albert de Lasalle, Le Monde Illustré, 10 February 1866, p. 95.
30.Michael R. Booth, ‘Nineteenth-Century Theatre’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre, ed. by John Russell Brown (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 299–340 (p. 331).
31.Le Tintamarre, 8 April 1866, p. 2.
32.Booth, ‘Nineteenth-Century Theatre’, p. 302.
33.Ego, p. 2.
34.Émile Zola, Nana, trans. by Douglas Parmée (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 121.
35.Ludovic Halévy, La Famille Cardinal (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1946), p. 36.
36.Kracauer, pp. 190–1.
CHAPTER 4
1.Céleste Mogador, Memoirs of a Courtesan in 19th-Century Paris, trans. by Monique Fleury Nagem (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), pp. 74–5.
2.George Sussman, ‘The Wet-Nursing Business in Nineteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies, 9 (1975), 304–28.
3.‘Gazette des tribunaux’, Le Figaro, 9 November 1881, p. 5.
4.Ego, Isola (Paris: Dentu, 1876), p. 172.
5.Ego, pp. 160–1.
6.Ego, p. 176.
7.Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. by Geoffrey Wall (London: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 70.
8.Michelle Perrot, ‘The Curtain Rises – Introduction’, in A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Ariès and George Duby, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. by Michelle Perrot (1990), pp. 9–11 (p. 9).
9.On prevailing views of the family and the legal changes which influenced it from the ancien régime to the early 19th century, see Patricia Mainardi, Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 4–18.
10.Mme Romieu (Marie-Sincère), La Femme au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1858), p. 239.
11.‘Gazette des tribunaux’, Le Figaro, 15 November 1881, p. 2. Le Temps, 16 November 1881, p. 3.
12.Le Figaro, 21 September 1868, p. 3.
13.A. de Bory, ‘Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens – Soirée de Réouverture’, La France Musicale, 4 October 1868, p. 311.
14.Le Figaro, 10 October 1868, p. 3; Le Figaro, 1 November 1868, p. 3.
15.Le Figaro, 25 March 1869, p. 3.
16.Émile Blavet, ‘La Princesse de Trébizonde’. Le Figaro, 3 August 1869, p. 3.
17.Un passant, Le Rappel, 9 December 1869, p. 1.
18.Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse, Dictionnaire des opéras (Paris, 1881), p. 808.
19.Un passant, Le Rappel, 9 December 1869, p. 1. Cocodès was the name the Duc de Gramont-Caderousse gave to his intimate friends. These were society men who were attached to courtesans. Their mistresses were known as cocodettes. Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone Books, 2002), p. 252.
20.Froufrou, ‘Les Premières’, Le Gaulois, 9 December 1869, p. 1.
21.Ibid.
22.Ibid.
23.Ibid.
24.François Oswald, ‘Bruits de coulisses’, Le Gaulois, 15 December 1869, p. 3.
25.Kracauer, p. 177.
26.Oh very good!
Oh very well!
Pretty, charming, spiritual.
Oh, sire, it was very good, very chic!
Oh! What is sweet love in music.
[…]
Sir, I am a rich widow!
Will you marry me, my dear?
M.M. Tréfeu et Prével, La Romance de la Rose – opéra bouffe, partition chant et piano (Paris, 1870).
27.Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse, Dictionnaire des opéras (Paris, 1881), p. 813.
28.Le Petit Journal, 20 December 1869, p. 2.
CHAPTER 5
1.Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone Books, 2002), p. 142.
2.On Zulma, see Kracauer, pp. 262–5. See also Alexander Faris, Jacques Offenbach (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), pp. 102–3.
3.James Harding, Jacques Offenbach: A Biography (London: John Calder & New York: Riverrun Press, 1980), p. 139.
4.Gabrielle Houbre, Le Livre de Courtisanes: Archives secrètes de la police des moeurs (Paris: Tallandier, 2006), p. 253.
5.Kracauer, p. 331.
6.Ego, Isola (Paris, 1876), p. 146.
7.Ego, pp. 4–5.
8.Offenbach’s grandson insisted that his grandfather’s weight never exceeded 50kg. Harding, p. 129.
9.Vi
ctor Koning gave a detailed report of the event and its guests. Victor Koning, Tout Paris (Paris, 1872), p. 52–5.
10.Gustave Lafargue, Le Figaro, 28 February 1870, p. 4.
11.Faris, p. 128.
12.Nouveau guide en Italie – Guide-Chaix, (Paris, 1864), p. 17.
13.Ibid.
14.Joseph Caccia, Nouveau guide général du voyageur en Italie (Paris, 1875), p. III.
15.Ernest Blum, Le Rappel, 30 January 1870, p. 4.
