by Andrew Rose
In later years, Marguerite posthumously moved her parents up the social ladder. Firmin and Marie were promoted respectively to lawyer’s clerk and milliner (after all, Marguerite’s couturier ‘Coco’ Chanel had started her working life making hats).105
In the 1890s, Maître Elie-Henri-Jules Langlois, a lawyer originally from Nîmes and with a very shady past (including imprisonment for assault), acted for Thérèse Humbert, La Grande Thérèse, prime mover in the colossal ‘Humbert-Crawford’ financial scandal that convulsed France in 1902, a drama of which Marguerite would have been well aware. By the simple ruse of inventing a rich American benefactor, Thérèse and husband Frederic persuaded scores of people, of modest means as well as the super-rich, to ‘loan’ them money at absurdly attractive rates of interest. Overall, the Humbert scheme netted around 100,000,000 gold francs (perhaps £350,000,000 at present-day values).
Although discovery and retribution were inevitable consequences of so colossal a deception, one valuable lesson was almost certainly not lost on Marguerite. The fraudsters had succeeded in duping the public because they aimed high, brazenly keeping up their act to the very end. The luxuriously appointed mansion at 65 Avenue de la Grande Armèe, the Humberts’ Paris home for twenty years, was just a few steps from the cramped and modest apartment shared by Marguerite’s family.
In Marguerite’s account, she left the spartan convent of her own volition, moved in with the Langlois family, and began enjoying le haut luxe (the high life) of Paris. She claimed that Mme Langlois was her godmother. In reality, Marguerite may have entered the household as a domestic servant (perhaps placed there by the nuns), giving her the chance to see the workings of an haut bourgeois household and to use her nascent observational skills to the full. The Langlois were cultured, as well as rich, interesting themselves in music and the arts. Marguerite undoubtedly profited from the brief association.
The idyll did not last long. Although Marguerite considered herself to have been ‘devout … in a mystic way as young sensitive girls sometimes are’,106 she fell from her state of grace rather rapidly. By the early summer of 1906, she was pregnant. On 21 January 1907, her only child, a daughter christened Raymonde, was born in the grim maternity hospital at Port-Royal.107 Marguerite was just 16 years old.
Many years later, it was suggested in the American press that Raymonde’s father had been a penniless art student, but he might just as easily have been a member of the Langlois family or another male servant, perhaps a footman or a coachman. Marguerite, typically, has left two completely different accounts of the father’s identity, neither of which is convincing. The first finds her engaged to a man of 28, whom she had known since childhood, but – as she wrote airily – ‘unfortunately I had not a sufficient dowry and the beautiful dream collapsed’.108 The second version involves an Englishman, younger son of a colonial administrator in India and killed in the Great War. His name is given, quite improbably, as ‘André Mont-Clarc’. Under the age of 21 at the time of the romance, the young man required his father’s agreement to marry, a consent that unsurprisingly never came. Whoever fathered baby Raymonde, this episode put an abrupt end to Marguerite’s association with the Langlois family.
In the straitened circumstances of the Alibert household, there were few resources to spare for Marguerite and her child. Raymonde was sent away to be looked after on a farm near Maulins, in cetnral France and remained there for seven years. Marguerite never visited her during this period. Later, after Marguerite’s circumstances had dramatically improved, Raymonde returned to live with her mother in Paris, before being sent to school in London after the Great War.
But for now, untrammelled by early motherhood, Marguerite was free to pursue her quest for upward mobility. Her prime asset was her body. Although not a chocolate-box beauty, she was petite, with a shapely figure, expressive greenish-grey eyes, a pretty mole on her left cheek, and a large sensuous mouth. At this time, she wore her striking auburn hair in long tresses, ‘falling to my knees’.
