The Book of the Courtesans

by Susan Griffin

  Cora was not born to poverty. Still, she claimed that she was forced into her profession by what, according to modern standards, would be considered a rape. The story she cites in her memoirs as determining her fate resembles the cautionary tales told to young girls during the Victorian age. Though if we are to understand her decision, a few facts from her childhood will be necessary, too. It is not insignificant that when she was still a child her father abandoned the family. Nor that shortly thereafter, her mother sent her to a convent in France. The pattern of abandonment continued when, after graduating, she returned to London. Instead of taking her daughter back, her mother sent her to live with her own mother. Though Cora’s grandmother was kind, she was overprotective. Following the years she spent in the French convent, where Cora claims to have received a very liberal education from the other girls, this atmosphere must have felt stifling. Made to read books aloud to the old woman for hours on end, Cora seldom went out, except to go to church on Sunday. But one Sunday, when the maid who always accompanied her home did not appear, she set off into the streets of London by herself. Soon she discovered she was being followed by an older man named Saunders, who eventually persuaded her to go with him into a “drinking den” where after tasting what he gave her, she lost consciousness, regaining her awareness only the next morning when she found herself in a bed upstairs.

  There is no way now to determine the validity of this tale. The memoirs of courtesans were often embellished with fantasy and fiction. Generally, Cora Pearl was known to be very honest. Indeed, during the Second Empire, when a certain kind of deception was thought preferable in women to frankness, she was often described as vulgar. And there is also the fact to consider that the practice of spiking a young woman’s drink, thus rendering her an easy prey to rape, is still in use today.

  Decades later, when she told this story in her memoirs, she said that as Saunders helped her to her room, she was aware of his intentions and hoped “that at last I might be about to discover the pleasure of lying with someone of the opposite sex.” The next morning, however, she remembered nothing, which, in one version of her life story, she claimed was her only regret. In another version, she wrote that the incident left her with “an instinctive horror of men.”

  Whatever the truth was, on the first morning she woke up in his bed, she knew she could never go home again. Though the modern reader may simply shrug her shoulders at this slightly sordid initiation to sexuality, in that period, Cora was ruined. Which is to say, she would never be able to make a respectable marriage.

  Whichever version we read, she must have felt at least a moment of fear, when waking disoriented in a strange room, she realized what had happened to her. Both versions of her memoirs, written to raise money, have the exaggerated style of a book written to be salacious. But there must be a seed of truth in each description. She was spirited even as a young woman. Which is to say that she would not have let the moment grow into despair but instead moved within herself, in a timely fashion, to leaven her despondency with humor and resolve. If on seeing the five pounds Mr. Saunders had left her she felt tempted toward shame, she did not allow the mood to take hold, but swiftly calculated instead how much more income she had just gained, more than a milliner would earn over several weeks.

  The young courtesan managed the new profession that fate had thrust upon her with a vengeance. Her first lover, Robert Bignell, who was the owner of the Argyll Rooms in London, a “notorious pleasure haunt,” supported her well. But she was not satisfied. And from the day that Bignell suggested she accompany him to France, her life was to take on a momentous change. Masquerading as husband and wife, they toured Paris and the French countryside, traveling afterward to the spa at Baden-Baden in Germany, where she spent 200,000 francs of Bignell’s money. Still, at the end of the trip, she sent him back to London alone. She preferred life in Paris, where she quickly became a favorite of the most powerful and wealthy men; soon she was wealthy herself, her private collection of jewelry alone worth a fortune. Over time, more than one man exhausted his inheritance for the love of her. If once a single man had had the power to ruin her, now she was coolly ruining many men.

