ELDERLY COUNT GUSTAV VON SACKELBERG SET MARIE DUPLESSIS UP IN LUXURY BUT OUTDID HER AS A LIAR

Marie Duplessis was an acknowledged liar. She was said to explain her lying by saying that the habit whitened one's teeth; her teeth were beautiful. What all did she lie about? I don't know. That blog post title is my opinion and here I speculate. 

The octogenarian Count Gustav Von Sackelberg met the 21ish year old Maria in the late fall of 1844 or early 1845. He said he wanted to "rescue" her from the life she lead and that she reminded him of his daughter... He claimed to be a widower, but the truth was he was married to a woman who had given birth to eleven children and would outlive him by eighteen years. He hid his wife by setting up Maria in an apartment across the street from where he lived with his wife... My guess is his wife knew all about him.

He was said to keep a list of all the virgins he had deflowered, a hobby of his. While Maria was no virgin, perhaps her delicate femininity and youth appealed to a fantasy he had. He wanted her for himself and was willing to spend to have her. Of all the men who provided for Maria, perhaps this man spent the most to keep her. And perhaps despite his sexuality, he was also influenced by pending death.

Besides the substantial apartment, Von Sackelberg bought Maria furs and jewels, horses, carriages and drivers, maid, cook, chambermaid, the services of hairdressers and other craftsmen who created and repaired and kept up, and allowed her to spend, spend spend. Gourmet meals and baked goods were ordered in. She was now eating sweets and drinking wine - Maria bought herself an expansive wardrobe - dresses, hats, and boots by the dozens, fine furniture, and much else. She claimed to spend about five hundred francs a day. Author Virginia Rounding mentions school teachers were paid about three hundred francs a year.

While he thought of keeping her to himself, Maria was pragmatic. What came first? Her acceptance of other men or his waning interest? She went out on the town and was seen at the theatre and concerts, still advertising herself as courtesans did. In the spring of 1845 Maria met the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who seems to have been taken enough by the young woman to care about her health.

I wonder if knowing she had not long fueled Maria's desire to have as much as possible and to live life to the fullest. When she met the composer she had about two years to live. 

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot 

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

WAITING

 

DESPITE TUBERCULOSIS TWENTY YEAR OLD MARIE DUPLESSIS HAS ILLUSTRIOUS AND RICH LOVERS INCLUDING ALEXANDRE DUMAS THE YOUNGER

1844, and lasting a year, Alexandre Dumas "the younger" was twenty, like Marie. He could not support her and could not deal with the facts of her life, that she was a Courtesan and had other lovers.  He was too jealous and perhaps too in love. This man immortalized Marie when he used her as inspiration for a novel he published in 1848 which was called La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas the younger. (She loved that flower.) The book may very well be a romantic fantasy in which Dumas also is a character. In 1952 the book was turned into a play and then the play inspired the opera by Verdi called La Traviata.  La Traviata translates to The Fallen Woman. 

La Traviata is currently the most performed opera in the world. Marie's life, perhaps because she died so young, is a tragedy. 

Perhaps it is the book and the play and the opera that has made Courtesan/ Mistress  Marie Duplessis famous, for there were others we have heard about and many others we have never heard about and never will.  This blog depends on the books and other information on those who became famous but some say the most successful Mistresses are the ones we never hear about.

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

MARIE DUPLESSIS

 Image is in Public Domain in the United States and provided by Wikimedia/ Wikipedia.

 Source : Čeština: Obrázek Marie Duplessis, dámy s kaméliemi

Her extremely white, pale skin contrasted with her thick black hair.  

She was slim and not especially voluptuous.

In this image of Marie, the young woman might even be called "Tubercular."

MARIE DUPLESSIS MOVES INTO A BETTER APARTMENT : COUNT EDOUARD DE PERREGAUX

As Marie Duplessis moved up in the world, she attracted Count Edouard De Perregaux as a new love and perhaps he was the man she would come closest to becoming a Mistress of. His father was a financier who had been made a senator by Napoleon Bonaparte and was attached to the Bank of France. Edouard himself had been in the military in Africa and had earned a good reputation and inherited a sizable fortune but he also seemed to be determined to spend it and go into debt.

