A Woman's Affair Read online

  The Translator

  Graham Anderson was born in London. After reading French and Italian at Cambridge, he worked on the books pages of City Limits and reviewed fiction for The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph. As a translator, he has developed versions of French plays, both classic and contemporary, for the NT and the Gate Theatre, with performances both here and in the USA. His publications include The Figaro Plays (Beaumarchais) and A Flea in Her Ear (Feydeau). He has translated Sappho by Alphonse Daudet, Chasing the Dream and A Woman’s Affair

  by Liane de Pougy for Dedalus.

  His own short fiction has won or been shortlisted for three literary prizes. He is married and lives in Oxfordshire.

  Contents

  The Translator

  Introduction

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  Dedalus Celebrating Women’s Literature 2018–2028

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Liane de Pougy was a high-profile courtesan in the Paris of the 1890s. Her picture appeared in the popular papers, on souvenir postcards, on flyers and advertisements for theatrical entertainments. She performed as a dancer, in tableaux and as an occasional actor at a number of theatres, notably the Folies Bergère. She attracted the attention of a series of wealthy lovers and within a few years she had acquired celebrity status among the fashionable women of the demi-monde. When still in her mid-twenties, and possibly in imitation of her friend and mentor, Valtesse de la Bigne, who had written a fictionalised account of a courtesan’s life, Isola, in 1876, Liane de Pougy embarked on her own similar project.

  A minor sub-genre of ‘courtesan novels’ had existed throughout the nineteenth century. The high-class prostitute’s life sometimes became a subject for mainstream writers, attended by a degree of public outrage and plentiful sales. They seemed to be either heavy-handed or salacious, and rarely written from first-hand experience, in the view of Liane de Pougy. She had a poor opinion of Zola’s Nana (1880) for instance, and had little good to say about Colette, who, according to Pougy, ‘appeals to her readers’ latent sensuality, she titillates sex… tries to intoxicate, is well aware of the vulnerable spots and flavours her salad accordingly. It works; it works with everyone; not with me.’ (Mes cahiers bleus). An element of professional jealousy is at work here. The two women were of nearly the same age (and each lived to the same age, 81) but it was Liane who made her own career, as celebrity courtesan, ‘actor’ and then writer, whilst Colette, as it appeared, had achieved nothing of her own. The early 1900s saw the publication of Colette’s Claudine novels, under the name of her husband Willy, and also most of Liane de Pougy’s works. Colette’s real fame came with Chéri (1920) and Le blé en herbe (1923), when both women were in their middle age. Colette might have been a good writer, as Liane acknowledged, but she felt that her own work was fresher, more genuine, more vécu, lived.

  In 1898, Liane de Pougy published her first novel, L’insaisissable, which she had begun in about 1895 while fulfilling professional engagements in St Petersburg. Its courtesan heroine, Josiane de Valneige, recounts to an old flame her many adventures and misadventures. At one level her stories paint a vivid and glamorous picture of life in the demi-monde, for Josiane is hedonistic, energetic and ambitious. Yet disappointment and regret always lie beneath the surface if one wishes, in such a world, to find fulfilment in true love. In the second half of the novel, a newly chaste and idealistic Josiane pursues the path of love with an unworldly younger man only to have her hopes cruelly dashed. There is nothing out of the ordinary, in L’insaisissable, in terms of theme or plot; what does emerge is the author’s distinctive voice. Her protagonist’s verve, contrariness and optimism reflect the character of a woman who both embraced and stood out from the stereotype of the belle époque courtesan.

  Liane de Pougy was born in 1869, not in Paris but in La Flèche, a small town some forty miles from Tours. Her name was Anne-Marie Chassaigne. Her convent education ended at the age of sixteen, when she became pregnant by a naval officer called Armand Pourpe. Their son, Marc, was born in 1887. The family moved to Marseille, following Armand’s posting, but the marriage was not a success. When the naval man reacted with violence to discovering his wife with a lover, Anne-Marie Pourpe ran away to Paris, leaving her son to be looked after by his paternal grandparents. Some hard months followed, financed by small parts on stage and by prostitution, which are briefly referred to in her most significant novel, Idylle saphique. Her bold character and unusual looks soon assured her advancement in life. At a time when female beauties tended to the opulent and statuesque, Liane de Pougy was different.

