The Orchid Dancer: Cora Pearl, 1835-1886

The Orchid Dancer: Cora Pearl, 1835-1886
by Lorette C. Luzajic

The Emma Crouch story begins and ends in lonely anonymity, but in between, she was Cora Pearl, the world’s most spectacular courtesan. The cockney peasant milliner rose to the pinnacle of France’s 19th century demimonde to become the Queen of Paris.

Emma was born in London, England, probably in 1835. (She claimed 1842, but was using her younger sister’s birth certificate.) Her father was a cellist and a womanizer who peppered the UK and America with his progeny- an estimated twenty plus children. The girl’s mother pronounced him “dead.” Emma hated her new stepfather, so he shipped the girls to a convent school in France. Little did she know that later, the deportment and the French she learned would become major assets.

As a young woman, Emma moved in with her grandmother to take work at a London hat maker, with hopes of pursuing work as an actress. She was vibrant, fiercely intelligent, funny, and had a killer body, so naturally she attracted the attention of men. She also found millinery work utterly boring.

What happened next is not clear. Though Emma claims she was raped on the way home from church, it is believed she may have used this story to justify moving out of her grandma’s home into her own room to take up prostitution. She couldn’t stay, as she was no longer “pure.” It’s not a question of not believing “the victim” in this case: Emma was an independent freethinker who may have fabricated the story to explain or justify the shocking idea that she wanted to live on her own. Being “tainted” could be something of a relief when ridiculous societal and emotional investments were made on one’s “reputation.” Emma was always a bit outrageous and her desire to work in theatre was considered scandalous.

There is a parallel myth for this story, and that is one of a consensual night of amour. In this version, Emma’s lover left some money for her on the night table as an indulgence for her to buy herself something nice. If it happened that way, it would not be the first time a girl who longed for the stage saw a way to support herself. Eventually, Emma would command all of Paris as her stage.

Either way, or if it happened another, Cora had a deep mistrust of her stepfather, and there has been much speculation of why she was sent to boarding school. It is, of course, not uncommon, for a teenage girl to be abused by her mother’s new partner, and Cora’s lifelong refusal to devote herself to one man may have had roots in this version of the story. Of course, she may have simply seen from her father that not all men were faithful, and rather than end up with a pack of babies, poverty, and possible desertion, she decided to remain her own woman. She continually stated that independence was the most important drive for her. She also said she “detested men too much to ever obey one of them.”

In any case, she took on the name Cora Pearl and began “entertaining” men in a humble room. She may have “detested” men in the role of keeper or jailer, but free of the burden of reputation, Cora found she quite enjoyed men: the attention, the company, the sex, and being able to pay her rent. Aside from her apparent enthusiasm and skill in the boudoir, and her spectacular body, at once athletic and curvy, Cora had other considerable charms. She was charming and funny and flamboyant. One of her clients was named Robert Bignell, owner of a popular dance hall. She became his mistress, and he took her to Paris. Cora loved Paris so much that she sent him home alone.

Paris was certainly the cultural centre of Europe- maybe of the world- in the mid 19th century, a world that was called the Second Empire. Society revolved around creative values and spectacle, making art, music, literature, theatre and more of focal importance. Cora felt herself to be part of this world. But culture wasn’t free. Though she couldn’t afford the indulgence of fine lingerie and the fanciest garments, she began wearing them anyhow, certain that if she advertised her worth, she would attract the richest men. She famously began to wear gowns by Charles Worth, the first designer to put his name label in clothing.

Cora was right, but I’m willing to bet that many of her rich lovers weren’t just attracted by her fine clothes. Her companionship was much sought after. She was fun to be with, attentive, and witty. Biographer Baroness von Hutten wrote, ”She knew how to make bored men laugh.” Victor Massena, the duke of Rivoli, became her “amant en titre” or official lover, but Cora belonged to no one and made that clear. She kept the company of whom she wished, when she wished. That company included businessmen, dukes and princes, exotic ambassadors, including the Prince of Orange, heir to the Dutch throne. He gave her the black pearls that became one of her trademark accessories.

Not everyone understood the phenomenon. In 1892, memoirist “Zed” wrote about the Parisian courtesans. About Cora, he wrote, “I humbly admit that hers was a success I never understood, that it must be noted, as it did exist, but there is no justification for it. To me, she represents a stain on what was, taken all in all, a scintillating group, refined and aristocratic, of the gallant women of her époque and from whom she differed absolutely in every respect. She was a personality apart, a specimen of another race, a bizarre and astonishing phenomenon.”

Zed was not the only one who was puzzled by others’ attraction to Cora Pearl. Many refined, humourless stick-in-the-muds found her coarse and vulgar, and did not appreciate her loud jokes and pranks. Julian Osgood Field called her “an amiable, but very stupid woman, and very fond of playing coarse, silly monkey tricks.” He recounted that she had once pulled a meat cutlet out of a bowl and placed it on the head of her date, shrieking with laughter. She was known for many such foolish, silly pranks, and did not fit into anyone’s model of refinery.

Whether Zed liked her or not, countless did. Her boyish and horsy lust for life made her fun to be around and enthusiastic in bed. She was lavished and indulged and spoiled in the finest linens, gorgeous clothing, luxurious dwellings, gourmet dining, wines, parties, and most important of all, horses. Cora was a talented horsewoman, and at one time, she had a stable of sixty horses.

“All Paris knew Cora Pearl. She was a centauress; she created the Amazon…She was the first to appear in our elegant promenades on a real horse which she rode with unequalled distinction and skill…For Cora Pearl, the horse is not only a luxury, it is an art; it is not only an art, it is an enterprise,” wrote admirer Nestor Roqueplan (quoted in Virginia Rounding’s Grandes Horizontales.)

What must be understood about the courtesans of this epoch is that they were the face, the display of the spirit of the Second Empire. This age of France was about art and literature, but its spirit was not serious: it was heady, frivolous, lacy, indulgent, feverish. The courtesan Marguerite Bellanger wrote in her memoirs, “To have fun, fun and more fun was everyone’s preoccupation.” Virginia Rounding, in her book about French courtesans, Grandes Horizantales, said, “There is a sense of glitter-of poudre d’or- about Second Empire Paris at its zenith, accompanied by an underlying disquiet that all that glitters may not really be gold.” Virginia says, “The ethos of the Second Empire was itself grounded in the importance of display, of showing its grandeurs to the world.” She points out that words like trimmings, frills, frivolity, froth, and flashy set the tone of the age.

Cora’s showmanship and belief that the world was her stage was her ticket to the big time. She commanded the attention of all around her with her theatrical maquillage. Other courtesans claimed she used rouge on her nipples, which looked like “wild rose petals.” This may or may not have been the case- tales of Cora’s spectacular breasts abound from many- they apparently didn’t need any help whatsoever. She died her hair yellow or pink and powdered herself with various glittering metallics. Her hands were assets Cora was especially proud of, beautifully shaped and elegant, and she wore a ring connected by chain to a bracelet. She wore flowers in her hair, and bracelets jangled up and down her arms.

Once she appeared on stage as Cupid in an operetta. She’d had no vocal training for the singing role, but the Illustrated London News didn’t seem to mind: “She was one blaze of diamonds- diamonds in her hair, round her neck, on her tiny cloak, round her arms, round her waist, and round her ankles.” She knew the value of advertising her beauty in a horse drawn carriage, posed in crinolines. Sometimes she dressed only in white gowns and diamonds everywhere. Her luxurious homes were decorated in exotic treasures of the Orient, animal skins, mirrors, armour, and art.

Legends abound from Cora’s sometimes-embellished memoirs and from the demimonde she starred in. One of Cora’s claims to fame was bathing nude in a silver tub filled with champagne, the centrepiece of her fabulous banquets. She was also said to strew the carpets with orchids and dance naked upon them, bewitching all who watched. She spent loads of money- one bill came to more than eighteen thousand pounds- on fine French lingerie. That Cora took delight in her sensuality and pleasure in pleasuring bewitched those around her. She was adventurous and fun in bed, or so they said, with a special penchant for doing it on horseback.

Cora’s homes were never-ending feasts of glitter, champagne, buffets of splendid food, and music. She boasted that there was dancing in the morning, noon, and night. She displayed dozens of varieties and cuts of meat, and fruits on beds of rare Parma violets.

Unfortunately, Cora had other thrills that she picked up from her suitors, and she became a voracious gambler. Though she kept ledgers of her transactions, income, and expenditures, her extravagance and her gambling addiction devastated much of her wealth, leaving her ill-equipped for a future in old age- a time when even the most beloved courtesans were no longer desirable. Even during her height, she said, “How many times I’ve ended up without a farthing!”

Cora’s reign as Queen of Tarts came to an end after an unfortunate incident with one of her neurotic consorts. The January 5, 1873 edition of The New York Times reported a rather unusual act of obsession on the part of Alexandre Duval. Duval was heir to a butcher’s fortune, which he had thrown away. His foolishness was blamed on Cora, for in addition to horses, horses, and more horses, “her banquets were of a character to recall the legends of declining Rome.”

The Times’ blames the dissolution of the couple’s affair on the fact that Duval’s diamonds and horses ran out. But Duval was stalking Cora, threatening her, and breaking into her house. He kept insisting that she see no other men, and that she marry him, simply not playing by the rules agreed upon in such a relationship. The young man had also squandered much of his fortune before he was with Cora, and he felt that he was unable to sustain her because of this, when in reality, she cut him off because of his dangerous threats to commit suicide if he could not win her love.

His obsessive harassment was too much to bear, so she ended the affair with a finality he refused to accept. He appeared on her doorstep, made his way inside, argued, and then pulled out a revolver and shot himself.

Cora’s terrible “cruelty” grew in legend after this episode. The Times’ reported that Duval was “carried to a chamber, and help was sent for.” But today, it is widely told that the frosty bitch left him lying in his own blood and went back to bed. If true, this would probably mean some kind of criminal negligence charges for Cora, so it is almost certainly a myth, unless the New York Times was lying. Nonetheless, the Times clearly indicated a pervasive belief that Duval and all other men who choose to hire expensive hookers are somehow victims, using the word “victim” half a dozen times. There is no mention of whether or not men who choose to waste large amounts of money on lesser delights like fine cars and fancy ties or sports betting are also victims. “There is no telling exactly the number of fortunes helped to dissipate in a few years’ time, but it was well known that her victims were many,” the reporter wrote. “…He had been the victim of a drolesse. He would be laughed at by all the world and hence resolved upon suicide. He could not bring himself to take his place in line in order to watch with other victims for the catastrophe which must soon overtake his successor.”

Curiously, the New York Times asks how so many could fall for the oldest trick in the book when “her character is perfectly known and has been advertised for years.” Ummm, because men are responding willingly to that advertisement! Because men want sex, and some women make themselves available to fill this need, that’s why. The reporter wonders why no inquiry was called for by law to “examine into the charms which can thus lead the young men of France to forget their duties, their family, their honour, and their God.” Say what?

In any event, Cora was expelled from France and forced to return home to London following Duval’s suicide attempt. “They talk of sending me out of the country,” Cora said. “But what has happened to me which would not happen to any other woman under similar circumstances? Suppose you said you wanted to live with me and I declined your offer, should I be to blame if you shot yourself? It is not true that I wanted to get rid of Monsieur Duval because he had no money left…The truth is that, during the ten months I have known him, he has constantly implored me to marry him. Now, as marriage is not the thing for me…I have always refused him, and as my refusals only make him more obstinate, I resolved to cut matters short by telling him that although we should remain good friends, all must be at end between us…He forced his way two or three times into the house…”

After being stalked, threatened, and harassed, Cora had to witness Duval’s attempted suicide and then face expulsion from her home. She told the press that the estates she owned were given to her by Prince Napoleon and that Duval’s problems began before they met, with his squandering money already, family troubles, and emotional instability.