  That she served herself as dessert could easily be read as an extreme form of servility. But this reading of the event would be too simple. As she records the incident in her memoirs it is clear that she took enormous pleasure in her seductive powers. She tells us that even as the prank was being prepared, one of her servants was taking great interest in the chef’s work, “and the state of his breeches proclaimed that his attitude to his employer was one of greater warmth than respect.” She reveled even more in the awe she struck when her footman raised the silver lid that concealed her body. “I was rewarded,” she wrote later, “by finding myself the centre of a ring of round eyes and half open mouths.” Her memoirs make the power of her presence evident. “M. Paul,” she tells us, “was the first to recover,” after which her dinner guests, in the posture of petitioners paying homage to a goddess, kneeled “on their chairs or on the table . . . their tongues busy at every part of me as they lifted and licked the sweetness from my body.” The reversal is clear. If once she had been abandoned by her father and mother, now she was the undisputed center of attention. If she had been seduced by a gentleman, now she was the seducer of many; if once she had been fed a drink that made her lose her better judgment, now she herself was the libation that drove men to a frenzy of desire, while calmly she enjoyed the effect.

  Her Blue Dress

  Nana dazzled him and he rushed over to stand on the step of her carriage.—Emile Zola, Nana

  I was able to start a high fashion shop because two gentlemen were outbidding each other over my hot little body.—Coco Chanel

  Let us return to the party of 1906 with which our exploration of this virtue began. This was a pivotal moment in the life of that woman with such good timing, called Gabrielle. Like many courtesans, she was born poor. Abandoned by her father, she was raised in an orphanage. And as was also true for many cocottes, she began her life as a grisette. But though she liked trimming hats, she did not want to live out her days working long hours in the cramped quarters of a dimly lit room. So eventually, she began to sing in cafés, which is where she met her lover, the very wealthy Etienne Balsan. He was in the audience when she performed. The simple fact that he kept her would in another time have immediately classified her as a courtesan. Indeed, when she lived with him on his estate near Compiègne, she shared both his bed and his mansion with another woman who was already attracting public attention. Usually dressed in raspberry pink, witty, and often outrageous, Emilienne d’Alençon was a famous courtesan during the Belle Epoque. Far from jealous, the two women admired each other, though more for their differences than what they had in common.

  The difference was clear in the way they dressed. While d’Alençon, one of the last grandes horizontales, had a lavish style, Gabrielle wore simple, almost boyish, clothing. The choice was less accidental than portentous. Instead of developing a career as a courtesan, she went into another business. Convincing Balsan to lend her his apartment, she set up a hat shop in Paris. Emilienne did her friend an inestimable favor when she appeared both at Maxim’s and the races in the Bois du Boulogne wearing one of Gabrielle’s creations.

  At the turn of the century, Longchamps was well established as a premiere showplace for new fashions. Zola, who well appreciated the significance of fashion in the lives of courtesans, describes in exacting detail what his heroine, Nana, wore to the Grand Prix there. She was dressed in blue and white, he wrote. The silk bodice she wore, cut close to her body, was blue. And even for an age of enormous skirts, her crinoline was exaggerated. Over this she wore a white satin dress. The white sash that stretched diagonally across her chest was adorned with silverpoint lace that seemed to glitter in the sunlight. And finally her hat, a toque, was also blue except for the single white feather she had placed on top.

  The outfit, of course, was designed not only to please
the eye, but to be read for meaning. The colors she chose belonged to the stable owned by her benefactor’s family. Her toque resembled a jockey’s cap. The size of her crinoline, which was daring, emphasized the size of her hips (or, read another way, libido). The sash implied that she was a conqueror (which, in a certain sense, she was). Silk and satin served to remind everyone who gazed in her direction of her wealth as well as the way she had made it. The glitter and shininess of it all reflected the powers she possessed to attract and fascinate. And the feather? On the one hand a bird, wildness itself, the voluptuousness of nature, and on the other, the hunt—the urge to capture, ravish, possess.

  Clothing is not just practical. What we wear on our bodies speaks to others, expressing intent and mutual understandings, while acting as a public calling card, telling others, even strangers, who we are, or at least who we pretend to be. But that is not all dress does. Aside from protection and expression, clothing can also be read as a sign that reveals the Zeitgeist of a culture, a spirit that is always changing. Indeed, fashion is one of the principal signatures of time. What is desirable at one moment will not be acceptable at the next. To know what color to choose, at what length to measure your hem, which shoes you should wear for what occasion, requires an acute awareness of the present moment.

