Seductress (51 page)

63
“Home,” he always . . . :
Quoted ibid., 172.

63
After David’s abdication . . . :
Quoted in King,
Duchess of Windsor,
239.

63
With age, the . . . :
Buffie Johnson,
Lady of the Beasts
(Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions International, 1994), 47.

63
Yet despite all . . . :
Higham,
Duchess of Windsor,
383.

63
He showered her . . . :
Charles J. V. Murphy and J. Bryan III,
The Windsor Story
(New York: Dell, 1979), 109.

63
With typical seductress . . . :
Higham,
Duchess of Windsor,
387.

63
“It would take . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 394.

63
Like the bad wife . . . :
Gimbutas,
Language of the Goddess,
192.

63
“She got him . . .”:
Quoted in Murphy and Bryan,
Windsor Story,
113.

64
Truer to the owl goddess’s . . . :
Georgina Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1975), 88 and 118.

64
“Overly tall,” Tullia . . . :
Quoted in Lynne Lawner,
Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance
(New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 72.

64
Beauties of the . . . :
See the Renaissance writer Agnolo Firenzuola on these requirements, which he illustrates with numerous geometrical drawings. About the correct alignment of eyes, nose, and mouth he writes: “And there is as much distance from the tip of the chin to the top of the upper lip as from the top of the nose to the hairline, which is the end of the forehead. And there is as much distance from the top of the upper lip to the beginning of the nose as from the inner corner of the eye to the middle of the bridge of the nose. The base of the nose must be as wide as it is long,” etc. Firenzuola,
On the Beauty of Women,
trans. Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992 [1541]), 25.

64
Tullia was born . . . :
Ethel Colburn Mayne,
Enchanters of Men
(New York: Putnam’s, 1925), 82.

64
Her mother, herself . . . :
Ibid., 83.

64
She proved an infant . . . :
Quoted ibid., 83.

64
With shrewd perspicacity . . . :
Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,
86.

65
When pile-it-on excess . . . :
Mayne,
Enchanters of Men,
83.

65
Sparkling with “devilish” . . . :
Quoted in Lawner,
Lives of the Courtesans,
73 and 72.

65
Although she lavished . . . :
Quoted in Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,
107 and 106.

65
She made all her clients . . . :
Ibid., 96.

65
The maximum difficulty . . . :
Quoted in Mayne,
Enchanters of Men,
88.

65
“She knows everything, . . .” :
Quoted in Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,
102.

65
None of his “other mistresses” . . . :
Ibid., 94.

65
Almost a hundred thousand . . . :
Quoted ibid., 94.

66
When a local dramatist . . . :
Quoted ibid., 95.

66
“Let’s leave out . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 101.

66
She saturated the city . . . :
Quoted ibid., 102.

66
Muzio regarded her . . . :
Quoted ibid., 106.

66
Once more the “Queen . . .”:
Mayne,
Enchanters of Men,
86.

67
“You are young . . .” :
Quoted in Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,
113.

67
Tullia, “more queenly . . .”:
Mayne,
Enchanters of Men,
85.

67
“Monster, miracle, sibyl!” . . . :
Quoted in Masson,
Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,
94.

67
“Fierce and hawk-like,” . . . :
Quoted in Joanna Richardson,
The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth-Century France
(Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1967), 96.

67
But she exercised . . . :
Ibid., 84.

67
Just as her critics . . . :
Rupert Christiansen,
Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune
(New York: Viking, 1994), 116.

67
“Ugly, elegant, and remote” . . . :
Judith Yarnell,
Transformations of Circe
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 29.

67
Yet this eerie . . . :
Harrison,
Prolegomena,
168.

68
While the she-vulture . . . :
The theme of death-point sexuality and the perverse attraction to self-destruction and disintegration has been well studied. The two seminal works are Denis de Rougemont,
Love in the Western World,
trans. Montgomery Belgion (New York: Harper & Row, 1956) and Bataille,
Eroticism: Death and Sensuality.

68
“All of my wishes” . . . :
Quoted in Richardson,
Courtesans,
98.

68
Thanks to her three-year . . . :
Ibid., 82.

69
“I am not badly . . .”:
The Goncourt Journals,
trans. Lewis Galantiere (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 164.

69
“You go back . . .”:
Quoted in Richardson,
Courtesans,
85.

69
To win Count . . . :
Quoted ibid., 96.

69
When no respectable . . . :
Quoted ibid., 92.

69
She wore
bouchons . . . :
Goncourt Journals,
243.

69
Transfixed by her . . . :
Quoted in Richardson,
Courtesans,
85.

69
When La Paiva accepted . . . :
Quoted ibid., 86.

69
A hawk-eyed businesswoman . . . :
Quoted ibid., 91.

70
She bought a sixteenth . . . :
Quoted ibid., 90.

70
At this ornate shrine . . . :
Quoted ibid., 93.

70
Though entirely unschooled . . . :
Quoted ibid., 87.

70
He eventually married . . . :
Quoted ibid., 96.

70
Hissed in the street . . . :
Quoted ibid.

70
With her primal erotic . . . :
Quoted ibid.

71
Dumas
fils,
though . . . :
Quoted ibid.

71
These were “man-seizing” . . . :
Harrison,
Prolegomena,
198 and 166.

71
They sang the song . . . :
Storms and shipwreck were a central metaphor for ancient Greeks of the soul-uprooting, deranging, and destructive power of sexuality. See Thornton,
Eros,
35-37. Death by drowning is a common image also of “man’s fear of being overwhelmed by female sexuality or for loss of identity and self-control in sexual intercourse.” Patrick Bade,
Femme Fatale
(New York: Mayflower Books, 1929), 8.