But it is always the woman who bears the brunt of the shame and spectacle in society’s feigned disapproval of the original commerce. Somehow, the “reason” for prostitution is always a woman’s low self worth, childhood abuse, or wanton evil, and never the fact that there is an insistent demand that will not disappear no matter how much self-esteem women grow up with. Somehow, grown men who own businesses and empires and run families and farms are not capable of making a decision without a whore’s vicious manipulation or seduction. We rely on counts and kings and tycoons and even just the average joes of this world to make decisions in politics and business and manufacturing, but we assume they cannot make a decision on what to spend their money? Indeed, to have one’s own courtesan was a status symbol, particularly in the Second Empire. To show her off to the world, you showed that your wealth was limitless and your virility was powerful. This was a very ostentatious way of showing to society that for you, money was no object. Powerful men wanted to most expensive, glamourous courtesans possible.

When will we discard our prudishness and acknowledge that sex is important, and that the oldest arrangements in the book exist because they are necessary? Let’s stop infantilizing men by pretending they couldn’t “help themselves” and start accepting that lust is natural. If all women who willingly sold themselves stopped tomorrow, what would happen to the millions of men seeking service? Would they magically stop needing the service? No- there would be anarchy.

Obviously, no kind of regulations in any culture in any society, moral or loose, ever in the history of the world has been able to stop the market. There is prostitution in Saudi Arabia- despite the risk of death- simply because there are men in Saudi Arabia. There’s only one reason why women become prostitutes- it is the same reason why women take on any other kind of job. Money. If she loves her job, that’s simply a bonus. If she hates it, well, there are all kinds of people who hate their jobs. I’m not sure people who manufacture plastic crap love their work or find it meaningful, but someone’s got to do it if there is a market for it.

Perhaps it’s time to accept that the oldest arrangement is an excellent model. At it’s best, it fills a need for both parties. At it’s best, it is consensual and discreet. At it’s best, it is one of the most dignified and honest way for men to fulfill their needs. Until that need disappears, there will always be a need for the Cora Pearls of this world. And while not every lady of the evening earns on such a grand scale, it is unlikely that kings will hire cheap hookers. As with everything else, there is a range of prices scaled to taste.

Cora Pearl was not a victim, and nor was she insatiable and immoral. She sought out her work, enjoyed her work, and did it well. That she was rich seems to be the reason for which she is hated. Had she died of syphilis on the backstreets of London, like thousands of other women who worked on less savoury rungs of the ladder, we might forgive her for falling victim to her voracious immorality. Cora’s reputation would have been the same if she became a more conventional actress, a disgraceful job at the time, not one step above prostitution. Should she have stayed in hat-making, and subjected herself to marriage and misery if that is not what she wanted?

Cora’s exile from Paris and the fickle nature of popularity meant she struggled to work afterwards with the dead weight of Duval’s histrionics on her reputation. Cora lived for years on what she had, and eventually that ran out. She died of intestinal cancer in relative obscurity, alone, in squalid poverty at the age of 51. But according to her memoirs, she accepted the way things were and said she’d had a very happy life.

“I have never deceived anybody because I have never belonged to anybody. My independence was all my fortune, and I have known no other happiness,” Cora said.

The Other Heiress: The Marchesa Luisa di Casati

I was fourteen when I fell in love with a mysterious redhead I met at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I fancied myself a seasoned intellectual, a young lady of literary tastes and culture, despite my blue-collar country upbringing. And so I would take the Greyhound into Toronto, and dressed in something as obscure and outlandish as a girl could muster on a babysitter’s income, I would visit the gallery. My heart beat faster when I saw her. Her eyes were daunting, piercing through an alabaster visage, set afire with a mop of carrot curls.