  It should not surprise us then that the word chic came into use in association with courtesans. For these women, not only was it imperative to be à la mode, the successful courtesan had to stand out among fashionable women. She could never afford to be boring. Her timing had to be such that she was always just a few steps ahead. Perhaps this is why the great courtesans were known for having set styles. If in the eighteenth century, Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, was so skillful at making alterations to the designs of her tailors that she entered the history of couture, the courtesans of the Second Empire followed suit. It was Alice Ozy, for example, who introduced the custom of wearing all one color. Collectively courtesans popularized the crinoline. Indeed, all through the nineteenth century and two decades into the twentieth, grandes horizontales set the style in Paris. Charles Worth, who inaugurated the tradition of haute couture, was eager to design dresses for women who were courtesans. His clientele included not only the Empress Eugénie and the most prestigious families of France, but Cora Pearl, Païva, and the Countess de Castiglione. The notoriety of these clients made his designs even more notable. Since, as with the clothes film or rock stars wear today, what the grandes horizontales wore was news; columnists who wrote weekly about their exploits included detailed descriptions of their wardrobes. And there was another reason for their popularity among designers. Like movie stars or rock stars, as outsiders they could take more risks, a bravado that allowed couturiers to be more creative.

  The subject of style is often looked upon as trivial, but it is no less so than any art. Clothes announce the changes in society that are yet to come. By the time Cora Pearl was having her dresses made by the same couturier as the Empress Eugénie, as power moved with a steady pace from the hands of the aristocracy to the newly rich bourgeoisie, a great shift had already begun. The drama was perhaps at its most intense during Holy Week at the opening of the races when, as a parade of carriages would make its way down the avenue de L’Impératrice toward Longchamps, the cabs that carried courtesans were indistinguishable from those belonging to the ladies of high society. Though, as with all members of the nouveaux riches, courtesans could be revealingly ostentatious. Cora Pearl, for instance, shocked the sensibilities of the socially well positioned when she dressed all her livery men in yellow suits she had tailored to copy the style of British jockeys. During the Belle Epoque, Cornelia Otis Skinner describes another courtesan who stepped slightly over the line of modesty when she festooned all her horses’ bridles, her footman, and her driver’s hats with cockades of pink carnations. Still, like the cabs of those born to high society, a cocotte’s carriage would usually be signed by one of the most sought-after Prussian carriage makers.

  But though they arrived in the highest style, once inside the arena, courtesans were constrained by the old class distinctions. It is often the case that when a social system is waning, the old order will be asserted at certain sites with an almost vengeful rigidity. At Longchamps, the barrier between the terrain of those called the “proud elect” and the “impure” was, as Amédée Achard wrote in Paris Guide, “insurmountable. ” Here, the sanctity of bloodlines was asserted not only in the stables but in the galleries. Courtesans were not allowed into the enclosure near the jockey stand where titled and wealthy families watched the races.

  The courtesans, however, met this defense with a campaign of their own. Through weapons as flimsy as silk and cashmere, the old barriers were not only challenged, they were seriously compromised. More than one competition took place at Longchamps. While thoroughbred horses were readied to run, the track became a “battleground of dresses.” One by one, women with no pedigree, but who were nevertheless kept and dressed by the gentlemen sitting in the enclosure that excluded them, entered the amphitheater in full regalia, dazzling the excited crowds with an array of luxurious fabrics, deep and luminous colors, ribbons, lace, rich embroidery, feathered hats, and blazing jewelry. Every eye was upon them. And though some thought it scandalous that these outcasts dressed as well as, if not better than, ladies from high society, despite their disapproval, wellborn women felt compelled to study the detail of the courtesans’ apparel carefully, for what the grandes horizontales wore would dictate fashion for the coming season.