71
By the same token . . . :
Harrison,
Prolegomena,
178.

71
She fetched up . . . :
Margaret Crosland,
Piaf
(New York: Fromm International Publishing, 1985), 79.

71
No man in fact . . . :
Ibid., 100.

72
Throngs of “young guys” . . . :
Simone Berteaut,
Piaf
(New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 29.

72
“I’m ugly,” she . . . :
Quoted ibid., 139 and 236.

72
In both work and love . . . :
Ibid., 183.

72
First she panned . . . :
Ibid., 217.

73
She stroked her . . . :
Jean Cocteau, intro., Edith Piaf,
The Wheel of Fortune,
trans. Peter Trewartha and Andrée Masoin de Vinton (New York: Chilton Books, 1958), 15, and Crosland,
Piaf,
92 and 15.

73
Edith’s departure left . . . :
Quoted in Eugen Weber, review, Yves Montand et al.,
You See I Haven’t Forgotten,
trans. Jeremy Leggatt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992),
New York Times Book Review,
November 15, 1992, 31.

73
Contrary to the . . . :
Quoted in Crosland,
Piaf,
85.

73
Her landlord during . . . :
Quoted ibid., 76, and Berteaut,
Piaf,
104-05.

73
A lover of . . . :
Quoted in Crosland,
Piaf,
115.

73
Eddie, who left . . . :
Quoted ibid., 106.

74
“She made me . . .”:
Quoted in Berteaut,
Piaf,
358.

74
She’d have laughed . . . :
Crosland,
Piaf,
192.

74
“I had a . . .”:
Piaf,
Wheel of Fortune,
62.

74
“A woman who . . .”:
Quoted in Berteaut,
Piaf,
131.

74
Early in her career . . . :
Quoted ibid., 82.

74
As her half sister . . . :
Ibid., 176.

75
From the topmost bleacher . . . :
Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
162.

75
Everyone who saw Pauline . . . :
Quoted ibid., 42 and 70, and Avrahm Yarmolinsky,
Turgenev: The Man, His Art and His Age
(New York: Orion Press, 1959), 86.

75
For forty years . . . :
Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
187.

75
The ugly duckling . . . :
Rupert Christiansen,
Prima Donna: A History
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 77.

76
In a period of fascistic . . . :
Ibid., 42. See Rupert Christiansen on the intolerance for plainness on the Paris stage and ruthless ranking of actresses on the basis of pulchritude in
Paris Babylon.
“Few societies,” he writes, “have so completely reduced women to sex objects as the Second Empire did,” 92.

76
When she strode . . . :
V.S. Pritchett,
The Gentle Barbarian: The Work and Life of Turgenev
(New York: Ecco Press, 1977), 36.

76
Then she sang . . . :
Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
28.

76
It was a voice . . . :
Quoted ibid., 43.

76
Critics compared it . . . :
Quoted ibid., 50 and 52.

76
Like Dante’s siren-ogre . . . :
quoted Pritchett,
The Gentle Barbarian,
36
.

76
She enchanted men . . . :
Quoted in Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
49.

76
He praised her . . . :
Quoted ibid., 60.

76
Louis Viardot, a theater . . . :
Quoted ibid., 47, and ibid., 85.

77
One of the most ardent . . . :
Quoted ibid., 94.

77
For him, it was . . . :
Ibid., 165.

77
He was six feet . . . :
Quoted ibid., 161.

77
He treated her . . . :
Ibid., 451.

77
She had a personality . . . :
Quoted ibid., 67.

77
She told her St. Petersburg . . . :
Quoted ibid., 183-84.

77
One huffy Russian . . . :
Quoted ibid., 431.

78
“Laugh,” he beseeched . . . :
Quoted ibid., 223.

78
“Ah,” she said, “I too . . .”:
Quoted in Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
281.

78
The latter endured . . . :
Quoted in Fitzlyon,
Price of Genius,
350 and 353.

78
He dreamed of . . . :
Ibid., 417.

78
“There have always . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 312.

78
“One of the greatest . . .”:
Ibid., 246.

78
“She is perfect” . . . :
Quoted ibid., 460.

78
She died in 1910
. . . : Ibid., 464.

79
Objectively she resembled . . . :
Gautier poem quoted ibid., 12.

79
When Turgenev drew . . . :
Quoted ibid., 448.

79
“Transformation,” say folklorists . . . :
Pierre Brunel, ed.,
Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes,
trans. Wendy Allatson et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 1430.

79
They belie the . . . :
See Erik Erikson, who maintains “we feel beautiful according to how we’ve been loved. A child who is loved becomes more beautiful.”
Journal of American Psychological Association,
10 (1962), 451-74. Nancy Friday summarizes this axiom of self-esteem in “The Mutual Gaze and the Crying Storm,”
Power of Beauty,
(New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 24-33.

79
They knew—who better? . . . :
Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
act I, scene i, line 8, 98.

79
For that reason . . . :
Havelock Ellis expands on this idea that beauty of clothing, for example, operates as substitute for beauty of body in every society,
Psychology of Sex,
vol. 1, 158.

80
When they talked . . . :
Robert R. Provine,
Laughter: A Scientific Investigation
(New York: Viking, 2000), 2.