GARVAL on CLEO DE MERODE - THE SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN WHICH SHE CAME UP

19th CENTURY ART WORLD : GARVAL'S ON DE MERODE 

From an article called Cleo de Merode's which is excellent and gives us much information about society and culture in Paris, France, at the time when Cleo de Merode was coming up as a dancer and woman.

EXCERPT:  During this period young dancers or petites danseuses loomed especially large in the collective imagination.  The most coveted of all were the so called rats, the 12-16year old girls in the Paris Opera corps de ballet, an institution that, according to Lenard R Berlanstein, had a long standing reputation as a "national harem."  Likewise, Willy's 1904 book on danseuses still characterized the Paris Opera as "a sanctuary for Venus's progeny, a libertine haven," subject of "a thousand salacious anecdotes. a thousand scandalous rumors.  In this temple o licentiousness, the young girls of the corps de ballet were the not-quite vestal virgins, and the Foyer de la Danse, or dancer's lounge, the inner sanctum.  Her only the wealthiest, most powerful en could enter, mingle with the dancers, and pursue those they fancied - as in the 1901 Steinlen illustration from L'Assiette au beurre - practices that amounted to a kind of "state- sponsored prostitution."

Go the article to see postcards of Cleo De Merode and more fascinating information including poetry that had been written about her as a beauty..