I have never deceived anybody for I have never belonged to anybody. My independence was all my fortune, and I have known no other happiness; and it is still what attaches me to life. – Cora Pearl
Those of you who have read many of my “harlotographies” have probably noticed that few of the great courtesans were astonishingly beautiful. To be sure, pictures often fall short of reality; some women’s beauty is based less on body contours and facial structure than on personality, style and presence, none of which can be captured by the camera. In courtesans there is also a further component of sexual magnetism which, though impossible to depict on film or canvas, is equally impossible to ignore in person. And what separates the fantastically successful courtesans – Les Grandes Horizontales as they were called in Cora Pearl’s time and place – from the merely successful ones was then, as now, marketing. And though Cora was lovely, it was her ability to create an image which won her fame and wealth…and her inability to sustain that image which precipitated their loss.
The details of her birth are a litany of “probablies”; she was probably born in Plymouth, England on February 23rd, 1835, but that may be the date of her christening and she later claimed the year to be 1842. Her birth name is usually given as Emma Elizabeth Crouch, but her death certificate calls her “Eliza Emma” instead. Her father was a cellist named Frederick Nicholls Crouch who was the composer of “Kathleen Mavourneen”, a song which was extremely popular in the United States during the Civil War period. Unfortunately, Crouch was a “one-hit wonder”, but never learned to live within his means; he fled his creditors in 1847, abandoning his wife and six daughters and moving to America (where he is known to have remarried several times before dying in 1896). Lydia Crouch was an attractive woman and soon found a live-in boyfriend who was willing to support her children, but Emma did not get along with him and so was sent to a boarding school in Boulogne, France to be educated by nuns. After eight years (and numerous lesbian relationships mentioned in her memoirs) she returned to England in 1855, moved in with her maternal grandmother and went to work for a milliner in London.
Emma chafed under the strictures imposed upon middle-class Victorian girls and one day she ditched her chaperone, accepted a man’s invitation to have cake with him, and drank a bit too much gin…with predictable consequences. In the morning she found he had left her a five-pound note (about £250 today), and though she later claimed to have been “horrified” by the experience, the truth is that she used the money to rent a room for herself and immediately began hooking. It wasn’t long before she started working at a brothel called The Argyll Rooms, whose owner Robert Bignell soon recognized her potential and asked her to be his mistress, moving her into a suite of her own. Within a year he took her on holiday to Paris, and she so fell in love with the city that she decided to remain; she adopted the stage name “Cora Pearl”, took a cheap room, and made her living as a streetwalker until she met a pimp named Roubisse who set her up in better quarters. He paved the way for her future success by teaching her the business and insisting she develop her professional skills, and by the time he died of a heart attack in 1860 Cora was already well-established with Victor Masséna, Duc du Rivoli (later Prince of Essling).
It was the Duc who first introduced her to extravagance: besides the money, jewelry and servants (including a chef), he gave her funds for gambling and bought her the first horse of the sixty she would eventually own. She quickly became an excellent rider, and her equestrian skills attracted the attention of many a French noble. Though the Duc remained her primary patron until 1862, she had many other clients including the Prince of Orange, the Duc de Morny (Emperor Napoleon III’s half-brother) and Prince Achille Murat, grand-nephew of Emperor Napoleon I. In 1864 she bought the gorgeous Chateau de Beauséjour and began to hold the parties for which she became renowned, including the one at which she had herself presented to diners on a huge platter; she was fond of dancing naked before her guests, and even had a custom-made bronze bathtub in which she would bathe with clients in champagne. And when she wasn’t naked, she wore only the finest clothes by Charles Worth, the first superstar designer.
In 1865 she became the mistress of Prince Napoleon, the Emperor’s important and fabulously wealthy cousin. He supported her for nine years, usually for about 10,000 francs per month, and also bought her many expensive gifts and several houses (including a small palace, les Petites Tuileries). And though he frowned on her seeing other clients, she secretly did so anyway and charged them that much more for the risk. It isn’t that the Prince didn’t give her enough; it’s just that she was incredibly extravagant and regularly sent money to both her mother and father. She became a very popular celebrity and was well known for wearing heavy makeup and dying her hair outlandish colors to match her wardrobe. In 1867 (the same year a cocktail was named for her) she took the role of Cupid in Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, dressed in a costume which consisted of little more than a diamond-studded bikini; she only appeared twelve times, but the jewels brought 50,000 francs at auction.
Cora’s downfall began with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, during which she allowed her homes to be used as hospitals and paid for doctors and medical supplies for wounded soldiers out of her own purse. But the disastrous defeat of the French meant the end of the Empire; Prince Napoleon fled to England along with the Imperial family, and though Cora went with him the Grosvenor Hotel refused to let her stay for fear of scandal (ironically, the hotel’s modern management has capitalized on the incident by unveiling a “Cora Pearl Suite” last year). Within a few months she returned to Paris, but the postwar mood was no longer conducive to the social climate in which a courtesan thrives; so, when the wealthy young Alexandre Duval became obsessed with her, she did not discourage him despite the fact that she despised jealousy in her patrons. In less than a year he had spent literally his entire fortune on her, and when his family refused to give him any more she refused to see him any longer. On December 19, 1872, he went to her house with murderous intent, but the gun accidentally discharged while he was trying to force his way past her servants, shooting him in the side.
Though he eventually recovered the public disapproved of the way Cora had handled the affair, and the government ordered her to leave France. She spent some time with a friend in Monaco, and after a time returned discreetly to Paris. But the party was over for good; in 1873 she started to sell off her properties, in 1874 Prince Napoleon sadly informed her that he could no longer support her, and by 1880 she was down to just her chateau, which she finally sold in July of 1885. In 1883 she rented an incall on the Champs-Elysées and returned to middle-class harlotry, then published her memoirs in 1886; unfortunately she was too discreet for her own good and the tame result with disguised names did not sell well. By that time she was terminally ill with colon cancer and died on July 8, 1886. She did not end her days in abject poverty as some accounts claim, but neither did she have anything put aside for a funeral; her meager plot and small service were paid for by some of her old clients.
After her death she passed into obscurity, and would barely be remembered today if not for a curious epilogue which occurred almost a full century after her death. Apparently, Cora wrote an earlier version of her memoirs during her slow decline in the ‘70s, containing real names and many juicy details; it was released by a British publisher in 1890. The few who knew about it assumed it to be an English translation of her bland 1886 memoir, but when a modern collector named William Blatchford got ahold of a copy he realized that this was not the case. Blatchford publishing the find in 1983 under the title Grand Horizontal, The Erotic Memoirs of a Passionate Lady, and its vivid, on-the-spot descriptions of the gay life during the Second French Empire rekindled interest in its author and has given her, albeit posthumously, another chance at the fame she so enjoyed in life.
i really like Cora Pearl.i was thinking about courtesans who had lost their fortune,because they didnt save money or because of some other misfortune or they ones who had contracted diseases(the worst in that case in those times would be syphilis).i was thinking if even with such a high risk factor,i would enjoy that lifestyle back then.(i feel really great having a sugar daddy now,mostly because of the confidence.i realised that the confidence it gives me is even better than the luxuries,but im in no danger to lose everything,because i dont depend solely on him and there are adequate precautions for diseases and pregnancies,now).i concluded that if my other option would be getting married and become the property of a man,id rather live free,even if that meant a shorter life.i just beleive freedom is the greatest good one can have and i totally understand how this attached Cora Pearl to life after everything crashed.about the beauty thing we totally see this everyday,especially in sex work.there is another strong historical example.Hurrem Sultan,wife of the Sutan Suleiman the Magnificent,who was able to get the sultan to be monogamous with her and legally marry her.she wasnt even close to beautiful,but she managed to beat her rival,Mahidevran Sultan,who was considered to be the most beautiful woman ever in the Ottoman Empire.
Love
While La Belle Otero and Lola Montez were my favorites among Les Grandes Horizontales, Cora holds a special place in my heart as well. That’s one of the few color photos I’ve ever seen of her, so that was a rare treat. Betsy Prioleau’s Seductress gives a good account of her life as well.
I believe that’s one of those photo portraits in which a black-and-white image was painted over, but I can’t be sure.
Though there were experiments in colour photography from mid-Victorian times; the first successful, commercial application was the French Autochrome process, available from the early 20th century. So Cora’s portrait has been hand-coloured.
Reblogged this on respectsexwork and commented:
Wow, what a find!
Another great harlotography from our great harlot! Thank you, Maggie.
[…] the first modern-style celebrities who are “known for well-knownness”; others included Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters. Some, like Calamity Jane, become famous for activities completely […]
Oddly my daughters name is kora pearl ,I was googling to see if there was a ship or boat with the same name….I ground this, pretty neat!
Cora Pearl is actually one of the few historical harlots you’ve featured who I find extremely attractive. I’ve puzzled over the tremendous (if often frustratingly transient) success of those who I find less beautiful by modern standards, but then I remember several of my female crushes from when I was a young girl. One in particular would have made a fantastic courtesan in any other age; she was poised, sensual, elegant, demure, flirtatious, kind, gentle, friendly, & extremely sexy. Every guy had a crush on her. She exuded sex appeal, sweetness, seduction & charm, & was just so genuinely good to everyone around her. I remember her as a breathtakingly beautiful young woman, with onyx hair & smooth cinnamon skin, strong brows & bedroom eyes over an aquiline nose, & a cute little tummy (which has always been one of my weaknesses; as an hourglass shaped girl, I had to grow quite fat to get any belly, & so I’ve always really liked women with a little “pooch” so to speak.)
The point of my above ode (which I realize no one will ever read) is that looking at a picture of the seductive Indian American teen, I was surprised to note rather plain features that didn’t match my rose-hued memories. Her presence, it seems, was enough to form a kind of glamour.
I just read it. 😉 And I’m told my looks have a similar effect; it’s hard to get really good pictures of me, because in most I don’t really look good. But in person the glamour kicks in, and everyone agrees I’m strikingly beautiful. It confused me for years until I finally grew to accept it in my early 30s.
I have a sister who was a lovely teenager.* But for about five years she just could not take a good picture. Male heads would turn, but apparently camera lenses would not.
* This doesn’t mean that she hagged out as soon as she hit 20, of course. And she even eventually started looking good in pictures.
[…] McNeill, Maggie, “The Honest Courtesan” https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/cora-pearl/ (accessed October 6th, […]
The second volume of supposed memoirs of Cora Pearl is a modern fake written in the 1980s by an Englishman Derek Parker who conned the publishing house Granada. Parker wrote and published a lot of erotic fiction, astrology books and many other texts