What happened in the year or so after the birth of Raymonde is obscure, and Marguerite, understandably, glossed over what may have been a particularly unpleasant period in her life. This was a time when – like Edith Piaf a decade or so later – she may have been forced on to the streets, earning a living by ‘polite prostitution’, singing in cheap cabarets and restaurants. Unlike Piaf, however, Marguerite already had a veneer of sophistication, the legacy of her brief convent education and time spent with the Langlois family. She also had the advantage of having been brought up in a smart area of Paris, affording her countless opportunities to see how the rich led their lives. Marguerite, a quick learner, soon honed the skills necessary to support herself in the only practicable way open to her. ‘She was tough. She had to be.’109
Marguerite came (or brought herself) to the attention of a Mme Denart, who ran the kind of high-class brothel known as a maison de rendezvous at 3 rue Galilee, in the heart of the fashionable 16th arrondissement, not far from Marguerite’s modest childhood home on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe. Mme Denart, for reasons which will be seen, later developed a jaundiced view of her young protégée. Marguerite came to her ‘ill-mannered’, with ‘no accomplishments’, unpleasant disparagements which do not quite fit the facts. Mme Denart, for all her sour recollections, probably did help develop Marguerite’s social skills. Elocution lessons were arranged (Marguerite would learn to speak French with slightly old-fashioned formality). The daughter of a cab driver and a charwoman was taught how to dress in style and keep her demanding customers entertained in restaurants or the theatre. With some exaggeration, Mme Denart boasted that her ingénue had been made to study the piano for three years ‘so that she could go out with my clients’. Mme Denart undoubtedly had an eye for talent and Marguerite evidently had what was needed to become a successful courtesan. In time, Marguerite became ‘the mistress of nearly all my best clients, gentleman of wealth and position in France, England, America and other countries…’ All in all, Mme Denart declared modestly, ‘It was me that made … a sort of lady of her.’110
Even by 1907, Marguerite, a very self-possessed 16-year-old, was the sort of lady known as ‘une dame à cinq heures’ (‘a 5 o’clock lady’) or ‘une cinq à sept’ (‘a five to seven’), references to the late afternoon, a popular time for sexual assignations in maisons de rendezvous.111 When not accompanying a client to dinner or to the theatre, there were excellent opportunities for such working women to gain custom in the music halls springing up all over Paris as the new century progressed, such as the Palais Persan (Persian Palace) at ‘Magic-City’, near the Eiffel Tower; the Casino de Paris; and, most famous of all, the Folies Bergère at 32 rue Richer in the raffish Pigalle district.
At the Folies, business was booming and, despite prudish attempts at municipal regulation, stage acts were becoming steadily more risqué. The management of the Folies actively encouraged the presence of attractive, well-dressed and elegant young women as expensive bait front of house, greeting the regular incoming procession of rich men eager for sensual diversion.
There were broadly three types of what would now be called ‘sex workers’ operating in Paris. Commentators noted the difficulty of distinguishing from each other la courtisane, la fille d’occasion et la prostituée professionelle (the courtesan, the woman for hire, or the professional prostitute). Marguerite’s aim in life was very clear from the start. She had no intention of standing in a darkened doorway in a draughty street in order to drum up trade. She never regarded herself as a common prostitute, some diseased whore from the pages of Bubu de Montparnasse, a widely read contemporary novel.112 In the manner of another fictional courtesan, Marguerite Gautier, doomed heroine of Dumas fils’ maudlin novel La Dame aux Camelias (and others in the long line of Parisian poules de luxe), she would succeed in creating a glamorous, almost wholesome, image for herself. In due course, she was able to manage, with considerable professional skill, the simultaneous attentions of a number of wealthy men.
Perhaps her closest literary forebears are the courtesans who feature in La Comédie Humaine by Balzac. Marguerite’s rapacity, ambition and desire for social acceptance mirrors the hypocritical Valérie Marneffe, while her gentler side, love of style and fashion, is reflected in the character of Josépha Mirah, the ‘tart with a heart’.
In real life, nineteenth-century Paris had seen a parade of grandes horizontales, seeking to exploit the riches of the City of Light. One of the most avaricious was Esther Lachmann, ‘La Païva’, born in Moscow of Jewish parentage. In around 1838, abandoning husband and child, she moved to Paris, becoming mistress of a concert pianist, who introduced her to the fashionable world. In 1851, now widowed, she married a Portuguese nobleman, obtained his title, then abandoned him for Count von Donnersmarck, a much younger man, ‘whose income never fell below three million francs a year’. Esther, always a heavy spender, built the ‘Hôtel Païva’ on the Champs-Élysées, a temple of luxury, which featured a ‘Hollywood style grand staircase’ and a salon lined with costly Lyons damask. Her ‘great bed was carved from precious woods inset with ivory’, next to ‘a large safe which kept her jewels’.113 Esther was grasping, greedy and, it was said, particularly unpleasant to her servants. After her death at 64, her husband allegedly preserved the body of ‘La Païva’ in embalming fluid.