  ‘Shall I draw my physical portrait?’ she asks in Mes cahiers bleus. ‘Tall, and looking even more so: 1.68 metres, 56 kilos in my clothes. I run to length – long neck, face a full oval but elongated, pretty well perfect; long arms, long legs. Complexion pale and matt, skin very fine… My nose? They say it’s the marvel of marvels… Hair thick and very fine, incredibly fine, a pretty chestnut brown.’

  And of her character: ‘Am I vain? At bottom, yes. Not outwardly. I am aware of my beauty, naturally enough – the nation’s Liane could hardly have remained unaware of it… I have a persistently naïve side which makes my first reaction to anything one of delighted amazement, whether it’s a dress, a painting, a house, a piece of furniture, a book, a poem, a gesture, a face. On second thoughts I return to reality. So I seem very changeable and in fact I am changeable, oh dear yes, tremendously so. I’m always turning coats completely, and doing it with the utmost sincerity.’

  Liane de Pougy’s new name came to her in two parts: Liane she adopted for herself on arrival in Paris; de Pougy she borrowed from one of her early aristocratic lovers. She was to have many others. In 1899 she met the American adventuress and writer Natalie Clifford Barney and began an impassioned if short-lived affair (although the two women remained close friends for most of their lives). Liane’s attraction to women was natural: if anything, she preferred them to men. It was just that the money and power lay in men’s hands and her courtesan’s livelihood depended on the one sex while her heart found more fulfilment with the other. Idylle saphique, written in 1899 and 1900, and which was something of a succès de scandale on publication in 1901, is a novel based on real life. Jean Chalon, Natalie Barney’s biographer, writes (in his introduction to the 1987 reprint by des Femmes):

  ‘My friend (Natalie) made me a present of her copy of Idylle saphique… She enjoyed giving me the keys to the characters. Yes, she was Flossie then, under the same name as the Flossie in the Claudine novels of Colette. Yes, Annhine de Lys was Liane de Pougy. Altesse is that famous Valtesse de la Bigne who was one of the models Zola used for his Nana. Beneath the name Jack Dalsace it is easy enough to recognise Jean Lorrain. As for Annhine de Lys’ official lover, “head of a major bank”, Maurice de Rothschild was the man who, along with the king of Portugal and a few other powerful individuals, enjoyed the privilege of counting among Liane’s protectors.’

  Idylle saphique is a more accomplished piece of work than the debut novella L’insaisissable, although its heroine has the same blue eyes and golden curls as in the earlier works, the same impetuosity, love of luxury and yearning for fulfilment. But in this book, both more cynical and more idealistic, women, it is suggested, can be self-sufficient, at least in the emotional and spiritual spheres, while men are at best a necessary evil. Instead of amusing her readers with a parade of unreliable men, as in L’insaisissable, Liane de Pougy broadens the canvas, from the high society of an artists’ ball to the low life of Montmartre, from Sarah Bernhardt at the Comédie Française (in a chapter largely provided by Natalie Barney) to destitute actors starving in garrets and broadsides against the patriarchal system. There are abrupt changes of tone and scene – Liane de Pougy’s ‘changeability’ – comic fantasies, mystical reveries and underlying it all, the sense of a struggle towards some greater good, some fairer world, which may or may not be ‘saisissable’, graspable, but which is the driving force of life.

  In 1910, now forty, Liane de Pougy married a minor Romanian aristocrat, Prince Georges Ghika. He was many years younger, and sometimes a difficult man, but the marriage lasted more or less intact until his death in 1945.

  In December 1914, Marc Pourpe, Liane’s son and now an aviator, was killed in an air crash in the early phases of the Great War. His death plunged Liane into deeper retrospection about her past life, inclining her to seek atonement, or answers, in religion.