16.Oscar Havard, Guide de Rome, Turin, Milan, Venise, Padoue, Florence, Assise, Ancône, Lorette, Naples, etc. (Paris, 1877), p. 7.
17.Caccia, p. 253.
18.Ego, p. 47. The items listed in the sale catalogue when Valtesse auctioned many of her belongings in the early 20th century confirm her attraction to Italian lace and earthenware.
19.Houbre, p. 253.
20.Kracauer, p. 118.
21.Kracauer, pp. 118, 269.
22.Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 19th-Century France (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 33.
23.Richardson, The Courtesans, pp. 9–11.
24.Faris, p. 149.
25.Valtesse’s relationship with Millaud was recorded in her police file. Houbre, p. 253.
26.On Paris in 1870, see Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), pp. 282–313.
27.Edmond de Goncourt, cited in Horne, p. 294.
28.Edmond de Goncourt, Paris under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. by George J. Becker (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 190.
29.Théophile Gautier, cited in Horne, p. 295.
30.Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (1870–71) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 83.
31.Clayson, p. 83.
32.Horne, p. 288.
33.Eugène Morand, ‘Nouvelles Diverses’, Le Figaro, 24 January 1870, p. 3.
34.A. Mazon, Nice en 1861 – Guide de l’étranger (Paris and Nice, 1861), pp. 127–9. Robert Latouche, Histoire de Nice de 1860 à 1914, 2 vols (Nice: Ville de Nice, 1954), vol. II, p. 86.
35.Horne, p. 290.
36.J.D. Hayhurst, The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870–1871 (1970) http://www.cix.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pigeon/pigeon.html (accessed 4 April 2014)
37.Recueil des dépêches télégraphiques reproduites par la photographie et adressées à Paris au moyen de pigeons-voyageurs pendant l’investissement de la capitale, 6 vols, I (Bordeaux), 29 December 1870, message written 9 December 1870.
38.Recueil des dépêches télégraphiques reproduites par la photographie et adressées à Paris au moyen de pigeons-voyageurs pendant l’investissement de la capitale, 6 vols, I (Bordeaux), 3 January 1871, message written 31 December 1870.
39.Recueil des dépêches télégraphiques reproduites par la photographie et adressées à Paris au moyen de pigeons-voyageurs pendant l’investissement de la capitale, 6 vols, I (Bordeaux), 29 December 1870, message written 9 December 1870.
40.Recueil des dépêches télégraphiques reproduites par la photographie et adressées à Paris au moyen de pigeons-voyageurs pendant l’investissement de la capitale, 6 vols, I (Bordeaux), 3 January 1871, message written 31 December 1870.
41.J.D. Hayhurst, The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870–1871, (1970) http://www.cix.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pigeon/pigeon.html (accessed 4 April 2014)
42.Juliette Lamber, Le Siége de Paris – Journal d’une Parisienne (Paris, 1873), p. 371.
43.Le Journal de Nice, 1 January 1871, p. 1.
44.Edmond de Goncourt, Paris under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. by George J. Becker (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 187.
45.Ibid.
46.Valtesse’s confidences interpreted in Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique (Paris: Éditions des Femmes, 1987), p. 15.
CHAPTER 6
1.On Paris during the siege and the Commune, see Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003), pp. 282–313.
2.Edmond de Goncourt, Paris under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, ed. and trans. by George J. Becker (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 311–2.
3.Goncourt, p. 312.
4.Goncourt, p. 315.
5.Valtesse’s confidences interpreted in Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique (Paris: Éditions des Femmes, 1987), p. 15.
6.‘Les Premières’, Le Figaro, 5 March 1872, p. 1.
7.‘Les Premières’, Le Figaro, 11 April 1872, p. 1.
8.Le Figaro, 25 November 1872, p. 3.
9.Richard O’Monroy, cited in Claude Blanchard, Dames de coeur (Paris: Éditions du Pré aux Clercs, 1946), p. 132.
10.Almanach de Gotha – Annuaire généalogique, diplomatique et statistique (Paris, 1872), pp. 164–6.
11.Frédéric Loliée, La Fête impériale (Paris: Tallandier, 1926), p. 73.
12.Cited in Auriant, Les Lionnes du Second Empire (Paris: Gallimard, 1935), p. 183.
13.Valtesse’s taste in clothing and jewellery can be gauged from the items in the sale of her house in 1902. See Catalogue de tableaux modernes, pastels, aquarelles, dessins etc. de Mme Valtesse de la Bigne (Paris: Imprimerie de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, June 1902).
14.Gabrielle Houbre, Le Livre de Courtisanes: Archives secrètes de la police des moeurs (Paris: Tallandier, 2006), p. 253.