We never spoke, because my redhead haunted me from a canvas painted by Augustus John. From her backdrop of sea-foam green, she never flinched, but held my gaze with her own, and an expression of both curiousity and haughty disdain. I was sure she was eccentric, that she must be a writer like me, a woman of outrageous tastes and interesting lovers. She was the woman I wanted to be when I grew up.

The famous painting is one of the Toronto gallery’s highlights to this day. “Luisa Casati should be shot, stuffed and displayed in a glass case,” is what the artist Augustus John said of the Marchesa.

John was not the only artist to paint this captivating femme fatale. Indeed, her whole celebrity was based on her lavish extravagance and eccentricity, which made her muse for the artists and literati of Europe in her time. Born in 1881, she reigned supreme over the imagination of anyone with a heartbeat for the first three decades of the 1900s. Her estate archives suggest she may be the most “artistically represented” woman after Cleopatra and the Virgin Mary. Sculptures, photographs, sketches and paintings preserve her spirit long beyond her death in 1957. She posed for Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Kees Van Dongen, and Jacob Epstein. She captivated Erte, Jack Kerouac, Jean Cocteau, Tallulah Bankhead, Tennessee Williams, Ezra Pound, Colette and Coco Chanel. Her pets inspired the famous Cartier Panther design. Later, she was played by silver screen legends Vivien Leigh and Ingrid Bergman.

But who was she, and what was all the hoopla about? Was she beautiful? What talents did she possess?

Luisa, born in Milan in 1881, was the daughter of a wealthy Austrian cotton manufacturer who was made count by King Umberto the first for his contributions to the cotton industry. Luisa was born rich, but she was an unfortunate looking child, with bulging alien eyes on a harshly chiseled face. She was also very shy. But she was fiercely intelligent and curious about arts and culture, and her passions were encouraged with visits to museums and art galleries. Very early on, Luisa became enchanted with eccentric royalty or outrageous theatre figures, a fascination that was to continue through her lifetime.

Luisa’s mother died when she was just 13, and then the Count died two years later. Luisa and her only sister were the richest women in Italy at the time. The girls moved into the care of an uncle, but a few years later, Luisa married Camillo Casati Stampa di Soncino, Marchese di Roma. They had one child a year later, and Luisa soon found that wedded bliss was stifling her style, and the pair took up separate residences. Though she’d picked up a fascinating with the mystical arts and the macabre from her husband, she soon began an affair with the famous Italian lover, poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. The affair lasted decades, and the friendship a lifetime. It was at the time of this relationship that Luisa began to explore her deepest eccentricities and vanities, becoming a truly Gothic heroine and dandy. She artfully blended the macabre with the outlandish in her demeanor, surroundings, and fashion- the freakier, the better. She engaged in scandalous love affairs, with both men and women. Her decadence was supreme and captivating. Disregarding her childhood insecurities, she seized the tall, ghostly androgyny and accentuated it wildly, powdering her face whiter, circling her eyes with black kohl, smudging her lips in vermillion. It’s a look that reappears on fashion runways every few seasons even today.

“The face was that of a sinister Pierrot, utterly white, the thin mouth a slit that seemed to be of the same black as the rings encircling the eyes. The high cheekbones, the forward-thrusting chin, the long neck bespoke the apparition’s class,” said Philippe Jullian. “Was this the vampire Nosferatu in drag or the daughter of Dracula turned grandmother?”

The Marchesa had a penchant for outrageous luxury. She went to Paris, Rome, Capri, buying palaces! She loved to lavishly and bizarrely entertain guests of artistic or aristocratic temperament, hostessing grandiose masquerade balls. She painted her Nubian servants gold. She had wax mannequins made to populate her rooms- legend says they were modeled after her lovers. And like fellow eccentrics Lord Byron, Josephine Baker, and Michael Jackson, the Marchesa had her own menagerie of pets.

