The Book of the Courtesans (3 page)

The reappearance of this tradition in fourteenth-century Italy was partly a
consequence of the revival of antiquity that was so crucial to the Renaissance.
A lineage of courtesans can be traced from antiquity through the great masters
into the modern period. We might begin, for instance, in Greece, with
Praxiteles, whose most celebrated
Aphrodite of Cnidus
, modeled after
his mistress the courtesan Phyrne, initiated the tradition of the female nude
in sculpture; then move on to Italy during the Renaissance, when portraits of
Venus and other goddesses, for which courtesans often modeled, were painted by
Veronese, Titian, Raphael, and Tintoretto; then go to eighteenth-century Paris,
where Boucher’s frothy images of frolicking goddesses recalled the rosy
likenesses of the Pompadour he painted; and end finally with the famously frank
portrait of a courtesan,
Olympia
, by Manet, which was intended both as
a copy and a parody of Titian’s
Venus of Urbino
.

Not only did many artists in the Renaissance, among them Cellini, Raphael, and
Titian, frequent courtesans, but friendships were often forged between the
members of these two professions. Veronica Franco was a good friend of
Tintoretto, just as Raphael and Imperia were also friends. The rapport is
understandable for many reasons. The revival of antiquity benefited both,
restoring an honored place for courtesans at the tables of noblemen and
intellectuals alike, at the same time as it elevated artists above the position
of artisan to which they had been relegated before. Moreover, since the amorous
Greek and Roman gods belonged now to the vocabulary of art, artists found
themselves free to explore the erotic life in their images.

The greater accumulation of wealth that characterized the same period meant
that artists could sell their works more frequently and for higher prices. This
abundance did not always help women. Since greater wealth meant that the price
of dowries was suddenly higher, women from less fortunate backgrounds could not
afford to be married. For this reason, more women were forced into becoming
courtesans. And yet, paradoxically, the same wealth that had prevented a woman
from marriage benefited her greatly once she became a courtesan. And finally,
both courtesans and artists, being newly and only provisionally accepted into
society, shared an ambiguous terrain, a world of salons and parties, taste and
wit that, skirting established power, existed just past the edge of the
respectable world. Together, through their association and the connection they
were making between art and sexual liberty, they were resurrecting and
reshaping the tradition that would lead one day to the
demi-monde
in
Paris, the Gay Nineties, if not to several contemporary movements of a
different nature. It is a history that has affected countless lives, in ways
both obvious and subtle.

A catalytic spark travels back and forth between each life and the spirit of an
age. The mood of an age affects the choices that those living in it make. What
is equally true is that the unique choices made by those who live in any period
create a particular atmosphere. No tradition can remain the same for very long.
A living tradition is dynamic. Just as with a great epic poem that is passed
down orally from one generation to the next, some lines repeated and others
slightly changed, so by minor increments of change, gradually major shifts will
inevitably occur in every tradition.

Though courtesans depended on the maintenance of a double standard, as they
became more popular, the eventual effect of their transgressions was to
liberate women from the strictures that had sexually confined them. At the same
time, the economic independence of courtesans served as a model to women,
making the feminist vision of economic parity seem more possible. First
gradually, and then like a house of cards, the whole edifice of values that had
nurtured the existence of courtesans fell. Braving scandal, upper-class men
began to marry the women they loved. Soon upper-class women insisted on
marrying for love, too. The idea of the virgin bride began to seem antiquated.
Finally, when the old way of life had changed forever, a long tradition came to
an end.

But though the great courtesans no longer exist, we still have their virtues.
Of course, nominally these virtues have always existed. But if beauty, grace,
and charm have long been considered feminine virtues, with creative ingenuity
the great courtesans expanded these attributes, sometimes simply adding a new
tone or texture to them, at others reversing the meaning of them almost
entirely. Indeed, since any movement outside conventional roles can create
considerable erotic energy, this reversal accounts for some of the appeal
courtesans once had—an appeal that their virtues have for us still.
Despite changing conditions, the effect can still be felt in the gritty aura of
bravery that surrounds the images and stories, phrases, songs, and dances in
which their influence remains.

