In her own telling, Marion was born with a great aptitude for frivolity, an important quality in a good hostess. Though this talent is rarely encouraged in children (at times it is even punished), it is as fruitful a calling as any other, beneficial not only to those who have the ability but to the larger society as well. We have only to imagine an atmosphere dominated by dutiful work, dour expressions, or strict manners to see the necessity.
For parents at the beginning of the twentieth century, Marion’s mother and father seemed exceptionally lenient. They were not especially punitive when, on Halloween, she was arrested for throwing a sack of vegetables at the butler who answered the door of a posh mansion. Her mother and father must have felt partly culpable for her actions. While they were out of town they had left her in the care of a maid who, too busy to look after a child, sent Marion by herself to the locked park in the neighborhood below. Very quickly she decided that, as she describes them in her autobiography, “the raggedy looking” children outside the gate were having a better time than those inside. Soon she found herself joining them in a plot to steal vegetables from a grocer on Lexington Avenue in order to throw them at the first person who answered the door of a fancy house in the neighborhood.
Even as a child, the worlds that existed outside the comfortable one in which she was raised seemed more attractive to her. Her father was a moderately successful lawyer in Brooklyn. Yet, in the tape-recorded interviews that document her autobiography, though her grammar is correct, her speech is full of the slang and cadences of a rougher life. On film, Davies seems to be at one moment delicate, and at the next tough and charmingly streetwise. The notion that street life was supposed to be adventurous and romantic was characteristic of a generation that had begun to find the protocols of privilege suffocating. Once, when she was the guest of the socialite Jim Deering, at his villa on Biscayne Bay, after complaining to her mother, “I’m very bored here, what a lot of grumpy people,” she escaped over the estate walls and ran off to Palm Beach. Yet again like many in her generation, she was also drawn in the direction of glamour and glitter. If years later she learned that the mansion she and her friends had attacked on Halloween belonged to the man whose mistress she eventually became, the choice was metaphorical as well as accidental. The place she occupied in society would always be equivocal. Lover of a powerful man but not his wife, enjoying a luxury that was not always her own, respected and yet the center of a scandal that lasted for years, Marion Davies eluded definition.
To be free of strict demarcation, uncircumscribed by ordinary expectations, indeterminate and yet determined in another way, loose, spirited, seeking only the definitions of each moment was what she chose. She had little tolerance for anything she found tedious. Since she would not submit herself to the rigors of boredom in school, she was often consigned to the corner. Seldom is the significance of such resistance properly credited. If the wrong path is not refused, the right one may never appear. Though Marion wanted to dance, even ballet school seemed too dull. What she really wanted was to become a showgirl. This tested her parents’ patience. But finally, despite her mother’s horrified objections, they sent her to Kosloff’s, the best among New York’s schools that prepared girls to go on the stage. At the age of thirteen she joined the pony ballet, and not much later she became a Ziegfeld girl—a role in which she was able to use her extraordinary gift, a vivid and compelling love for the fleeting joys of life.
Hearst, who sat in the front row of the Ziegfeld Follies night after night as she performed, found her irresistibly charming. He pursued her for a period of a year, sending her small offerings, candy, silver, boxes, or gloves. More than thirty years older than Davies, he was not a conventionally attractive man. Pear-shaped and balding, in photographs of the couple he appears like a bloated ghost smiling beside her. But she fell in love with him nonetheless. No doubt the fact that he was so wealthy or that he could help her career with pages of free publicity in his newspapers added to his appeal. But these were incidental details within what was a far more complex attraction. They were both large figures—physically tall, vital, intense, intelligent, forceful in different ways. Like her, though again in different ways, he could be unorthodox. When they did not serve his purposes, he could push conventions aside with ease. Some of the differences between them would have attracted her, too. He was more worldly and better educated than she. That he was focused on future profit as well as present pleasures meant she could be free to dwell in the present without worry. And since he could match her move for move, where he was conventional, he provided her with a measure of safety, a seawall against her own outrageous impulses.