She could be seen in her skintight long velvet gowns walking her greyhounds- or her pet cheetahs. She wore live, gilded snakes as necklaces. Isidora Duncan recounts her experience as Luisa’s visitor. A parrot greeted her with a tirade of vulgarities. A while bulldog snarled. A cobra hissed from a cage. The walls and floors were covered in white bear skins and tiger skins. “There was a gorilla, showing its teeth.” The Marchesa drove in a carriage fronted by twin leopards. She carried a monkey in a cage. Others complained of the stench, but she gave him a sprig of lilacs, which he flung about, scattering the petals. “Now do you see why I have a monkey? Don’t you think that’s beautiful?” Luisa asked her detractors. “Isn’t it like something in a Chinese painting?”

Her biographers Scot D. Ryersson, Michael Orlando Yaccarino, Quentin Crisp, in Infinite Variety, tell the above anecdote. They also recount how her palace gardens were filled with a veritable zoo, and that she sometimes sailed the canals with her selection of primates, tigers, and exotic birds. There were white peacocks, ocelots, boa constrictors, and albino blackbirds.

“She was the most flamboyant and dramatic character to flit through the early 20th century European beau monde,” writes Michael Mattis at www.dandyism.net.  “They simply don’t make her kind anymore: richer than God, gloriously semi-sane, with outrageous taste in friends, art, décor, clothes, houses, pets and lovers. Guests of Casati’s boudoir were a veritable who’s who of the aristos, aesthetes, artists, bons vivants, poets, dancers and dandies that made the early 20th century’s art scene what it was: totally, utterly, and delightfully mad.”

A Polish sculptor named Catherine Barjanksky once said, “She was so different from other women that ordinary clothes were impossible for her.” The artist described Luisa’s ensemble of one occasion as something out of Thousand and One Nights. “Long Persian trousers of heavy gold brocade, fastened tightly…. held by diamond bangles…feet encased in gold sandals with high diamond heels…she smoked cigarettes out of a long black mouthpiece studded with diamonds.”

The Marchesa has been criticized for the bottomless well of her vanity. Would she have been so outrageous if she attracted no attention? Furthermore, she had hundreds of portraits made of herself in ink and oil and photograph. Her motivation, hardly original, yet clear as a bell, was simply this famous statement: “I want to be a living work of art.” Luisa wished to make herself immortal, and so she made herself memorable, with portraits that would bring her to life centuries after her passing.

Luisa was also criticized for being a showy, flamboyant personality despite contributing no art or literature to society. Her talents were mere shock value and superficial veneer.

But this is hardly a fair critique when one considers not only the inspirational value of the muse, but the monetary injections her estate provided for endless artists, sculptors, photographers, costumiers, designers, dancers, actors, musicians, writers, theatres, even puppeteers. Her high profile cemented their stature in some cases, and others had a chance at a career because of her. Her lavish splurging boosted the productivity and importance of the arts in Europe after the turn of last century.

Just as important as her money was the attention she brought to the arts and literary affairs. People flocked in droves to events just to see the living work of art, and thus the arts themselves gained considerably in both finance and audience. The importance of this role cannot be understated. This was a vivid time in Europe for arts and culture, with other eccentrics like Ballet Russes superstar Nijinsky and opera/theatre artist Erte and a whole host of others mingling around salons and galleries. But the roots of these geniuses and most of their company were humble. Luisa’s grandiosity fuelled the development of greatness.

Today we depend on the fickle and disinterested government arts grants and listen to other taxpayers complain that they could care less about opera or oil painting. Or we watch artists and writers live their passion very nearly in the gutter. The Marchesa was a patroness extraordinaire who valued the arts above all else, even, I believe, above her own image. I am certain that the meaning of her vanity was rooted in her absolute devotion to the creativity of the human imagination. It takes tremendous vanity to fuel the salons and cafes and theatres of Europe, and this was the Marchesa’s fate.

But alas, even for a filthy rich heiress, the bottomless well of gold runs out after one too many monkeys. By the early 1930s, the Marchesa had spent more than everything, overdrawn by some 25 million dollars.