Some courtesans became acknowledged figures in the field of art, music and literature. Apollonie Sabatier, born in 1822 and known as ‘La Présidente’, was famous for her Sunday dinners, attended by literary lions such as Gustave Flaubert, Ernest Feydeau and Théophile Gautier. Mistress of the banker Hippolyte Mosselman, Apollonie was acidly described by Edmond de Goncourt as ‘a biggish woman with a coarse, hearty manner … [a] rather vulgar creature endowed with classical beauty … a camp-follower for fauns’.114
Emma Crouch, born in England and educated in Boulogne, reinvented herself as ‘Cora Pearl’ for the Paris market of the 1860s. Cora, very beautiful with tremendous dress sense and strikingly auburn hair, was quickly taken up by French nobility, including the Duc de Morny and Prince Napoleon, the Emperor’s cousin. She sang, wearing the skimpiest of costumes, in operetta by Offenbach. In association with Charles Worth, the English couturier, her style of dress, her maquillage and her coiffure became the talk of Paris. She even out-dressed the Empress Eugénie on one evening at the opera, when all eyes turned to look at Cora, causing Eugénie to leave in a jealous huff. Her château at Beauséjour, near Orléans, was the scene of extravagant parties, during one of which Cora, nude, was carried around on a large silver charger, covered only in parsley. Like Marguerite, Cora became an accomplished horsewoman, riding in the fashionable Bois de Boulogne. Like Marguerite, too, she kept a studbook of her lovers, recording all manner of intimate performance data.
Nearer Marguerite’s time, as the turn of the century approached, the reigning Paris beauties were ‘La Belle Otero’, Liane de Pougy (a glamorous reinvention of Anne-Marie Chassaigne)115 and Lina Cavalieri, originally from Belgium. All these women served their time at the Folies Bergère.
Otero, who traded on her image as an exotic Andalusian dancer and was pursued by legions of royal and noble admirers, had a kind heart. She promoted the career of Marguerite Boulc’h, a penniless 14-year-old errand girl (born in 1891), who would become the great chanteuse, Fréhel.116 De Pougy ‘was famous for the splendour of her jewellery, her luxurious town house, the “secondary residences” … in Brittany and Saint-Germain’. Something of a wit, de Pougy was once asked her opinion of Otero and Calavieri. ‘It’s like this,’ she replied, ‘when Calavieri wears real jewels they look false and when Otero wears false jewels they look real.’117
It was in 1907 that André Meller first came into Marguerite’s life.118 Meller was a married man of 40 with, as Marguerite ruefully recalled, a roving eye for women. He was tall, good-looking and slim. Meller was also rich, the son of a successful Bordeaux wine négociant, who supplied claret to the Vatican. Marguerite may have been introduced to Meller by the friend of a friend. Or she may have encountered him in the street, outside the famous early motor showroom, Neubauer, where he had just bought a Renault. Or she may simply have been picked up by him one night at the Folies.
Meller had a racing stable at Bordeaux, which seems to have been the spur to Marguerite’s passion for horseflesh (in contrast to the unsteady seat of her future lover the Prince of Wales, Marguerite became an excellent mount and also adored attending fashionable race meetings). With little Raymonde safely out of the way, Marguerite cultivated her affair with Meller, who set her up, as a ‘kept woman’, in an apartment in the rue Pergolese (the 16th arrondissement, of course). Unlike strait-laced London, there was no shame in a man appearing in public with his mistress in Paris and Marguerite made an attractive companion for Meller in and around town. Over the course of a seven-year affair, Meller took her duck-shooting (staying at his villa in Arcachon on the coast, west of Bordeaux), and on trips abroad, including to Morocco and Venice. Although there was talk of annulment, Meller does not seem seriously to have contemplated marrying Marguerite, who none the less styled herself ‘Mme Meller’, although tout Paris was getting to know her simply as ‘Maggie Meller’.
