the passing of the lights of love

how the emancipation of women has brought about the vanishing of the great courtesans

PAUL MORAND

■ In ancient as well as modern times, the fame of the priestesses of Venus has been due to their intelligence rather than to their immorality. If their names and careers are still remembered, it is not solely because of the physical charms they once possessed. "We have mistresses to delight the spirit," said Demosthenes, speaking for the majority of the Greeks. And this "delight of the spirit" comprised the pleasures of the mind.

There is no doubt that pre-Christian Greece raised courtesans to the highest position they have ever held. This was partly because the absence of religious prejudice permitted pleasure without remorse, but it was also due to the fact that the profession of courtesan was the only one that women could practise. It therefore attracted the most gifted among them, for feminine energy and ambition naturally adopted it as a means of expression. And, the Greeks having accepted the validity and usefulness of a profession to which they attached great social importance, it came about that certain Greek courtesans were women of superior virtues (if we exclude from the last word the connotation it has in the singular). Obviously the virtues that could charm the foremost leaders of Greece and attract philosophers like Socrates were by no means contemptible. We have every reason to believe that women like Aspasia, Lais, Nais, Theodote, and Phryne, who were so successful in keeping both their protectors and their position in the upper ranks of society, must have been as skilful in the game of wits as in that of love.

The Greek schools for courtesans and the perfection to which their pupils could lay claim have been highly lauded. I believe that this is literary and historical license and that, as a matter of fact, the courtesan gained most of her knowledge through experience with men. It would follow that the art of charming and dominating illustrious citizens was not a secret possessed by Greek women alone, and one which disappeared with them. The psychologist would find the same traits in the adventurous women of every period. For, their success springs not so much from their beauty and their expertness in love as it does from their culture and intelligence.

■ It is doubtless from ancient Greece that the word courtesan derived the connotation of aristocracy which it has kept through the ages. The courtesan is essentially the woman who "courts" the great, from whom she expects favours. Beneath her is the prostitute, subjected to transient lovers. The courtesan chooses where the other accepts. Thus, one can question whether The Courtesan is the proper title for Van der Meer's celebrated painting. It represents a charming and luscious damsel whose bosom is confined in a lemon-yellow bodice. She is reaching for gold with one hand, and not defending herself with the other against the attempts of a young rake who has seized her round the waist. This sort of familiarity is not the way of a courtesan.

One might also object to A Courtesan's Destiny, the title which the French have given to Hogarth's famous series; in English it is known more accurately as The Harlot's Progress. This series obviously tells the story of a prostitute—one of those erring sisters whose sad existence John Cleland described in his Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Cleland's Fanny Hill, like Hogarth's Polly, is a strayed lamb who is pounced upon by a procuress as soon as she arrives in London, and who is immediately spirited off to a "sink of iniquity" in the Flesh Market, that horrible district inhabited by the London street girls of the eighteenth century. Her whole career is a story of slavery.

■ One must distinguish between these slaves and the true courtesans, whose traditional characteristic since Greece has been that of refinement. Venice, a rich and cultured city, has always been one of their favoured haunts.

The other sort were also to be found there, even on the steps of St. Mark's and they carried on high revels, as one learns from the books of M. Charles Diehl on the Venetian republics. The courtesans, however, became very powerful. On one occasion, the Senate deported them, but it had to bring them back —"in order," says an historian, "to provide for the safety of virtuous women and to keep the nobles occupied, for fear they might begin plotting innovations against the State." This remark suggests the social importance an established government attached to courtesans, and explains the political influence which they later acquired.

■ The whole period between antiquity and the Renaissance was unfavourable to the type of women we are discussing. Manners were coarse; society was shaped and dominated by religious and military elements; there was no room for refinement. Rabelais is filled with picturesque words which are not intended to describe ladies who cultivated the fine art of seduction, but which rather apply to brazen harlots, the slaves of the street and the prey of transient lovers. He calls them chippies, leeches, second-hand boots, pawn tickets, tops, among other things. All these terms reek of want, and the gutter. There is nothing elegant, nothing enduring.

