VALTESSE DE BIGNE's LETTERS FROM LIANE DE POUGY END UP SOLD and HER GRANDDAUGHTER ANDRE DE LA BIGNE FOLLOWS IN HER FOOTSTEPS

After her death in 1910 at the age of 62, the famous old courtesan, Valtesse De Bigne not only gave herself a decorative grave, but her estate held some beautiful antiques and paintings that were selectively given to her friends.

Courtesans of Paris often had a child somewhere in their youthful past, often raised by others, while they sent money. My observation is that the child was usually from a very early relationship, and that somehow these women managed to avoid further pregnancies. It is unknown to me, but I speculate that they may have also denied having any children to the men who they had affairs with. If you read Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, you know that these relationships varied, that some courtesans had many, some had one at a time, and the definition of Courtesan varies. I always wonder who in the family knew about the child and if the child grew up to know its mother or even know her reputation or if that child admired its courtesan mother.

Valtesse's own granddaughter took the letters that Liane de Pougy had sent to Valtesse and she sold them.  (Page 293)  My guess is that she read them. That she did come to understand some things and might have been inspired.

Perhaps you watch The Crown, as I do, and you caught the way Prince Phillip was depicted, a boy alone sent to a rather, in my opinion, brutal school, where team work was emphasized. After the devastating loss of relatives due to a plane crash, it would seem that his mother, who had been mentally ill and received treatment in a hospital, joined a nunnery.  His father was not much in his life.  His father was with his Mistress in Monaco.

Guess who Prince Phillip's father, Prince Andrew of Greece, had as a Mistress in Monaco!

Comtesse Andre de la Bigne, as she called herself was the grand-daughter of Valtesse de la Bigne.  

She deserves a month all to her own here, so I'll stop with that teaser here...

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

Our primary reference for this month's subject, Courtesan Laine De Pougy, is the book titled the Mistress of Paris by author Catherine Hewitt. Additional information comes from other sources, such as, for this post, wikipedia.

LIANE DE POUGY's COURTESAN MENTOR VALTESSE DE LA BIGNE RETIRES WITH DIGNITY

By 1900, Liane de Pougy, a talented woman, had decided to write. Eventually she would write books called fictions which were tantalizing due to her thinly disguised real life characters, including herself. She also wrote a diary in later life.  In 1901  Liane de Pougy published the book Idylle Saphique which was semi autobiographical. 

Liane was 31 years old and her mentor, Valtesse de la Bigne, was near 52 when the older courtesan understood that it was time to retire openly and with grace. She was gaining weight and going grey.  (Notes from page 268)

Of interest to us here at Mistress Manifesto is also the mention on page 272 of Cora Pearl. sometimes called The English Rose of Paris. It says that had been the Princess of Paris but had been caste out of society when Paris knew she had ruined a man financially and she was reduced to a common prostitute.

*****

Here is an excerpt from July 2012 when CORA PEARL was our Mistress of the Month.

Cora tells the story that she was 15 when she was taken to bed by a man who could have been 35, who she first saw in a market. Later, though she started out curious, she was disgusted. In Cora's day many poor women were considered to be unmarriageable because they didn't have a dowry or, out of innocence or hunger, they found sex to be the only way to resolve their destitution and couldn't marry because they had lost their virginity before marriage, even if they were molested or raped.

*****

Valtesse was all too aware that she needed to take control of her life, her career at its end, and her reputation. She did not want to be banished from society for any reason but she needed to remove herself from Paris, where the younger courtesans were taking over.  In 1902 she announced that she was auctioning off all her property (this was not quite true because she kept some of the things she most treasured) but this sale messaged two things, one that she was ending her life as a courtesan and the other that she had lived a most successful life as one. Like the auctions of the estates of many famous and wealthy people today, prices were about who had owned the item as much as what the item might be worth in itself. She earned enough to refurbish her new home in the finest décor. Called Ville d'Avray, her home held 'family portraits" of nobles that were beautifully painted but were fake because she had not come from the nobility.  She was far enough away from her fame in Paris that the locals thought she had been a Madam rather than a Courtesan herself.  

Valtesse lived long enough to see her protégé do what seemed impossible to the most successful courtesan and that was to marry a prince, which Liane did in 1909 at the age of 41.  Liane became the wife of Prince Georges Ghika of Romania.

Valtese died July, 29th, 1910, age 62, and Liane grieved deeply.  She was in Valtesse's last will, receiving a tea service and a desk.

Valtesse had a granddaughter.  Her granddaughter would become a Mistress, living in Monaco...

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

Our primary reference for this month's subject, Courtesan Laine De Pougy, is the book titled the Mistress of Paris by author Catherine Hewitt.