15.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 287.
16.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), pp. 24–5.
17.Houbre, p. 253. All currency equivalents calculated according to http://www.measuringworth.com
18.Houbre, pp. 252–3.
19.Houbre, p. 252. Rue Blanche is situated on the right bank in Paris, where upper apartments did not receive running water until 1865. See Roger-Henri Guerrand, ‘Private Spaces’ in A History of Private Life, vol. 4, ed. by Michelle Perrot, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 359–449 (pp. 370–2).
20.Valtesse’s confidences interpreted in Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique (Paris: Éditions des Femmes, 1987), p. 15.
21.Auriant, Les Lionnes du Second Empire (Paris: Gallimard, 1935), p. 208.
22.Auriant, Les Lionnes du Second Empire, p. 193.
23.This fact and Valtesse’s manner of greeting lovers have been recorded by Claude Blanchard. See Claude Blanchard, Dames de coeur (Paris: Éditions du Pré aux Clercs, 1946), pp. 129–34.
24.Auriant, La Véritable histoire de Nana (Brussels: Mercure de France, 1942), p. 44.
25.Houbre, p. 528.
26.Blanchard, p. 140.
27.Valtesse’s confidences interpreted in Liane de Pougy, Idylle saphique (Paris: Éditions des Femmes, 1987), p. 15.
28.Houbre, p. 252.
29.This complaint is recorded in Houbre, p. 575.
30.Liane de Pougy, My Blue Notebooks, trans. by Diane Athill (New York: Tarcher Putnam, 2002), p. 44.
31.Houbre, p. 254.
32.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 129.
33.‘Obituary’, The Standard, 22 March 1898, p. 5; ‘The Italian Opera in Paris’, The Morning Post, 13 June 1883, p. 5.
34.‘Court and Fashion’, The Belfast News-Letter, 29 August 1862.
35.‘Court and Fashion – Foreign Courts’, The Era, 26 May 1867.
36.‘Sporting’, The Belfast News-Letter, 26 April 1860.
CHAPTER 7
1.All currency equivalents calculated according to: http://www.measuringworth.com/uk
2.Adrien Marx, Les Petits mémoires de Paris (Paris, 1888), p. 1.
3.Françoise Tétart-Vittu, ‘Édouard Manet, La Parisienne’ in Gloria Groom and others, L’Impressionisme et la mode, exhib. cat. (Paris: Skira-Flammarion, 2013), pp. 125–8.
4.Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris (Paris, 1910), p. 239.
5.Marx, p. 169.
6.Unpublished text cited in Claude Blanchard, Dames de co
eur (Paris: Éditions du Pré aux Clercs, 1946), p. 133.
7.Y. Z. and C., ‘Au Jour le jour – Les Merveilleuses’, Le Gaulois, 18 December 1873, p. 1.
8.Joanna Richardson, The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in 19th-Century France (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), pp. 11, 35.
9.Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Napoleon, the Empress and the Artist: the Story of Napoleon, Josephine’s Garden at Malmaison, Redouté and the Australian Plants, ed. by Anne Savage (East Roseville, NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999), p. 95. Charles Angélique François Huchet La Bédoyère, Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 2 vols (London, 1827), vol. II, p. 747.
10.Fernand Xau, ‘Valtesse de la Bigne’, Gil Blas, 13 June 1883, p. 2.
11.‘Gazette des tribunaux’, Le Figaro, 15 November 1881, p. 2. ‘Tribunaux’, Le Temps, 16 November 1881, p. 3.
12.Joanna Richardson, La Vie Parisienne 1852–1870 (London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1971), pp. 110–12; Julie Kavanagh, The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2013), pp. 108–9.
13.Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Zone Books, 2002), p. 97.
14.Richardson, The Courtesans, p. 21.
15.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 272.
16.Ibid.
17.Émile Blavet, La Vie Parisienne – La Ville et Le Théâtre (Paris, 1884), p. 177.
18.H.A. de Conty, Paris en poche – Guide pratique Conty, 6th edn (Paris, 1875), p. 272.
19.P. Juillerat, cited in Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 195.
20.Anne Martin-Fugier, ‘Bourgeois Rituals’ in A History of Private Life, ed. by Philippe Ariès and George Duby, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991), vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. by Michelle Perrot (1990), pp. 261–337 (pp. 299–304).
21.Martin-Fugier, p. 299.
22.I am indebted to Damien and Florence Bachelot for their kind assistance in my research of Valtesse’s property in Ville-d’Avray; I am also grateful to Sophie Huet at the Service Communication et Culture at the Mairie de Ville-d’Avray for her assistance in my research.
The Mistress of Paris Page 32