Even her penitence was the height of elegant soap operatics. She appeared before the Parisian archbishop to seek his forgiveness, dressed from head to toe in white, carried by four valets, holding white flowers and an albino parrot on her lap.

Her estates were sold to pay off her debts, and the lady Luisa spent 25 years in England in humbling circumstance. But she lost none of her pluck, apparently- legend holds that the Marchesa could be seen strolling the alleyways, dumpster diving for feathers and other accoutrements with which to decorate her bonnets.

Luisa’s long-term lover, the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio wondered, “By what fire did she transmute the substance of her life into the beauties of such moving power? She demonstrated how true it is that all enchantment is a madness induced with art.”

Today I stood at the renovated and spectacular new Art Gallery of Ontario. More than two decades have gone by since I was first astonished and seduced by the portrait. Now I know that Augustus John was her lover, too, and that the effect she had on me was precisely the one she wanted to have on anyone who laid eyes on her. Amazingly, this picture was purchased for a mere 1500 pounds in 1934. It is said to be the best loved work in the gallery. Clearly, her ability to make an instant audience wherever she goes has prevailed long after she died. She was indeed the living work of art she wanted to be. Immortal.

Every portrait of the Marchesa shows another side, another layer, and John’s is disarming for its near-softness. He avoided the Gothic, macabre, darker incarnations and focused on the shock of her orange hair, flaming against a grey-green backdrop. She is pale, almost vulnerable, turning guardedly to her observer, yet unflinching. She shows that her intensity is still present even when undressed of her carriages and strange pets and vampiric gowns, never having been dependent on those things after all. Here, as ever, she does not flinch. She makes no apology for the fact that she is everyone’s lover, and not just mine. There is enough of her to go around, and always will be.

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
- Shakespeare, on Marchesa’s tomb, 1957

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Erte- a century of fashion design, opera sets, art deco, magazine drawing, stage construction, decorative arts, and sculptures

Few can boast a 100-year career. Erte, as Romain de Tirtoff was known, lived from 1892-1990, and worked as an artist since early childhood. This eccentric fellow veered from his heritage of Russian military aristocracy to saturate the world with flamboyance, plumage, and endless other fabulousnesses, for nearly a century. The sheer energy of Erte’s phenomenal reign is insane. He made thousands upon thousands of drawings: he was the designer of just about every theatre set, costume, opera, textile, and stage show in the last century. Close your eyes and picture ‘art deco’ and you are likely summoning up Erte. But the 20s came and went, and they were very early in his life’s work. I fell in love with Erte’s dozens of bronze sculptures at a New Orleans gallery. These ornate masterpieces showed a vivid world where the female form reigned supreme. There was little I’d ever experienced that so beautiful as these bejeweled, stylistic mermaids and mythic heroines.

Not even Madonna rivals this effeminate, utterly elegant little character; in career longevity and creative output…she’s only going on silver! His autobiography showed him to be a fierce, fearless, live-and-let-live type, a man who loved nothing more than his work, cats and solitude. He loved intensely, polishing off a ‘til –death-do-us-part that lasted 20 years and still left him ‘widowed’ in his mid-30s. He told the world about his life, art, love, theatre, opera, and Hollywood: his autobiography, Things I Remember, astonishes with dry, spare humour and deep warmth. Erte was a man of great refinement and absolute manners, hobnobbing with fashion designers and actresses, opera divas and prominent personalities- yet there’s no indication anywhere that he was ever a snob. There’s a peculiar warmth that underlies the memoirs of this graphic maverick. Even when he is scathing, as high camp personalities are wont to be, he is polite and elegant. “I firmly believe, too, that every human being has a duty to make himself as attractive as possible,” he writes in his epilogue.

Though Erte stated famously that he couldn’t ever retire because his work is his life, he did write Things I Remember to make a sweeping summary of his career. He was 80 at the time, so how long he had was anybody’s guess. I was mildly upset that he didn’t write at all about his sculptures. I just assumed that for a man who produced thousands of elaborate projects, mentioning the bronze sculptures just didn’t come up. Then I found out Erte hadn’t even STARTED making his best art yet…the sculptures were all made in his 80s!