LIANE DE POUGY : BISEXUAL PROTOGE OF VALTESSE DE LA BIGNE in BELLE EPOCH PARIS : FROM COURTESAN TO PRINCESS TO NUN?

Our primary reference for this month's subject, Courtesan Laine De Pougy, is the book titled the Mistress of Paris by author Catherine Hewitt. who did excellent research on Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne, one of the famous Parisian Courtesans who retired very rich.  As promised in the teaser I posted a couple days ago, Hewitt's book turns out to include Liane De Pougy, who Valtesse mentored.  Rereading that book, which I've featured before, from cover to cover, I focused on Liane.  Her life entwined with American ex-pat lesbian Natalie Clifford Barney and others who've been mentioned here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.

We will also look into Liane's own diary called Blue Notebooks, which she wrote in her later years as a Princess.   

                                                         Photo is a WIKIMEDIA COMMONS download

Anne-Marie Chassaigne

LIANE de POUGY

Princess Anne-Marie Ghilka

1869 - 1950

In the book, The Mistress of Paris, we get to focus on something we don't often get to and that's the relationships between one courtesan/mistress and another.  We are so used to the idea that women always compete with each other for the attention of men, be that as boyfriends or husbands or clients, but in every profession, there are some women who mentor others. In my opinion those women who mentor are the most secure in themselves and their position.

Valtesse de la Bigne*, along with the rest of Parisian society in the late 1800's, took on the new rage for British 'tea at five o'clock." It was a time to visit, nosh, gossip, meet and mix with others. Valtesse and all her friends had 'five o'clocks' and had become the talk of Paris, with people vying for invitations, even people who would never consider becoming courtesans themselves but wanted some notice because of their association with a Courtesan. The newspapers reported who attended. Valtesse's women-only 'five o'clocks" were popular but she intentionally remained mysterious about her attraction to other women. The 'Grand Horizontales' in Valtesse's circle usually experienced casual lesbian sex and she had no doubt been seen out and around town at concerts and the theater with lesbians, but her close friends knew there was only one favorite and that was Liane de Pougy.

Around the same time bars and eateries in the Montemartre district were whispered to be lesbian hang outs.  One, called Le Hanneton, had a décor that featured dark red curtains, small tables, and low lighting, for intimate meet ups.  Then there was Le Rat Morte (The Dead Rat!) which was open 24 hours and had second door to enter or exit through discreetly.  

Liane, who started out plain, skinny, and androgynous, graduated from a convent school and was married at seventeen to a navy officer who she was miserable with. Then she suffered the traumatic birth of her first baby. She could have had a financially secure life if she could put up with him, but she sought out adventure, love and sex, with other men. When her husband caught her in bed with another man he shot at her. In 1890 she left her child in the care of others and went to Paris, with some startup capital, to stay with a friend. She was twenty-seven years old. Unlike so many other courtesans, she had not started out as a teenage sex worker, a street walker at the bottom of the profession. Across the street was a famous and rich courtesan named Louise Balthy who she watched with great interest. She made the decision to become a courtesan and began with changing her name.

After they met and instantly took to each other, Valtesse, about twenty years older than Liane, decided to take the totally inexperienced newcomer under her wing and "taught her young protégé everything she knew, from how to secure a client, to managing her career and finances, even teaching her techniques to employ in the bedroom." (Page 251)

The two women had a great rapport and went out on the town - Paris - together, though they were distinctly different in appearance and generation. They acted like a couple light-hearted schoolgirls. Valtesse told Liane that going out to Maxims restaurant, the opera in Nice, and other elite venues was business; she had to be seen. She also cautioned the younger woman that she could not give sex away - not even if it was just that a man wished to see her ankle - and to not accept being ripped off by merchants either. This was business. She had to be focused on her goal to be rich and not allow herself to be blinded by feelings of love.

Liane De Pougy was courted by the Princes and Dukes who had money as well as the playwrights and artists. She could hold her own in conversations about the arts, but it was fashion that thrilled her as a young woman. She became known for her hat collection and spending 33,000 francs a year on clothing. Valtesse told her that a Courtesan's bedroom was a stage set and that her décor needed to reflect her appearance and style. Liane decorated her first apartment in luxury including a Louis XV bed. She vacationed on the Riviera in Menton where she stayed at a villa she called La Perle Blanche (The White Pearl.) Liane's trademark was the pearl.

Eventually she would author several books that the public eagerly consumed.

Liane could have failed to succeed and ended up sickly and on the street as so many of the sex workers did, so she was grateful to Valtesse for mentoring her and considered her an excellent friend.  