Excerpts pages 41 - 42 : He first encountered Marie at a masked ball at the Opera House in the rue Le Peletier, the tradition of masked balls having been revived there in 1839, such events being held every Saturday evening during the carnival time before Lent. Edouard and Marie were intregued by one another, and Edouard rapidly dropped another courtesan, Alice Ozy, in order to take up with her.

The apartment in which he installed her at 22 rue d'Antin comprised a drawing room, a boudoir, dining room and two bedrooms. The widows, and Marie's bed, were curtained with muslin and silk. Marie ordered her goods and services from a wide range of providers" wines from Madame Tisserant, just opposite in the rue d'Anton; cakes delivered by Rollet from the passage de l'Opera, glace fruits from Broissier, mint pastilles from Gouache in the boulevard de la Madeleine. Edouard would join in the consumption of all these luxuries, not stopping to make the calculation that by spending at the rate of three thousand francs a month, which was the absolute minimum Marie required to live on, he would rapidly use up his already depleted fortune. 

Marie felt flattered because Count de Perregaux seemed to be only interested in her but eventually also felt she had been deceived into thinking his fortune was substantial enough to last past her spending. He was estranged from his family and friends over his unrequited passion and extreme spending in order to keep her happy. She didn't cut him off completely but took on other lovers willing to keep her in the accommodations she desired. Considering his fixation on Marie, it must have taken some expertise to both disappoint him and keep him in her life.

At a time in which concerns about venereal diseases such as syphilis, for which there was no real cure, prevailed and during which contraception was limited, women especially paid the price for sexuality and pregnancy. But there was another disease that people feared and that claimed countless lives for which there was no cure and that was tuberculosis. Young Marie Duplessis must have realized she was seriously ill by this time as she was spitting up blood. 

Count Edouard de Perregaux is important to the story of this Courtesan though because towards the end of her life, as she was dying of tuberculosis, it was he who she married.

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

DESIRE

 

MEN "CLUB" TOGETHER TO SHARE THE BOUNTY OF THEIR FAVORITE COURTESAN MARIE DUPLESSIS

I wonder: is there a correlation between being a shopaholic and a Courtesan?

In 1842 Marie Duplessis might have been at the height of her earning power, if you choose to look at it that way.  She had many lovers and huge expenditures.

Excerpt pages 39-40 : ... Hippolyte de Villemessant tells how seven members of fashionable Paris decided to club together to purchase her favors, since she was so expensive to maintain.  To inaugurate this arrangement they bought Marie a present: a dressing table with seven drawers so they could each have one to keep their things.  In the early days Marie's management of her multiple lovers sometimes went adrift.  Shortly after Agenor de Guiche's return from England she made the mistake of taking him for a drive in the blue carriage which had been given to her by another lover, Fernand de Montguyon....  Subsequently she managed her affairs better and took care not to offend those who were paying the bills. Agenor was a t this stage what was known as an amant de coeur - that is, his and Marie's relationship was not a monetary transaction but a matter of genuine affections and mutual enjoyment...

This excerpt reminds me that anyone can attract many others at any one time but must somehow keep it all ... compartmentalized.  And be tactful. 

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

POISED

 

VICOUNT DE MERIL BECOMES THE FATHER OF MARIE DUPLESSIS SON

Viscount de Meril was the man to introduce Marie Deplessis to a vice - gambling.

In 1840, she had what is called "an affair" with this man, who introduced her to Spa, a resort in Belgium. As a result of their relationship, the young mother of a son she gave birth to in 1841 had to send the baby away to be raised by a nurse. A version of the story is that the baby died - not at all uncommon in those days before modern medical treatments - but perhaps not.

It is said that she was given to lying, which she claimed was good for whitening the teeth. (Perhaps she thought her lies were "white lies?") It's also said, from descriptions of her beauty and comportment, that her moods shifted from serenity to jubilance. My words; I do wonder if  Marie Duplessis was bipolar. Her behavior is often considered a consequence to having a horrible childhood.

C 2025 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights