True Pleasures (17 page)

The French language, they say, is the language of love. And the tradition persists that the French are a romantic people, the world's greatest lovers. But that's not entirely true, or at least, not in the way people think. After all, this is a race that has more words for ‘working girl' than any other language I know; each one, as Janet Flanner, the
NewYorker
's 1930s Paris correspondent, observed, ‘a precise professional rating'. There's
cocotte, horizontale, grisette, demimondaine, courtisane, demi-castor, dégrafée, irregulière, femme galante
…

At some stage, disconcertingly, the definitions blur, and common prostitutes at the bottom of the ladder become revered courtesans at the top. The King's favorite courtesan was the most important, soaring to the top of the social ladder with the title of
maîtresse en titre
or official mistress. I must say the step-by-step progress from whore up to mistress gets you thinking about an affair with a married man in quite a different way.

If anything, there's a deeply pragmatic aspect to French erotic culture. This is the nation that is not fazed by the fact that President Faure died while making love with his mistress in La Pompadour's former Paris home, the Élysée Palace, in 1898. Or that President Mitterrand was mourned at his State funeral in 1996, not only by his wife, but also by his mistress and love child. The greatest courtesans are affectionately memorialized. La Pompadour is remembered in the grandeur of the Pompadour Salon
in the Hôtel Meurice in Paris. Jeanne du Barry, always second best, is recalled, carnally, in the Comtesse du Barry gourmet charcuterie and food supplier.

Then of course, there are legions of artworks celebrating the whore. Puccini's
La Bohème
was based on Henri Murger's novel of 1830s Paris bohemia,
Scènes de la vie de Bohème
. Mimi, the heroine, was a consumptive
grisette
who gave herself for love as much as money. There was the exquisite, also consumptive, courtesan Marguerite Duplessis, immortalized by Alexandre Dumas fils as
La Dame aux Camélias,
and later by Verdi as
La Traviata
.

Colette's novels
Chéri
and
Gigi
are a tribute to the
belle époque
courtesans, like La Belle Otéro and Liane de Pougy. Colette always liked the healthy avaricious types, the survivors. Once, during Colette's music hall days La Belle Otéro took her aside and said to her:
‘You look a bit green, my girl. Don't forget that there is always a moment in a man's life, even if he's a miser, when he opens his hand wide …' ‘The moment of passion?' ‘No. The moment when you twist his wrist.'

Perhaps the French attitude to sex is best summed up in Nancy Mitford's
The Blessing
, when a Frenchwoman speaks to an American:
‘Well then, perhaps you can tell us,' said Madame Rocher, ‘how in a country where there are no brothels, do the young men ever learn?'

According to my friend Angie, whose sampling of men is truly global, there is definitely a sound basis to the Frenchman's reputation. The best lover of all, she said, was Frédéric in Vietnam.

‘Tell me why.'

‘He was … erotic,' she said. ‘Before then, I never liked doing it to music, but he did, and he made sex seem like a dance. And then he talked.'

‘Talked?'

‘You know, said things. During sex,' she said, adding inconsequently, ‘Both his parents were psychoanalysts.'

‘He said things,' she went on. ‘And it was …' her voice took on a dreamy tone, ‘erotic. And then at the end he did what no man has ever done before or since …'

‘What?'

‘He said, “'Ave you 'ad enough?”'

‘Ooh,' I said, impressed but rather confused. ‘And so … had you?'

She looked at me indignantly. I changed the question.

‘Was he marvelous?'

‘He was an utter bastard,' she said vehemently. ‘Turned out he was sleeping with half of Hanoi, including an exquisite Vietnamese prostitute. But he was … erotic.'

I'm thinking about love and romance and passion and pragmatism an hour or so later as Rachel and I present ourselves at 4 rue d'Artois, also in Versailles. Here is Nancy Mitford's final home. The house she bought to die in. It's very modest: a long and narrow white house, angled to let the sun in. Here's the plaque – I've seen a photo of the occasion when it was unveiled, with Nancy's sisters standing glumly around in black. Now the plaque is looking a bit faded and unkempt, as if no one is very interested in it anymore. We walk around the back. There's a school next door where very young children are playing. In Nancy's garden the sun shines gently on waving grass and spring blossoms and chestnut candles.

‘It's all a bit sad isn't it,' says Rachel.

‘No,' I say defensively.

The role of the mistress is often vulnerable and painful. And lonely. But for a woman like Nancy, it would be unfair to suggest that she didn't have a choice or say in the
matter; that she didn't, at some level, choose her relationship and its progress. As Nancy's sister Diana wisely said:
I suppose she wanted to marry him … but if she had I don't think it would have worked out … I think she was perfect by herself
.

In 1949 Nancy Mitford wrote to a friend:
He
[Evelyn Waugh]
has been too terrible about my book
[Love in a Cold Climate]
but the publishers are preparing for it to be another best seller & I confess that for me is what matters, so that I can go on living here – all I care about. Evelyn said it could have been a work of art – yes but I'm afraid it's here & now & the Colonel I care for
.

It may sound shallow to gloat about a prospective bestseller, but Nancy was not. In those days she was still working hard for the financial freedom to create an independent life, to make it possible to enjoy ‘the here and now' and the love affair that was so important to her. Nancy Mitford's move to Versailles, was, I think, the ultimate statement of her classical values. That's why she moved to the city of aristocrats, to the home of the warrior class that went to war on behalf of France and dedicated itself devotedly to pleasure the rest of the time.