Liane De Pougy, was not heterosexual.  She was bisexual, but careful to keep her involvement with women a secret from the men who paid to play. Valtesse believed strongly and so advised Liane that to remain a successful courtesan she could not become known as lesbian. An occasional affair with another woman was fine but a serious liaison would ruin her career. ame the day when Valtesse would make a point of that when a famous American lesbian came calling.

This month we will explore the life of Liane De Pougy who, as the title of this post says, became a Courtesan, married a Prince and became a Princess, and ended her years associated with a nunnery. 

Missy

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

*an aristocratic name that she took hoping to elevate her status, Changing names was common among those is any form of sex work.

If you are interested in the Courtesans of Paris, you may want to read the following months.

Valtesse de la Bigne was featured in April 2018 

American lesbian in Paris, Natalie Clifford Barney is first featured in the September 2014 issue. 

You may also be interested in Marguerite Alibert, who was the subject of January 2019.  

Or search for the word Paris using the search feature in this Google Blogger.

COMING UP : PARIS AGAIN !

Her life intersected with some other women we have covered here including the Valtesse de la Bigne, who faked a noble heritage and ended up rich, in April 2018, and American lesbian in Paris, Natalie Clifford Barney, in September 2014. 

She was a Courtesan who chose as an adult to start at the middle and made it to the top.  But was she happy?

PAID FOR by RACHEL MORAN is DEVASTATING MEMOIR about HER LIFE THROUGH PROSTITUTION

One of the questions I have - we have - here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT - is the question of sex for pay and how that may or may not relate to being a Mistress.  I feel that the stereotype of a Mistress is that she is much like a Belle Epoch Courtesan, which is to say, if we consider our Mistress of the Month Valtesse de la Bigne and her 19th century contemporaries as an example, a high class prostitute.  However, this is a stereotype that I do not believe fits the contemporary Mistress who is more likely to have a relationship founded in a love affair with one married man (at least one at a time!) and consider herself to be married to him even if he's legally married to another.  One of the purposes of this blog is to look at the grey areas.  For there is an argument that relationships, including legal marriage that might accommodate a Mistress, are of choice, and that not everyone is a serial monogamist.  While I believe it is true that sexual attraction is a strong reason for becoming Kept, I also do not think that sex keeps a relationship together.  More has to happen and that more is often love.

The word "devastating" in the title of this post, is not hyperbole. I read this one by listening to an e-book and the reading was intense, as was the sophistication of the understanding Rachel Moran came to about herself, her life, and her profession. This woman's testimony will grab your heart and cut it into little pieces, as you read about the terribly impoverished childhood she had in a large family with parents who were both mentally ill.  You can feel that ache.
Listen up, please!
Like so many of today's teenage runaways and street children, Rachel's entry into prostitution was one of survival out of homelessness. She left an intolerable home life (which did not include being molested by her dad).  At fifteen she got a boyfriend, also a homeless person, and well, she saw the logic in becoming a prostitute, which she was by age fifteen, and she says telling men how old she was excited them.  For two years she managed to limit her sexual repertoire with paying men so that she did not have intercourse with them, but you will be riveted to hear of some of the perversions she encountered and complied with, including S and M relationships.  It was dehumanizing and she lost her self worth.
While there are a full range of sexualities to identify with, including asexuality, and some prostitutes are going to, like Valtesse, move forward into being the Mistress of just one man or a wife, Rachel Moran has a mission.  To let the world know that "real men" do not pick up prostitutes, even if they are called "call girls" or "escorts," or "exotic dancers."  She is a brave woman, and she has achieved freedom from her past as best as she can, after years of having her lack of self esteem reinforced through degradation.  Her advocacy against legalization of prostitution, includes the honest of this book, the many interviews she has done, videos ... in 1998 at age 22 she got out of the life.


Go to her website SPACE INTERNATIONAL RACHEL MORAN in order to learn more about her advocacy, her prestigious speaking engagements.... From that site, "In the millennium year she returned to education and completed a degree in Journalism from Dublin City University. She has been involved in the political push for the Nordic Model in Ireland since she first addressed the crowd gathered at the launch of the Turn Off The Red Light campaign in February, 2011. She has spoken at numerous international locations, including the United Nations Plaza in New York and Boston’s Harvard University. She works in conjunction with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the European Women’s Lobby."

VALTESSE DE LA BIGNE and COURTESAN LIANE DE POUGEY as LESBIAN LOVERS

Henri Gervex is the artist, and Lianne De Pougey is the model.

Sources such as Wikipedia and Catherine Hewitt's book on Valtesse de la Bigne mention a lesbian (or bisexual by my way of thinking) courtesan named Liane de Pougey, who Valtesse possibly had an intimate relationship with.  Knowing how much Valtesse depended on mystery to be appealing, hiding the fact that she was a mother successfully for many years, it's possible that her relationship with the younger up and coming courtesan Liane was only mentoring.  While she did not want her daughter to follow her into the profession, taking a younger woman as a protégé was common among courtesans. For sure Liane de Pougey had a number of known affairs with lesbian women.

One of the most famous lesbians in Paris was American expat Natalie Clifford Barney, who is said to arrive ready to pursue a woman, lesbian or not, by arriving dressed as a Page Boy and declaring her intention.  Pougey is said to not have shared Valtesse's literary interests or ambitions, being more of a pop culture sort of person, but Barney immortalized her in a turn of the century novel called Idylle Saphique.  Like Valtesse, Liane eventfully wrote her own book, My Blue Notebooks.  Like Valtesse she was also painted by Henri Gervex.

Liane de Pogey (July 2 1869 - Dec 26, 1950) changed her name from Anne Marie Chassaigne, like Valtesse wishing to give the impression she came from nobility, and was seen with aristocratic and wealthy men, and like Valtesse she had them as friends, as lovers, and as paying clients. Unlike Valtesse she married and to Prince Georges Ghika in 1910.  They soon lived separately but never divorced.

VALTESSE'S COURTESAN'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MEN and SEX

I listened to Catherine Hewitt's book as an audio book
right on my cell phone, downloaded with Overdrive.

Chapter 6 of The Mistress of Paris, gives a very detailed account of the gradations of sex work in France that so very many women relied upon to support themselves and their families. 

Poverty was the qualification.  In this era without the contraception and safe sex options that we have today, illegitimate children were also common, and yet, having an illegitimate child could disqualify a woman from marriage. Sexual harassment was also common. And so our Mistress of the Month, Courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne, decided that if she was going to be a whore, she would become the best of them, and here is what we learn:

Though said to have hardened her heart early after the disappointment of having fallen in love and given birth to two daughters with a man who would not marry her, Valtesse, who had been prostituting herself since a teenager, put men into three categories.

The first category was the ESCORT.  The escort was a man who she could go out with, be seen with, enjoy herself with, but she did not allow herself to have sex with him or him to have sex with her.  (I wonder if some of these men were gay.  I also wonder how firm she was about allowing a man who was her escort to advance to being her lover!)

The second category was the men who PAID.  Be it the price for an hour, a night, a weekend, or perhaps a trade of gifts, that included jewelry, clothing, objects of art, paintings, houses, hotels, or a country estate crammed with valuables, she was careful to always have others waiting for a chance to be her everything when she was through with a man or he was through with her.

The third category may surprise some of you.  These were the lovers she took who were not rich men, men she was attracted to, by her CHOICE.  Some had some money, some did not, but offered her opportunities or introductions in art, literature, and diplomacy. Some she just liked

According to the book she was also ready to have sex at all times and could have sex with no foreplay.  (Though to me this seems more the forte of the street prostitute.  Why else spend a fortune on a bed (which is now in a museum) and to set the stage for seduction?)

She probably lost count of the men she had been sexual with. 

By maintaining these categories, Valtesse had friendships of her own choosing and it could be said the majority of the men in her life fell into the first or third.

VALTESSE by GERVEX

Valtesse de La Bigne, by Henri Gervex, musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Image from Wikimedia.

Her long thick red hair was the inspiration for the nickname she gave herself, marketed herself, with "Rayon d'Or" which means Golden Ray.

COMTESSE VALTESSE DE LA BIGNE : 18th CENTURY PARISIAN SEX WORKER to COURTESAN to MISTRESS

She believed men were not to be relied upon... Catherine Hewitt's book is a dazzling biography with descriptive details that help the reader imagine...

Our Mistress of the Month is Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne (1848-1910), a woman of 19th century France who it could be said slept her way up - intelligently.  A strength of author Catherine Hewitt's book is the way she clearly explains the reality of sex work as a common option for women alone in the world, especially a woman with a child ; i.e. her mother turned to sex work too.  Within the culture, as is the case now, there were those who started at the bottom and worked their way up, though perhaps very few made it into Mistresshood (generally, dedicated to one man) and so Valtesse was exceptional, beginning with her bright blue eyed - red haired beauty, but also because she was an astute observer and made a point of learning how those who were successful did it.  She knew she would have to rise quickly and cover her tracks.