  On a car journey in Savoy in 1928, Liane and Georges Ghika stopped by chance at a convent which, when investigated, proved to be the Asylum of Saint Agnes, a home for children with birth defects. Profoundly moved by the children’s plight and the nuns’ devotion, Princess Ghika became a lifelong supporter of the asylum, seeking donations from her wide circle of wealthy friends and making frequent visits in person.

  When the Second World War arrived, Liane de Pougy was seventy. She and Georges had escaped the worsening situation two years before by establishing themselves in Lausanne, where she remained for the last decade of her life. Following her husband’s death, she sought admission to the order of Saint Dominic as a tertiary. She died in December 1950 as Sister Anne-Marie de la Pénitence and was buried in the grounds of the Saint Agnes Asylum.

  Liane de Pougy’s published works:

  L’insaisissable 1898

  La mauvaise part: Myrhille 1899

  L’enlisement (play) 1900

  Idylle saphique 1901

  Ecce homo! D’ici et de là (short stories) 1903

  Les sensations de Mlle de la Bringue 1904

  Yvée Lester 1906

  Yvée Jourdan 1908

  Mes cahier bleus 1977

  Mes cahiers bleus, Liane de Pougy’s diaries, written between 1919 and 1941, were posthumously published in France in 1977, and translated as My Blue Notebooks by Diana Athill in 1979.

  L’insaisissable (Chasing the Dream), Liane de Pougy’s first novel, is now available from Dedalus Books, who also publish Jean Lorrain’s best known novel, Monsieur de Phocas.

  I

  ‘Oh, Tesse, I’m so bored… my life is a desert! The programme never changes: the Bois, the races, fittings at the couturier’s. Then, to end an insipid day, dinner, and what an occasion that is…! Imprisoned in a fashionable restaurant so cramped for space you can’t breathe, and the air usually foul with cooking smells and tobacco fug… in the company of various friends. And what friends, too – if you can call them that, the thousand and one acquaintances of greater or lesser interest that chance throws our way…! Then the evening ends with… well, what a way to end it… oh! Now, this evening, I say: bother the lot of them! I’ve had as much as I can take, I want to stay here at home, just with you. They can all go hang…! Ernesta! Don’t put out any clothes for me, give me my old dressing gown, the pink flannel, you know, my monk’s robe with a hood and waist cord. No ribbons or laces! Enough of all these frills, they’re getting on my nerves! Today I want to pare myself down to the essential me. Ah, Tesse, Tesse, I’m so tired of life! I’m so bored! And tonight, you see, it’s just too much. Oh…! Here we are in the middle of Paris with all its distractions, the envy of Europe, and ten thousand times over I’d rather be alone here, with you and my dog, my pretty Princess…! Princess, come here! Isn’t she pretty! Here, quick, a kiss… a kiss for her mummy! Off you go now, my funny little sweet-heart, as Maindron says in Saint-Cendre… have you read it, Tesse…? It’s charming… is everything ready? Good, I’m going to take these things off. Won’t it be lovely, Tesse, dear, to be alone together, woman to woman, able to relax over dinner and gossip, elbows on the table, free of corsets and, especially, of irritating people…! This life of ours is so witless and silly! It brings no satisfaction to the soul or the mind and, most of the time, has nothing to offer but a level of materialism I find both tiresome and disconcerting! I promise you, Tesse, if I didn’t have – fortunately, and to a very high degree, exaggeratedly even – the sensual impulse that marks out real women from the others, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. You see, when I shrink back inside myself, privately and silently, in those rare moments when the whirlwind allows me a little respite, what a void…! What banality, what disgust and sadness at the same time…! Then I consider myself a poor little thing, much to be pitied, for my soul is very good and very upright. You know that, Tesse, you know the sort of person I am. I’m a child, I have a huge need for tenderness, advice, protection, and I find myself surrounded by feelings of every sort except the ones that would be so dear to me! I bitterly regret feeling alive… I’d like to exist as nothing but a doll, a brute being, everything I appear to be and everything that I am not, alas! With nothing good ahead of me, time slips past in the same old ways… every hour brings some disappointment and a sense of fatigue, and I ask myself why…? Why…? Why all this…?’

  Carried away by her outburst, the delicate creature threw herself into her friend’s arms and began to heave great sighs.