That we are remembering courtesans whenever these vestiges of their existence
come to mind, however, has until very recently been obscured. The idea of
scandal outlived the tradition long enough to erase our awareness of the
crucial roles the courtesan has played in history and in art. This amnesia is
especially strong in America, where, in the first productions of
Camille
, the heroine was changed from a courtesan into a chaste young
woman who was innocently betrothed and cruelly jilted. By contrast, if in mid-
nineteenth-century France the first production of Dumas’
La Dame aux
camélias
was temporarily halted by state censors, by the time of the
Belle Epoque, Liane de Pougy was affectionately called “our national
courtesan,” as now in countless ways this history is still remembered and
honored there.

It is wise to remember this history. Without it, any reading of our cultural
heritage must be somewhat shallow as well as naive. We need only think of the
familiar term “Gay Paree” to grasp the significance of this
forgotten dimension. At the end of the nineteenth century, the word “
gay” was used to describe women who were courtesans, as “the gay
life” referred to the world of the
demi-monde
that was built
around them. Understanding the reference throws light in two directions, past
and present, illuminating both Paris at the turn of the century and the
homosexual identity for which the word is used now.

Not only Renaissance art but modern art is filled with images of
demi-
mondaines
. The faces and figures of courtesans appear throughout paintings
by the artists who have shaped contemporary vision: Courbet, Manet, Degas,
Béraud, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec; they are gracefully present in the
posters made by Mucha, humorously depicted in the caricatures by Daumier and
Sem; in sculpted form they adorn more than one grand building, and even today
dance in a sculpture that flanks the entrance to the Palais Garnier, the old
Opéra in Paris.

Neither modern literature nor the modern sensibility would be the same had
courtesans not existed. They people the poems of Baudelaire, the novels of
Balzac, Dumas and Dumas
fils
, Zola, Flaubert, Colette. Proust’s
great novel,
A la recherche du temps perdu
, the work that more than
any other has defined the aesthetic of his age and perhaps also our own, places
a courtesan at the center of the narrative. A whole repertoire of plays, operas,
and films has been based on stories and legends of
cocottes
,
including Franz Lehar’s
The Merry Widow
; much of Offenbach’s
work; Verdi’s
La Traviata
, of course, and the great film by George
Cukor from the same plot,
Camille
; Pierre Renoir’s
Lola
Montes
; and Howard Hawks’s
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
.

The great fame of Maxim’s, where the second act of Lehar’s light opera
is set, is due in large part to the fact that this was once the restaurant
favored by the
grandes horizontales
and their escorts. The fabled
Grands Boulevards of Paris took their sparkle from them. They invented the
cancan at the Moulin Rouge and provided the most celebrated acts at the Folies-
Bergère. From these women a dazzling lineage can be traced that leads from
the
cafés chantants
, public dance halls, and music halls where
they performed, to cabaret life, and the modern French song as it came to be
sung finally by Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, and Maurice Chevalier. Indeed, the
wonderful singer and comedienne Minstinguett, who was Chevalier’s partner,
was encouraged at one point by the Second Empire courtesan named Alice Ozy.
Fréhel, the working-class singer who preceded Piaf as a great favorite in
the public eye, wore a gown in her first performances that was given to her by
La Belle Otero. Laure Hayman introduced Marcel Proust to contemporary artists
and gave him an education in worldly ways at the salon she hosted in Paris.

The lineage continues. The good timing and cheekiness of courtesans, the
graceful way they leaped and slinked and kicked their way past boundaries,
their implicit and explicit androgyny, their wit, their luminescence, their
aesthetic sensibilities, their capacity to fascinate and enchant, all have been
continued by a lineage of actresses, film stars, comediennes, singers, dancers,
who though not courtesans, studied and learned their virtues. Josephine Baker,
Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Gracie Allen, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan
Sarandon, Madonna, and Chloë Sevigny reshape and continue what is even now
a living legacy, an inheritance which has been handed down to all of us.