Erte worked fearlessly, and he was blessed with strength and confidence and intuition. While the theatre world was long a haven for the queer, the early 1900s weren’t exactly an ideal era to burst out of the closet in. Will and Grace had not yet brought camp into everybody’s normal social circle. Madonna had not yet rolled out the red carpet. Furthermore, Erte was the only son of a Russian Imperial Fleet admiral. Still, his gayness must have been obvious even to those who had never known or heard of such a thing. Even as a child, Erte looked effeminate. He wanted to be a ballerina! He hated war passionately, unlike all the men in his bloodline who lived for their military duties. Erte had beauty, not violence, in his heart. “When I was five years old, I designed an evening dress for my mother,” he writes. Indeed, his mother had the gown made up, and wore it to a ball. “Around her décolletage was a garland or real roses. I was absolutely enchanted.”
Surely the redder necked among us will point to such examples to say, see; it IS the mother’s fault! But most of us see that sublime moment for what it was – as Erte felt, the pivotal moment where his fate was realized. Every last piece of his work was a celebration of women’s exquisite beauty.

Romain de Tirtoff, his real name, enjoyed variety in his work, his social life, his world travels, and his love life. He was adventurous, though he mentioned that he was so spacey that he often forgot who or where he was. For this reason, his daring never led to opium, cocaine, or other drugs that may have been in vogue in his many circles. While he enjoyed meeting new lovers on trains and at parties, he did not care for a Hollywood orgy he attended, sensing that the pleasures felt forced, awkward, and pretentious. But despite the conservative, military bloodline he was born to, Erte never wasted a moment on foolish regrets. His first ‘rendezvous’ was at age 13. “I wasted very little emotional energy in trying to fight my own nature, even less in punishing myself with feelings of guilt. Rather, I looked forward to many more delightful adventures. I was not disappointed. Sex has always played an important role in my life, and still does,” Erte wrote in his geriatric years. “But my greatest love has been my art. Other desires and relationships have always taken second place to this ruling passion.”

Indeed, he attributes indulgence and its moderation as the force behind his longevity- including the two, and only two, cigarettes per day that he enjoyed for most of his life. He also enjoyed dressing up- back in the early days, he referred to ‘drag’ as ‘in costume.’ A petite, elegant harlequin of a man, no one knew. Sometimes it wasn’t drag, per se, but such over-the-top outlandishness that his presence was unforgettable. Erte liked to intrigue his dinner companions by modeling various Asian robes, wearing a different one for every course served! But even when he dressed fashionably male, he was often mistaken for a woman.

Regardless of his unorthodox adventures, Erte was still a deeply religious person, though he preferred to pray in private. “Throughout my adult life, (prayer) has been a source of great comfort and strength. But, since I feel that religion is a private matter, I am likely to do my praying in empty cathedrals,” he wrote. He also dabbled in some salon spiritualism in the days that ghost-raising séances were the fashion. But he felt too intensely a portal, and didn’t care to experience the spirits beyond that.

Though Erte loved festive soirees, operas, and gala celebrations with the rich, famous, and royal, hobnobbing with everyone from the deeply eccentric Marchesa de Casati to Barbra Streisand, he loved his cats most of all. “Being alone is vitally important for me and my work. I am a solitary person…The cat is a solitary animal, very independent, very quiet by nature. Like cats who hide themselves away when they are ill, I cannot stand people visiting me when I am indisposed. I want to be left alone.”

Lorette C. Luzajic is the girl at thegirlcanwrite.net. Writer, artist, editor- her various art creations are everywhere. Visit her site for biography, client testimonials, links, or to hire her for your next writing project. Please order her amazing poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Astronauts-Wife-Poems-Eros-Thanatos-Lorette-C-Luzajic/9781847287335-item.html