  ‘Come now, come now, Annhine, such a pretty thing! I don’t recognise you any more! What’s brought on this sudden attack of misery, there must be a reason, surely? You’re not explaining yourself clearly… has something gone wrong…? Has someone said you can’t have something you wanted?’

  ‘No… no…’ And the enervated Annhine shook her head. ‘No, Tesse, you don’t understand! This is a special moment for me. I’m giving you a glimpse into a hidden corner of my heart, where everything is bitterness and disgust… I’m speaking frankly… intimately… I’m suffering from this life we lead…’

  ‘And that’s where you’re wrong, Nhinon-the-beautiful. Because a courtesan must never cry, must never suffer. A courtesan is not allowed to be like other women and feel the way they do! She must stifle sentimentality of any kind and play out her heroic and unrelenting part, in order to devote her life, her youth above all, to laughter, to joyous times, to every possible pleasure! You are wrong, Nhinon, look at me: I have a soul of iron, unbending, I want nothing out of life except beauty and pleasure, I am not minded to tolerate the slightest obstacle in my way… if it is simply a case of exercising one’s will, then I will with all my energy, believe me. So don’t be so sensitive, Nhinette, fight, you’ll turn your pawn into a queen the same as I shall… nothing easily throws me, and the day I’m no longer strong and capable, because everything comes to pass in the end, well, that’s the day I’ll smash myself to smithereens and everything will be over…’

  Her agitated friend replied, her voice choking: ‘Oh, my darling Tesse, how I envy you! You are so wise, so masterful in the way you think! You’re so lucky! But me…!’

  ‘I am lucky because I want to be, because the day I decided to be a courtesan I erased from my life every memory, every attachment, any sense of obligation. I abdicated all claims to having what people call a soul. For me duties no longer exist, nor any responsibility except to myself and my desire! What independence! What intoxicating freedom! Annhine, just think: no more principles, no more morality, no more religion… a courtesan can do anything she likes without hiding it under a veil… without pretence, without hypocrisy, without fearing the least criticism or blame, for nothing touches her…! She is on the outside of society and its many pettinesses… fingers pointed at her? Once upon a time, perhaps, but not these days! The rebel is victorious…! Away with you, Lady of the Camellias, and long live the Aspasias and the Imperias…! You’re made of such tender stuff, my little courtesan. There’s an impish spirit abroad in this house whispering things in your ear and you must drag her back down to earth before she leads you astray! Do you not have gold in your hair? In your coffers…? And gold is our sun, for people like us… an adorable and all-powerful sun that we can put aside or scatter about as we wish! Do you not have a touch of heaven in your eyes? Pearls at your neck and behind your rosy lips…? You are delicious in your monk’s dressing gown… I think your androgyny is the thing that charms me most of all about you… enough of the philosophy of life, let’s play! Pull the hood over your head… you’re exquisite like that, Annhine… a real gem… an eighteenth century friar in miniature, all fresh complexion and curly hair! Annhine! Laugh, then! Raise your eyes to heaven and look like someone inspired while you give me your blessing… no, no, we don’t want stockings or mules, Ernesta, you’ll spoil everything… bare feet on the white carpet, that’s wonderful, your pale little feet with their long toes and transparent nails. Curse it, that’s certainly a clever manicurist you’ve got, you handsome little Franciscan…! Come here, let me hug you…! And next…’ Her voice suddenly turned grave. ‘Father, I wish to make confession…’

  She slid to her knees before the pretty monk who sat down and assumed an attentive pose, severe and contemplative.

  ‘Begin, my daughter, and hide nothing from me!’

  ‘Father, my sin… is love.’

  ‘Ah! Good, or rather bad, for it is bad, very bad, to give way to this harmful inclination… and you have a lover, no doubt, you have…’

  ‘I have several, Father!’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Why, yes…! The first is a useful lover, I’ll even say necessary; he is old, rich, generous. I am attached to him through habit, need, a sort of affectionate friendship, a sort of duty… he is, so to speak, my lover number one, or my husband if you prefer, anyway something very nearly legitimate!’