If the role the great courtesans were supposed to play was to please the lovers
who sustained them, within the seemingly narrow compass of that task they
discovered a kind of magic. In the unpredictable realm of eros, that which
pleases most is not simple submission. The secret they discovered is a paradox:
Those who would dominate are soon bored by their own powers. And
correspondingly, desire is excited by the presence of a spirited soul—
independent, unpredictable, incandescent with the mysteries of a separate being.
Perhaps in this way desire mirrors the incandescence of life, which is by
nature submissive only to an inner order, an order quickened by changes of
every kind, tuned to a mandate of transformations beyond our powers to fathom
or command.

Here, then, are the virtues.

MARIE DUPLESSIS

Flirtation

(THE FIRST EROTIC STATION)

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word,
flirtation
, which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.
—Earl of Chesterfield

W
E CAN SEE
all the elements of
timing, not only rhythm but also a talent for both comedy and fashion, at work
in flirtation. This is an art that relies far more on good timing than one
would ordinarily suppose. Let us go to still another party, the one held in
1841
at the old opera, la Salle Peletier in Paris, on the
night that comte Edouard de Perregaux met Marie Duplessis (the courtesan on
whose short life both
La Traviata
and
Camille
were based), to
illustrate the process. Though Duplessis was born to a poor peasant family and,
like Chanel, had worked for a short while as milliner’s assistant at wages
too low to keep anyone alive, she was at this moment already a kept woman. She
had learned how to dress and do her hair, how to speak correct French with a
Parisian and not a Norman accent. She was popular with the Jockey Club, that
aristocratic organization devoted both to horse races and to chasing women. But
she was yet to achieve the even greater heights of elegance and luxury which
for a great courtesan was both the mark of having arrived and her reward.

Of course, once again we can only try to imagine the scene between
Duplessis and the count, the man whom, just five years hence, in
1845
, she would marry. History has not given as much
detail here as the observation of the courtesan’s skill requires. But that
is why fiction exists—so we may see the undocumented moments that would
otherwise pass out of history, and thus out of our understanding, unwitnessed.

Yet good fiction also requires much that is accurate surrounding it. Thus, it
is important to know that a few years before this period in Paris, a ball at
the Opéra was a very exclusive event, which only members of aristocratic
or very wealthy families attended. They were dazzling affairs at which one
looked forward to being seen and to seeing. To remain
au courant
(or
as we say now, in the swim), one had to attend. But during the reign of Louis
Philippe, that ruler who, while trying to be both a monarch and a democratic
man, was called “the Citizen King,” the balls were opened up to
every level of society. And now that almost anyone could come, this particular
party was no longer so prized. Many upper-class ladies stayed home. But the
courtesans came, along with hopeful
lorettes
looking for a chance to
inch their way higher into society or find a new protector. There were still
plenty of successful entrepreneurs in attendance, as well as barons, and, as we
have already mentioned, at least one count.

As was usual for such gatherings—and still is—at the sidelines of
the ballroom floor the crowds settled into small groups and chatted. During the
conversation, as also was and is still usual, the eyes of those who conversed
would wander the crowd. Ladies would be scrutinizing each other’s dresses.
Everyone would be curious to know who arrived on the arm of whom. New faces
were being scrutinized. And of course, by means of a glance or a stare, whether
with subtlety or flourish, countless flirtations crossed the elegant rooms,
filling the air with excitement.

It was thus while Marie Duplessis was no doubt chatting with a group of friends
and acquaintances that she began to feel the heat of attention fall across her
shoulders like a light cloak or a hand brushed in passing against her spine.
Just as in the song written almost a century later about a similarly enchanted
evening, comte Edouard de Perregaux was standing across the crowded room, or
rather, the crowded
Grand Salon
(a salon which everyone in Paris
complained lacked elegance), when his gaze chanced to settle on her.

Here is where her timing transformed chance to good fortune. Aware that she was
being scrutinized, Marie did not turn quickly, as someone too eager might have
done. Though of course we are forced to fill in this part of the narrative, the
story is true to the many accounts that we have of her character, all of which,
with only one fleeting exception, describe her as refined and kind, two
qualities that together would have prevented her from turning abruptly away
from the conversation in which she was already engaged.

And of course there was another element that should have slowed down her
response—the precise quality of her gaiety. She loved to laugh and
laughed often, but her smile had an intriguing chiaroscuro not unlike the
mysterious mood of the
Mona Lisa
’s smile, a trace of a rather sad
boredom just beneath the surface, as if she were saying, “I’ve seen
it all.” And this is how the story unfolds further, toward the great
complexities of timing together with the many histories that can be sensed at
the fringes of frivolity.

First, because she was suffering from tuberculosis, the courtesan believed she
would die young. On the one hand, this gave her a great and unceasing appetite
for life. And yet, in the strange way that contradictory emotions marry in
experience, every morsel of life she tasted was seasoned with the knowledge of
death that can give the soul of even one so young—she was just seventeen
when she met Perregaux—a philosophical wistfulness. Feeling his eyes upon
her, she waited to turn, waited attentively while the moment seemed to expand
inside her infinitely.

Second (since there are always many causes for any virtue), she had known
desperation. And while desperation causes the kind of hysteria that can make
you fall out of step, it can also give you the blessedly carefree attitude that
leads to perfect timing.
I have seen the worst life has to offer and
nothing surprises or frightens me
, is the mantra.
I have nothing left
to lose
.

Which brings to mind the single exception to the many descriptions we have of
Marie Duplessis as refined. We have already told the story. It occurred when
she was still just a working girl, probably no more than fifteen years old. She
stood on the Pont-Neuf on her one day off from the sweatshop where she worked
every other day for at least sixteen hours, for starvation wages. That was why
she was hungry and that was also why she was standing so near a stand that sold
fried potatoes and why she did not buy what she wanted. But as luck would have
it, a gentleman happened along the bridge at this moment who responded to her
wish and answered her wish. The man who did this, Nestor Roqueplan, would come
to know Duplessis later in her life when she had become the best-dressed woman
in Paris; they traveled in the same circles. But what he noticed on this first
meeting was that she was unkempt, dressed in filthy ragged clothing, and that
she grabbed and devoured the
frites
he gave her without any delicacy
at all.

To have experienced extreme deprivation before her ascent to luxury would also
have given her a covert assurance beneath her refinement, a confidence that
came from having survived on the streets, which not only delayed the advent of
her decision to turn toward whoever was staring at her but gave the gaze that
she did finally return the leisurely air of a queen. She did not bat her eyes.
She was neither rushing to please him nor slipping away from his eyes in
modesty. She simply stared back.

You can see that look today in the many portraits of courtesans that riddle the
history of art. Sometimes they are dressed in clothes more risqué than
proper ladies and sometimes not. But what usually gives each woman away is the
frank quality of her gaze. Staring directly out of canvas after canvas, the
eyes do not flinch or shrink or apologize but instead meet you with unremitting
candor.

Now meeting such a gaze, is it not possible that the count lets out an almost
involuntary laugh as his attention is discovered and returned? He has been
startled to see that this young woman places herself on an equal plane with him.
That she is a woman born to a lower rank vanishes in the fresh air of her
presumption. The count laughs at himself, at the rules he has grown up with and
at the delightfully casual way that this stranger is breaking them all.

Immediately, and in a pace that is at this instant appropriately quick, she
grasps the humor, lets him see that she has gotten the joke with a brief smile,
and then—but this is what will capture his heart forever—she turns
away. And here it is important to note that although this makes him want to
follow her, to know more of her, her retreat is not motivated by the false
modesty that society requires of women, but from the depths of the character
she acquired over a childhood full of loss, including at an early age the
disappearance and death of her mother, the profundity of experience that in
almost every public situation compels her to reserve part of herself.

The example is inspiring, even now. Knowing that the count will invite her with
him to a private party at the Café Anglais and that she will accept, that
they will become lovers. That (along with many other men) he will contribute to
her support, that they will eventually enter a brief marriage a year before her
death, and that he will accompany her body to her last resting place on earth.
Still following Marie’s exemplary reticence, let us reserve the rest of her
story for a later time.