A story she tells from their early courtship evokes the many shades of meaning in the word once used for a courtesan’s paying lover, her “protector. ” One night when Marion was about to go to a party being given by General Vanderbilt for the Prince of Wales, Hearst ducked quickly into Cartier’s, bought a diamond and pearl bracelet and ring, and used these to bribe her to stay home. He was afraid he might lose her to the prince, who shared Hearst’ s enthusiasm for showgirls. Though after she accepted his deal, she planned to climb out her window and go to the party anyway, she found that he had hired detectives to wait outside her house.
But if Hearst could be an almost parental figure, he was also frequently absent. Remembering the parties at 1700 Lexington Road, Charlie Chaplin recalled that the best of them took place when Hearst was elsewhere. Several times a week a group that included Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, John Barrymore, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Alma Rubens, Harry Crocker, and Tom Ince would gather to swim or play charades, join in masquerades or dance in the incongruously grand ballroom Hearst had added on to the house. There were small dinner parties and larger soirées to which at times over a hundred people were invited, not only actors and actresses but also polo players and senators, chorus boys and foreign heads of state, anyone who interested Marion.
Throwing a good party requires a particular genius. We can get a taste of the quality by watching Davies in her films. In the mid-twenties she had become a popular actress, earning close to half a million dollars a year for her work. She was neither especially good nor bad at acting, but she had an astonishing charisma. In one film she made with Bing Crosby, during a duet they perform together, whenever he sings, it is she who commands attention simply through her smile. When she sings or dances, the tone of her voice and the way she moves have a surprisingly hypnotic effect. Through all her seemingly casual gestures, she radiates an intimate sexuality—loose, authentic, riveting.
It is fascinating to ponder that, though Davies seemed so authentic, she did not always tell the truth about her life. Many of those who are known to have charisma embellish and rearrange their own histories, almost as if they are creating a new past to express the mood of each moment. Any good hostess must have a fierce loyalty to the present. The significance of every other element—elegant food, furnishings, candlelight, atmosphere—pales when compared to her ability to awaken to each guest, every event or remark, thus multiplying everyone’s pleasure through her own delighted awareness.
Everywhere She Went
A city, yet a woman.—William Blake, “Jerusalem”
Here is the burning heart of Paris, the high road to mundane triumphs, the great theatre of ambitions and of the famous dissoluteness, which draws to itself the gold vice, and folly of the four quarters of the globe.—Edmondo De Amicis, Studies of Paris
We are accustomed to thinking of pleasure as simple. Yet as much as pleasure belongs to the present, it also belongs to the past. Even the most sensual desires have a complexity redolent with history and tradition. Whether it is a glass of wine or a can of beer, rich coffee and milk taken in the morning with a croissant or perhaps Earl Grey tea with porridge, an embroidered coat designed by Yves St. Laurent, or a pair of blue jeans, a ride down Fifth Avenue in a Jaguar convertible, a ride over the waves on a surfboard, or the glimpse of a certain part of the body that we find attra
ctive, no desire is entirely free of the past. To a great extent, we learn to want what we want.
Like any great tradition, the history of pleasure includes classic forms and revolutionary innovations, influential figures, celebrated movements and times that were especially creative. These famous periods were often centered in particular places, cities that have gradually taken on the aura of sacred sites. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris became a mecca of pleasure, as pilgrims from around the world arrived to pay homage and bring back some of the city’s wisdom. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., who not only founded the Ziegfeld Follies but shaped American musical theatre for years to come, was deeply influenced by the music halls he saw in Paris. Indeed, he imported the idea of presenting a spectacular tableau of beautiful women dressed in elegantly revealing costumes from the Folies-Bergère. He was not the only one to be persuaded. Whether it was the Prince of Wales or the king of Prussia, Edith Wharton or Henry James, Stanford White or Eugene O’ Neill, everyone fell under the spell of “Gay Paree.”
The name is revealing. Long before it was a cypher for homosexual life, the word “gay” had another meaning. Perhaps because its ancestry in Old French includes a word which denoted “licentiousness,” the use of the term “gay” during the nineteenth century implied the presence of courtesans. And in truth, it was the grandes horizontales who made the city gay. If Paris was a perpetual celebration, the courtesan was the life of the party. Everywhere she went came to life.
