The Book of the Courtesans (19 page)

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 attractive, 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.

They might have climbed the hill up to Montmartre, where not far away at the
Moulin Rouge the cancan was being performed until the early hours of morning,
or gone east on the boulevards to the Folies-Bergère, where one could
watch the stage while drinking or eating as tableaux and parades of
extravagantly costumed women appeared, some of them legendary. It was here that
Colette performed half nude; Liane de Pougy, Cleo de Mérode, and La Belle
Otero danced, and Emilienne d’Alençon presented the talents of her
famous pink rabbits, all to be followed at the end of the era by performers
still fabled in modern memory—Mistinguett, Josephine Baker, Maurice
Chevalier, and Charlie Chaplin.