Meller’s business interests in Bordeaux, coupled with his status as a married man, allowed Marguerite – like many other ‘kept’ women at the time – to carry on the rewarding business of Paris courtesan. She continued to feature as a major attraction at the maison de rendezvous and, aiming unswervingly for the top, would now be seen in the most luxurious hotels and expensive restaurants. People were beginning to notice Maggie Meller.
And Marguerite took notice of the world around her. She lived through the sensational trial of Mme Steinheil in 1908. Jeanne-Marguerite Japy had been the mistress of President Felix Faure and, as legend has it, was engaged in an act of fellatio at the Élysée Palace, when the President suddenly died. Jeanne-Marguerite’s fair hair was held tightly in the dead man’s grip and had to be cut away. In her haste to escape from this most embarrassing situation she abandoned her corsets before slipping out of the palace by the tradesmen’s entrance.119
A few years later, now married to Adolphe Steinheil, a rich and well-connected artist, Jeanne-Marguerite was charged with strangling her husband (and murdering her mother-in-law) in obscure circumstances, apparently for gain. Her testimony was wildly inconsistent and there was evidence that she had tried to implicate innocent people. Nevertheless, after a spirited performance in court, Jeanne-Marguerite was acquitted.120 The verdict showed the world, including Marguerite, that a beautiful woman could murder her husband, tell a preposterous story, walk free from court and collect an inheritance.
One summer afternoon in 1912 (during the Prince of Wales’s first visit to France and the year when the first completely nude woman appeared on the stage of the Folies Bergère), Marguerite was introduced by a mutual admirer to Pierre-Plessis. The young journalist, poet and author was a friend of Jean Cocteau, the current enfant terrible of Paris. At l’heure du thé (‘tea-time’ is a wholly inadequate translation), amid the opulent surroundings of the Ritz Hotel in the Place Vendôme, a string orchestra essayed sentimental melodies amid a forest of palms. The young romantic was captivated by Marguerite’s large, deep, seemingly melancholy eyes (‘les grand yeux doux et tristes’). She was wearing a conspicuously large diamond ring, displaying the first fruits of what would soon become a formidable collection of jewellery. Pierre-Plessis was struck by her apparent air of simplicity, even of artlessness. Marguerite spoke demurely of going that evening to the Theatre-Français, and of how much she admired the writings of Pierre Loti, Charles Farrère and Alfred de Musset.121
Pierre-Plessis’s sympathetically written account of meeting Marguerite at the Ritz shows how well she could marshal her attractive qualities, but she did not always show her gentle side to the world. Her dry Parisian wit could be corrosive and was combined with a fiery temperament. At times, Marguerite could exhibit a violent temper, as the Prince of Wales would dis
cover to his cost. However rich and well-connected her lovers might be, she was not afraid to show her contempt when circumstances required. Mme Denart remembered a celebrated occasion when Marguerite vigorously slapped a wealthy admirer about the face as they sat in an expensive restaurant, in the full view of other customers.
André Meller, despite having provided his lover with a smart apartment, jewellery and access to Parisian haute couture, was not exempt from Marguerite’s whiplash. Pre-war Morocco seemed old-fashioned and, despite her own well-practised profession, she expressed distaste for holiday accommodation set among camels, prostitutes and slave-dealers. As to Venice, at the Danieli there was a violent scene in a bedroom (once occupied by the novelist George Sand), when Meller – increasingly jealous of the attention Marguerite was attracting from other men – lost his temper, slapped her, and had his face deeply scratched in return.
The quarrel was soon patched up and, the following year, Marguerite joined Meller Deauville at the Villa Paradou, a neo-gothic extravaganza which still stands behind the famous Casino. Marguerite was beginning to cut a figure among the swarm of ambitious and attractive women, wasps around the honey-pot in this most fashionable of resorts.
One writer with a sharp eye for beauty and the ways of high society was Georges Dreyfus, better known as Michel Georges-Michel, author of Les Montparnos, a novel based on the life of his friend Modigliani (later adapted into a film, Les Amants de Montparnasse, starring Gérard Philipe and Anouk Aimée). Artistic adviser to Diaghilev, helping produce the Ballet Russes between 1913 and 1929, organiser of the first Picasso exhibition in Rome, Georges-Michel wrote extensively, and amusingly, about the society that preened itself in fashionable resorts such as Deauville. Many of his books were illustrated by leading contemporary artists, such as Van Dongen and Raoul Dufy.122