Courtesans reappeared with court life à I'italienne. It was under Francis I, as Brantome observes, that courtesans began to be seen at Court. Thereafter the Renaissance carried on the Greek tradition. The Duchesse d'Etampes began a long line of great courtesans. The stage was set for Gabrielle d'Estrees, Marion Delorme, Ninon de Lenclos, Mme. de Montespan, Mme. de Fontanges, Pompadour, Du Barry—ladies unequal in birth, but equal in success, who carried on a tradition of refinement, brilliance, and power.

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If we have spoken at some length on the historic origins of the courtesan, it is only to show that -her position depends wholly on the existence of an elite class in society. She must shine in the first rank, must freely employ all her advantages, must answer intrigue with guile, baffle direct attacks with her wit, impose herself with her charms, maintain her power by her attractiveness. Is she described in plays? Is her profession made the subject of ridicule? Then she must attend the performance—and she is always there.

Grimm in his correspondence tells us that when Palissot presented The Courtesan, or The School for Morals, these ladies—that is to say, the celebrated courtesans of the time, such as Mmes. Duthe, Arnould, Rancourt, etc. —came to applaud the play. And less than a hundred years later, in December, 1887, the Theatre des Bouffes Parisiens having presented a rather dull comedy called A Voyage Round the Underworld, Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote in his column, "The theatre was crowded with the subject of the play. Mile. Cora Pearl sat auburning in her box with that macabre face of hers, which in my estimation is very inferior to Diirer's Death." But the invectives of the journalist contributed—more to her fame than they detracted from it. For Mlle. Cora Pearl, like la Païva, was one of the queens of the Second Empire.

The nineteenth century necessitated a further development of the courtesan. A favourite under the absolute monarchy, she had become the mistress of a salon or the inspiration of a sovereign, but the French Revolution forced her to find other protectors. Under the Directory, she profited by the rise and fall of money, the fickleness of wealth, and rose to a position of power which she did not long maintain: this uncertain power soon was seized by a leader who gave no scope to the intrigue of the senses. In the days of Napoleon, fortune smiled on men. The Restoration was hardly more favourable to gallant ladies, and even the Countess du Cayla, who became the mistress of Louis XVIII, could scarcely be called a courtesan. The Court, under Louis XVIII, was thoroughly bourgeois; the adventuress was gradually ceasing to be welcomed. At this juncture she flung herself upon society, seeking a new success among the wealthy or the powerful. Although Balzac's Esther Gobseck is the daughter of a street woman, she typifies this evolution of the courtesan, now exiled from the Court and determinedly forging her way in society.

What methods would she not employ? The intelligent courtesan of humble birth, cultured and daring, came to ally herself with the great political world as the agent of a government. Such, during the Second Empire, was the position of la Païva, who entertained grandly in her mansion in the Champs-Elysées, and gathered from every one the information which she later conveyed to the nation she represented. She became the hireling of Prussian diplomacy, and camouflaged her undertakings with her extravagance, her personal charm, and the diversity of her acquaintanceships. She knew the last word on everything; she entertained artists; she received with unheard-of magnificence. She displayed the wit and charm of a society woman, but with an additional freedom and provocativeness which the latter could not permit herself.

The Republic completed this "democratization" of the courtesan. Nc longer possessing a court where she could reign, she created a milieu of her own, upon which she acted. The courtesan cultivated the society of painters and men of letters, and often sought the help of a marriage to efface her past. Romanticism had paved her way. The Hugo of 1830 had painted the depth of her passion in Marion Delorme, and Dumas fds the delicacy of her feelings in La Dame aux Cornélias. Why shouldn't one marry a woman who had atoned for her early mistakes by the goodness of her heart? Might she not become the best of wives? And a wife she became. ... So it was that Dumas fils himself, in a princely mansion, met a young woman who was to end her life loaded with titles and honours—a young woman he had known years before as a dancer at Mabille's. Having become the fairy godmother of a prince, she proclaimed the highest principles.