Of course, given the mysterious nature of pleasure, this vitality was not spread evenly. Some places were livelier than others. In the center of Paris, the courtesan’s paces inscribed an especially legendary geography over an area extending less than two square miles known as the Grands Boulevards. Here the profoundly social nature of pleasure was palpable. The Italian traveler and writer Edmondo De Amicis describes the effect of entering this glittering domain, which began at the boulevard Montmartre and ended at the Place Madeleine. “The horses pass in troops, and the crowd in torrents. Windows, shops, advertisements, doors, facades, all rise, widen and become silvered, gilded and illumined. It is rivalry of magnificence . . . which borders on madness.”
That the extremity of this awe-inspiring abundance borders on religious experience does not escape him. Describing the signs on which the names of illustrious fashion houses, shops, and restaurants were spelled out, he writes that “Great inscriptions in gold run along the facades like verses from the Koran along the walls of mosques.” But this had to be either a very new or a very old religion, one that worships the fecundity of material life. “The eye,” he adds, “finds no place upon which to rest” in this excessive landscape, “full of coquetry and pride, which dazzles and confuses like blinding scintillations,” as it expresses perfectly “the nature of a great, opulent and sensual city, living only for pleasure and glory.”
Though the last phrase may seem somewhat exaggerated, De Amicis did not invent the hyperbole. The idea belonged to the phenomenon he was observing. It was a momentary illusion, created through an unspoken accord, the crowds not only assenting but each among them doing his or her best to keep alive the glorious feeling that only pleasure lay in every direction. And for a period of several hours, the common consent of the thousands who arrived by carriage or on foot, who strolled past the cafés, entered, drank, dined, danced, flirted, listened to music, laughed at the raucous or ribald words of a song, succeeded in creating a miracle. The pleasure they imagined was conjured into existence.
This extraordinary feat was more than made possible by the fact that it was repeated every night. That certain revelers came again and again, the men called boulevardiers, the women known as demi-mondaines, was essential. From noon until the early hours of the morning, the region belonged to them. Thus, a courtesan reaching this territory just after rising at noon might head directly to the café at number 22 boulevard des Italiens called Tortoni. Entering by the private door reserved for regular patrons in the back, she would take lunch with a friend or a lover, afterwards most likely indulging in one of the ices for which the café was famous.
After this, she might drop down to the shade of the Tuileries Gardens for a brief stroll before wandering into the passages leading off the boulevard Montmartre, small arcades filled with shops, to look at and perhaps purchase the sumptuous fabrics, the flowers arranged like offerings to the gods, sparkling gems wrested from all over the world, perfumes made from fields of lavender, rose petals, leaves of lemon verbena, and thousands of enchanting objects designed to titillate the eye displayed in the countless windows that lined her path.
Tired then from this brief but richly sensuous tour, she would return to the boulevard des Italiens, stopping now at the Café de Paris across the street from the café where she took her lunch, or instead at the Maison Dorée, next door to Tortoni’s, knowing that at this hour, the late afternoon, she will be certain to encounter friends. Perhaps while sitting with a table of boulevardiers, journalists, artists, other cocottes, she might meet a new protector; then again, if by chance she already has an appointment for the night, she may simply be there to relax.
If it is early fall, when the Paris season is already in full swing yet still not tired of itself, the air that was hot in midday will have a pleasant edge of coolness at this hour, and it is pleasant to sit outdoors as witty remarks fly by, laughter rising and ebbing, and abandon herself to the tide of conversation. Moreover, the relative ease of the hour is needed to revive herself for the larger waves to come.
Soon, she will rise to prepare for the evening. When she returns, she will be dressed far more elegantly and, no matter how nearby she lives, she will arrive in a coach. De Amicis describes the moment “when all the gay life of Paris pours itself out from all the neighboring street,” when the odor of musk and flowers and Havana cigars and absinthe mixes heavily in the air, and the carriages stop while “the cocottes, with their long trains descend . . . and disappear, with the rapidity of arrows through the doors of the restaurants.”