The funny thing is,
Love in a Cold Climate
did turn out to become a work of art. And Nancy did go on living in France, all the way to her death. And out of her accumulated ‘heres and nows', she made a beautiful life.

Nancy Mitford wrote about all kinds of love, but there was one love experience which eluded her. Motherhood.

At first she fully expected to follow the usual path. In 1938 she wrote to a friend:
I am in the family way isn't it nice. But … don't tell anybody … it may all come to nothing
.

I am awfully excited though
. She subsequently suffered a miscarriage.

In November 1941, Nancy wrote to her sister:
Darling Diana, Thank you so much for the wonderful grapes, you are really an angel & grapes are so good for me. I have had a horrible time, so depressing because they had to take out both my tubes & therefore I can never now have a child
. Nancy immediately minimized her grief:
I can't say I suffered great agony but quite enough discomfort – but darling when I think of you & the 18 stitches in your face
[due to a car accident]
it is absolutely nothing
.

Eight years later there was a curious exchange of letters between Evelyn Waugh in England and Nancy Mitford in Paris. In January 1949 she wrote joyously to her old friend:
I am having a lovely life – only sad that heavenly 1948 is over …
He wrote back sourly:
What an odd idea of heaven. Of course in my country we cannot enjoy the elegant clothes & meals & masquerades which fill your days …
In his letter Evelyn Waugh did not refer or allude in any way to Nancy Mitford's childlessness.

Yet she inferred the criticism.
Darling Evelyn, Don't be so cross & don't tease me about not having children, it was God's idea, not mine. Do you really think it's more wrong to live in one place than another, or wrong to go to fancy dress parties?

I've thought a lot about this exchange. Evelyn Waugh was criticizing Nancy Mitford for being happy. That much is clear.
How dare you be happy!
is his unmistakeable implication. Her defense was simply that she couldn't have children, and so it was necessary to find other joys and pleasures in life. Pleasures that might appear entirely frivolous to the eyes of a devout Catholic father of a large brood. But it wasn't fair to blame her for flourishing despite the absence of children in her life.

I think a lot of women today, perhaps unconsciously, share Evelyn Waugh's view that a woman is not complete unless she has children – or, to put it another way, that a woman without children is not a true woman, but floating, anchorless and without purpose.

Many of the women I admire never had children. Nancy Mitford. Edith Wharton. Madame du Deffand. Coco Chanel. Others did but children played only a minor role in their lives. Hortense Mancini abandoned her four young children when she fled from her husband. Madame de Pompadour had a daughter with whom she spent very little time after she began her liaison with a King. Colette had a daughter with her second husband – but sent her away to be raised, only spending time with her during summer holidays. Napoleon's Josephine, by contrast, was a devoted mother of two: she died in the loving arms of her son. Yet none of these women defined themselves by their status as mothers. Nor did they expect that the experience of motherhood would completely fulfil them.

People talk a lot nowadays about
having it all
. Having the husband, having the career, having the children. And there's a cruel implication that missing out on any of these experiences is necessarily a permanent blight on life itself. Like most of us, however, Nancy Mitford didn't have it all. She graciously accepted that it just didn't work out like that. She merely had whatever was hers to have. And she made the most of it.

There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life. And so when hats in Paris are lovely and french and everywhere then France is alright.

Gertrude Stein

I
DON'T QUITE KNOW
how to say this.
I'd like a French manicure please
? But do the French call it a French manicure? What if it's like condoms: the English called them French letters and the French call them
capotes anglaises
?

I'm in the Guerlain manicure room on the ChampsÉlysées. One minute I was on the hot wide street, the next I was climbing the creaky wooden staircase to a different century, up, up and my nose twitching as I inhaled the distinctive dusty smell. Now I'm perched awkwardly on a high faded settee among stuffed chairs. Dowdy women in gilt frames are looking down their considerable noses at
me. A collection of vintage Guerlain perfume bottles in a glass case adds to the historic micro-climate. Even the sunlight seems old and musty as it filters through the high windows.

Into the room walks a brusque little woman who wheels over a trolley and sets herself up in front of me. She takes her time. Only when she is quite ready does she look up and say calmly, ‘Bonjour, Madame.'

Clearly, this is no fancy Sydney salon where they wrap you in blankets and burn calming oils and play new-age music, as if you are a particularly dangerous inmate in a progressive asylum. Here in Paris, beauty isn't therapy, it's business.

French polish, it's called. It takes a long time. First there's the undercoat to cover the whole nail in pink-tinged clear varnish. Then another coat, the same. Wait for it to dry. Then there's a fiddly bit where a hard white varnish is applied just to the crescent tip of the nail. My manicurist is clearly an expert though; she attacks the task with complete confidence. Wait while this dries. Then clear varnish the whole nail several times until it sets completely hard. So the crescent tips of your nails are whiter than white, and your cuticles are pink and healthy. The effect is one of heightened reality: everything looks natural, only much better, natural in a way that poor old nature could never hope to achieve.

Somehow this seems to me very French, and sets me wondering whether I am wise to be sporting this very hard red lipstick, a color which bears absolutely no relationship to nature.

My manicurist is coming to the end of her task. My hands are soft and smooth; my nails are shining. ‘Now you are
soignée
,' she says, breathing a sigh of aesthetic relief.
Les
petits soins
the French call it, the little attentions. In Paris, the little things matter a lot.

Possibly my favorite Hollywood film about Paris is the fifties musical
Funny Face
, which it's only fair to warn you, fails as a film largely because of the miscasting of the million-year-old Fred Astaire as the love interest to the radiant Audrey Hepburn.