"A dramatist should always uphold the traditions of religion and the family," she remarked to Dumas fils at a very formal dinner to which she had invited him.

Thereupon, having dropped his napkin, the dramatist bent over toward bis hostess and murmured insolently: "You"—not the formal vous, but the familiar tu that one employs with street girls—"you don't say."

His remark was repeated, but it did not interfere with her social career. During the twilight of the last century, by an irony of fate, this lady came to preside over one of the most flourishing of the conservative salons. Not all courtesans, however, became such pillars of society. In France, during the forty-four years that passed between the two wars, many were content to remain as they were and to uphold a tradition to which the Second Empire had contributed a new brilliance. The fashionable courtesan lived in great luxury, had her private mansion (with studio) near the Parc Monceau, entertained the popular writers, had her entries at Auteuil, and at her table (the best in the world) entertained all the gilded youth of France. Mlle, de Marcy's casaque had a long period of fame, while another young lady of sensitive mind and undeniable charm served as model both for the Gladys Harvey of M. Paul Bourget and for the Odette (later Mme. Swann) of Marcel Proust. A few. old heirlooms of the Second Empire, ensconced in their brocaded salons, their feet on foot-stools, would indulge in reminiscences. They would describe Hortense Schneider's acting in the operettas of Offenbach; they would quote from Charivari or L'Estafette; they would mention the suppers of the "Big Five" at the Maison d'Or, the monocle of Aurélien Scholl, and the then slightly acid beauty of Mile. Blanche d'Antigny, which had guided M. Arthur Meyer's first steps through Parisian life. Journalists set down these confessions and gave them tone. Jean Lorrain, the foremost columnist of his time, quick to grasp the tenderness and absurdity of what he himself called the "Old Guard," mingled with these time-worn stories romantic pictures of the leading cocottes in the rising generation.

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But cosmopolitanism was already stealing its way among these purely Parisian elements. Germany, Austria, and Russia sent us their courtesans. They came to buy clothes in Paris; they remained. The German installed herself for diplomatic reasons; she organized pilgrimages to Bayreuth and celebrated the music of the future. The Viennese spent three months of the year in the Orient Express, while the Russian camped in a hotel on the Rue de Rivoli, mingled her lovemaking with Tolstoyan declamations, and seasoned her Slavic charm with a strong literary flavour.

Nevertheless, a few years before the war, the tradition of the socially prominent courtesan was slowly waning. The columnist also was disappearing, and no longer dared cast his flickering light upon ladies whose social position was held in general disapprobation. About the year 1905, there was a puritan reaction in France against the dilettantism of the nineties, and the middle class promptly imposed its moral attitude on many phases of society. The novel became academic and moralistic, the newspapers developed into journals of information or politics, and the courtesan crept off into obscurity. Even the leading actresses found that their fame was decreasing. Finally the rich, with bad grace, resigned themselves to the unaided support of those luxurious ladies whom aristocrats had formerly subsidized through habit, as if maintaining courtesans were one of the obligations of their caste.

The war suddenly overturned all values, flung foreigners back into their own lands, created and destroyed enormous fortunes. By the year 1920, many millionaires had ceased to recognize the need of possessing—either for themselves or as joint stockholders—a clever and wellknown lady. On the other hand, the war had destroyed the leisure class. Men no longer had time to enjoy an all-inclusive hospitality, or to appreciate a salon where the seductiveness of a woman could bring together a number of masculine celebrities, a few famous actresses, and some interesting young people. . . .

The intelligent woman who, in the past, quite naturally resorted to gallantry—the other careers being closed to her—has become emancipated, and turns toward other ways of employing her talents. By applying her mind, her will, and her taste to new careers, she has met with a rapid success. Today, the woman who occupies the public attention and captivates authors or the few remaining princes is no longer a courtesan; instead she is a dress designer or an actress. Her supremacy is opening every door to her. Of late years Phryne no longer takes off her robe; instead, she launches new styles and sells them most profitably to the four corners of the earth.