Whether she is dining at the Maison Dorée, the Café de Foy, the Café Anglais, Maxim’s, the Prévost, Marguery, Viel, Le Cardinal, Ledoyen, or Le Grand Vefour, the meal will be sumptuous, with eight or nine courses, beginning with small, nameless bite-size treats, followed by soup made velvety on the tongue by cream, continuing with fish and then meat, if not game, too, all accompanied by a good champagne, Bordeaux, or Burgundy, a chardonnay, and then perhaps a Charlotte or Croustade d’ananas Pompadour, and finally ices, without of course skipping at the very end a digestif—Armagnac, Cognac, or Chartreuse. She may be dining in a private room upstairs called a salon particulière, with just her lover or a small party, or she may be seated in the grand salon, the decor of both rooms adorned with velvet and silk brocade, frescoes, gold gilding, lit by dazzling chandeliers in the public room, and quieter, more flattering lamps in the private one. If she is in a salon alone with her lover, they may take another course of pleasure on the couch provided for each private room before descending together at midnight once again into the streets, which are lit now with gas lamps and the thousand lights of every café and restaurant, all of which give the boulevards, against the night sky, a startlingly brilliant illumination.
By contrast to the restaurant in which the air of jubilance is subdued, the streets host a celebration of gigantic proportions: the festivity stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction. Here a perpetual party pulls the couple into a powerful stream heading perhaps toward yet another café, open late at night, the Café de Foy or Paris, or toward the more verdant Champs-Elysées, where singers can be found performing at the café s chantants, their sparkling lights strung like diamonds under the trees; or in the other direction, to the Palais Royale and its gaming tables, which inspire an excitement that makes up for the sordid surroundings, the walls cracking and stained with oil but the spinning wheel seductive.
Yet perhaps they have not dined so early, choosing instead to attend the opera or the theatre
first. Before the end of the Second Empire, they will attend the opera on the rue le Pelletier, which is connected to the boulevard des Italiens by a covered passage. Closer to the turn of the century, they will attend the extravagantly decorous Opéra Garnier at the epicenter of the Grands Boulevards where the rue de la Paix, the boulevards des Italiens and Capucines meet. No doubt they will arrive separately, she by coach at the main entrance, mingling for a while with friends in the lower foyer before walking slowly up the grand staircase made of rare marble and onyx so that, appropriately set in this opulent architecture, her own beauty can be admired.
The streets immediately around the Opéra will have prepared them both for this night. Her dress would have been made by a designer headquartered on the rue de la Paix, perhaps the fashionable Paul Poiret or his mentor, Charles Worth (or, in an earlier time, Mlle. Sauvinet on the boulevard des Italiens). And a few steps further west, in the Place Vendôme, her protector would have found the diamond bracelet which he plans to present to her when he visits her private box during the intermission.
Leaving the Opéra, which at this hour would be illuminated by so many lights it appeared almost phosphorescent, they would cross the square to the Café de la Paix, with its pale green and gold gilt interior, designed (as the Opéra had been) by Charles Garnier to be elegant but more intimate, for a late supper together, followed perhaps by a few yet more intimate hours in a room next door at the Grand Hôtel.
Then again, they may have gone to the theatre. The abundance is staggering to contemplate. There were spectacles everywhere. The names are legendary now: L’Ambigu-Comique, featuring the great Frédéric Lema"tre, who could milk a laugh from any line; the Théâtre Historique, where Dumas’s La Reine Margot opened; the Théâtre des Variétés, where Hortense Schneider sang Offenbach’s bawdy roles, often portraying a courtesan; the Vaudeville, the Gymnase, the Théâ tre de la Porte Saint-Martin—each nightly presenting macabre murders, romance, history, mime, or variety acts filled with gymnasts, clowns, dancers, and singers. There were circuses, too: the Cirque d’Hiver, the Cirque Olympique, and the Hippodrome, established by the Franconi brothers, where Mogador rode bareback and the Frascati brothers clowned.
The Book of the Courtesans Page 15