  The triumph was more than sartorial. Mirroring the social revolution that already was in the making, through the splendor of her clothing a courtesan could attract the kind of attention formerly reserved for royalty. Thus Zola describes the arrival of Nana to Longchamps, “When she had made her appearance at the entrance to the public enclo-

  sures . . . with two footmen standing motionless behind the carriage, people had rushed to see her, as if a queen were passing.”

  The crowds were already the new arbiters of taste and power, and they belonged to her. It was as if into this arena ruled by speed and the stopwatch, time marched in, riding on the hems of flamboyant skirts, feathers, and glitter, providing evidence of the constant motion into which all are eventually swept.

  Change was only to continue in the same direction until finally, when Gabrielle arrived on the scene, the style she invented symbolized the new independence women were seeking. After the great success of her hat shop, a second lover, Boy Capel, bankrolled a dress shop. Nearly a century later, the name of the legendary house she established still has the power to evoke the old excitement. It is called, of course, Chanel.

  APOLLONIE SABATIER

  Chapter Two

  Beauty

  I look at you and a sense of wonder takes me.

  —HOMER, the ODYSSEY

  THE VIRTUE MOST commonly attributed to courtesans is beauty. We think for instance of Madame de Pompadour, that delicately pink blush, reminiscent of certain exquisite rose petals, which colors her cheeks in the portraits Boucher painted of her. Or one of several women rendered by Titian comes to mind: Flora, for instance. No matter that the abundance of her flesh is no longer in style. The way her shimmering hair cascades over her corpulent and presumably soft shoulder gives pause.

  That beauty would have been a virtue of courtesans is hardly unexpected. It is common knowledge that this attribute excites desire. But beauty is more than a prelude to sexual pleasure. It is a pleasure in itself. In the presence of a beautiful person, man or woman, the eyes, even at times as if unwilled by any thought, but moving instead as if solely of their own volition, will wander toward that face, that body, not simply to record the fact of beauty but to rest there, absorbing the very substance of it. Whether you are moved by the loveliness of luminous eyes or the deeply carnal colors of a portrait painted by one of the Venetian masters of the Cinquecento, or the calm of an elegantly proportioned square framed by eighteenth-century architecture,
or a canyon cut through red rock that is so immense the dimensions seem to strain the capacity to see, you seldom turn away from beauty easily.

  This is true even though beauty is not a simple pleasure. The experience can, in fact, be hazardous. While beholding beautiful eyes, for instance, you may become suddenly vulnerable to seduction. Encountering an old painting, you are forcefully pulled away from the familiar toward a sensibility that can be, at times, menacingly foreign; entering the square that seems so elegantly balanced, you will feel suddenly off balance, even dizzy; and as for the canyon, its grandness will probably push you toward the edge of awe, a territory of annihilation, where whoever you thought you were momentarily vanishes.

  No wonder then that beauty was once considered sacred. Despite whatever danger the desire for beauty involves (the thrill of which may sometimes be appealing), the attraction seems almost inevitable. And if in pursuit we throw caution to the wind, perhaps this is because beauty seems to infuse the whole of existence with a new sense of meaning. This is not a significance that belongs to the world of logic. Even language falters at the task of defining what in the end seems inseparable from life. Beauty is in itself a quaesitum, the solution that lies at the end of a search, the answer to a longing that shapes our lives with a force that rivals even the strongest spiritual aspiration.

  Ancient Recipes

  Rarely do we appreciate the creative talents of women who are thought to be the great beauties. Beauty is usually described as a passive virtue—an attribute bestowed by nature with no effort on the part of the recipient, who is supposed to be more fortunate than able. The contradictions of this thinking become apparent, however, when it is argued that beautiful women endanger men. In these arguments, the accusation is common that beautiful women use artifice to deceive and entrap their admirers. The idea that beauty is only “skin- deep” usually accompanies this argument. Though in truth, since “ wayward” women were accused in such strictures of wearing too much makeup, the beauty in question would have been even more superficial.