Hewitt gives us a historical perspective of that time and place, citified Paris, France, when sex work was extremely common.  The girl and her mother from Normandy blended into the impoverished culture of women alone with limited prospects of employment because they were women. She also ads to our understanding when we try to define Mistress versus Courtesan versus Sex Worker.  We can talk forever about how much choice is involved in each and every circumstance.  (Perhaps the only legal prostitution option currently in the United States is the legal brothels of Nevada and so there is the most  choice?)

Make no mistake about it, Valtesse took a lot of abuse early on, participated in acts she would rather forget, but somehow endured it, and became calculating and cold hearted in her need to never experience that level of poverty again and to not let her feelings get in the way.  As she rose she had more say about who she would or would not have sex with. Her mother also understood when her teenage daughter brought men home to have sex for money, though maintaining one's beauty, having fine jewelry and clothing to wear, being taken out and being seen in restaurants and theaters (from stage to audience), and setting aside money for one's future, were all part of an ambitious plan to never look back.

Evidence of her success includes being the subject of a painting by Edouard Manet and being the inspiration for the writer Emile Zola who wrote the novel Nana about her, which was considered scandalous.  She was rumored to have seduced the future King Edward VII and Napoleon III.  She eventually managed to pass herself off as a Comtesse - nobility.  The secret that the title of this book eludes to is her background.  Valtesse knew how to spin the P.R. and market herself, and remained somehow elusive and mysterious.  It was up to the author to tell her tale authentically.

In 1864 the teenager found herself in love and pregnant.  She would have two daughters, one born unwell who would not live into adulthood, and the other who she paid her mother to raise.  That she was a mother was a closely held secret until, at a time when she was at the height of her popularity and beginning to be open with her opinions, counter criticisms, and to write her own story, she learned that her own mother, who had brought six children into the world without marriage, might be raising her daughter to begin the life of a prostitute.  Like some other extremely wealthy courtesans, Valtesse did not want her daughter to follow her into the business.  A dramatic court case kept the French public enthralled with daily coverage in the newspapers.

Valtesse went through a number of wealthy men who were so crazy about her that some of them were rumored to be ruined financially.  She acquired more than jewels and fine dresses, but great wealth.

Her first man who is credited with raising her up out of the low level sex work was a married theatre owner named Offenbach, a man with five children and a devotion to his wife, who put her on stage. During this period it was Courtesan Cora Pearl (our Mistress of the Month in July 2012, called The English Rose of Paris) who she wanted to emulate.  But when War broke out Valtesse was one of those who fled Paris in 1870 for Nice.  By the time she returned to Paris she and Cora Pearl were side by side. Valtesse knew that being a courtesan offered her the ultimate independence a woman of her time and place could achieve but to persevere she needed to not ignore society, but become part of it. 

Done with the theatre owner and any hopes of a vibrant career on the stage, her first truly incredibly wealthy man was a Polish Prince Lubormirsky.

Lubormirsky owned great estates in Poland, Austria, and France. He was so generous to her that some speculated she left him broke - or well at least ended his cash flow.  They were public as a couple and in the newspapers.  But, one thing we must admire about this woman is that she knew when she needed to move on, be it that a man was running out of money or that he no longer found her fascinating, and she did so to an American General who was living in France.  She'd always had a thing for men in military uniforms. He spent very approximately (the conversion to American dollars goes from French money to British first) half a million dollars in six months.  He put an apartment in her name.  (I know some of you who are reading this can only wish for that!)  But she thought, what just an apartment?  By 1873 she had moved on to another Polish Prince.  At the time the police estimated that Valtesse had acquired thus far in her career about 3 million English pounds.  Now associating with nobility, this was when she changed her name to seem even more aristocratic.  After the war people weren't checking other people's credentials quite so much.  She said she was from an ancient noble family of Normandy.  And about this time, she began to wear clothes that gave her a masculine effect to balls.

It was the Prince de Sagan who provided her money to have a country house.  Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne, may have come from nothing and nowhere, but her house had only the finest in furniture and art.  She became an art collector and had affairs with painters.  She was a voracious reader and began to also associate with literary authors.  The book "Nana" was based on her and everyone knew it, even though the author said otherwise, and became a best stller.  She was angry with him and countered it with her own book about herself.

As for sex, stick with me this month, as I will reiterate what I learned from reading this book about this courtesans' attitude about sex - and men.  Just in case  you want to follow in her footsteps!


Missy
C 2018 All Rights Reserved Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot
Interested in Mistresses in France, Paris?
Use the search feature of this blog to bring up posts using those words, or consider reading July 2012 for Cora Pearl, of October 2014 for Anna La Chapelle Clark.  You may also want to read about Isadora Duncan, the American dancer who settled in France in February 2016 archives, Mata Hari the spy in November 2013, or ballerina Celestine Emerot in September 2016.