Countess of the Demimonde

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1:53Save money, check Lyft. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Listener discretion advised.

2:07In 1895, the French forensic pathologist Dr. Henri Le Ludic published his first work, Notes and Observations on Forensic Medicine, Offenses Against Morality. If that sounds fairly dull, please stay with me, listener, because I promise you this episode is anything but. It's the final section of the book that we're interested in today, a section that the doctor actually did not write himself, which consists of the entire text of a unique autobiography that the doctor had acquired, an autobiography entitled Secret Confessions of a Parisian. Legludique claimed the autobiography's author was one of his patients from his time as a prison doctor, and he had chosen to include the autobiography, quote, for documentary purposes, in order to enable readers to understand the writer's state of mind, end quote.

3:11Many of Legludique's patients when he was a prison doctor had been convicted for sexual violence, But this particular prisoner had instead been booked as an army deserter and petty thief. The autobiography, then, was included not as a study of a devious criminal mind, but, to quote the doctor, to, quote, trace the origin and evolution of the author's sexual inversion, end quote. The autobiography begins, quote, In the beautiful year of 1860, there lived in Paris a woman whom all gilded and gallant Paris knew. This woman, who happens to be the humble author herself, went by many names, but in the byline of the autobiography, she narrows it down to two, Arthur W.

4:10and The Countess. Throughout this episode, I will refer to our subject mostly as the Countess and as Pauline, another name she used, as those were the names she used most commonly. Pauline presents her life story in the vein of many 19th century buildings Romans. She takes the reader from her early experiences as a young boy wishing to wear the dresses her mother made to her courtship with the nobleman who introduced her to the life of a female courtesan. We then follow her as she becomes Pauline and the Countess, working as a performer in Parisian clubs frequented by the queer community as she gets drafted into the army and ultimately is sentenced to years in a men's prison for abandoning her post.

5:08Confessions of a Parisian was largely inspired by Rousseau's Confessions, and it offers the reader a similar look into the author's psyche. Pauline's insight is often funny, often joyous, and often heartbreaking. Sinner, degenerate, and corrupt are oft-used self-descriptors. These ideas echo the common societal view of homosexuality and other non-traditional sexual and gender identities as immoral vices. Her work was ultimately published, after all, as a documentation of mental illness. At the same time, Confessions also offers an intimate, vibrant look into the lives of members of Paris's queer community during a time where they were regarded as little more than case studies by social scientists and deviants by larger society.

6:10On top of being a talented performer and writer, Pauline was a very competent illustrator, and her drawings of different members of her community were included in Confessions publication. As I mentioned in one of our earlier episodes on the 19th century writer and nobleman Marc de Montefiade, discussing the gender and sexuality of historical figures through our modern understanding is a very complex task. The Parisian queer community at the time had their own language and system of identification, and this is how the Countess best understood and described herself. In her words, she was a fil or mignon, both of these terms applying to multiple identities.

7:06The latter term, for example, originated from Henri III's fashionable young male favorites, but eventually evolved to apply to a broader queer identity. In Pauline's writing, we see Mignon mean a homosexual man, a cross-dressing man, and a transgender woman. The Countess seems to have identified at times with all of those descriptors. She was happiest, however, when society saw her as a woman. She proudly reflected, I, who had so desired to be a girl, had triumphed over natural law. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The Countess opens her autobiography in the time and place I described earlier, 1860 Paris, at the height of her local fame.

8:05She was around 22 or 23 at the time and had begun performing six years earlier. Though the book is an autobiography, the prologue is written in third person and introduces us to our, quote, heroine. Speaking of the third person, this is a good time to acknowledge that there is very little secondary scholarship on the life of the Countess. Our main source of information about her life is the woman herself. Certain details and events have almost certainly been embellished or glossed over. Dates and ages don't always match up. She writes at one point, quote, Time doesn't matter, nor does space. In this sect of those who deny their sex, I was an example of that.

8:59Pauline is, however, a fairly balanced narrator, and seeing as she did not know whether or not the work would be published in the end, there was likely little reason to self-censor. In fact, I would argue that reading it, her writing comes across as brutally honest. She describes herself in a measured, if flamboyant, tone. As a young adult, she had, quote, literary tastes. She read a lot, she drew passably, and she sang agreeably. Her face lent itself marvelously to makeup, like the face of all of those whose physiognomy is large, full, and marked by strong features. While she considered her face beautiful to average, she thought her hands ugly and her figure too thin.

9:50When it came to her character, writing in the third person, quote, she was good despite her cold air, sensitive despite her reputation of insensitivity, a little romantic, generous to a fault. She also described frequent bouts of depression. She had, quote, a melancholic air, a tinge of sadness which, despite her efforts, changed the expression on her face from laughter to sorrow in an instant. It appeared as suddenly as a lightning bolt in the summer in the middle of her gayest hours. Pun ironically not intended. While the Countess's life drastically changed after her childhood, we see her goodness, her sensitivity, and sometimes her sadness in her earliest years.

10:44Pauline says she was born in 1839, though that would make her 20 or 21 in 1860. Her parents were working class and, in her words, decent folks in all senses of the word. Her father was a coachman turned steward, raised and educated by his first master. Pauline notes, interestingly, that he belonged to a now-extinct class of servants who were treated as family by those they worked for. She concludes that her father, quote, had only one great flaw, a weak character compounded by excessive vanity. I inherited these two traits almost in their entirety. Her mother was a seamstress and, according to her, an angel.

11:36The image Pauline holds of her mother, even years after her mother's death, is nothing short of seraphic. The two were incredibly close from her earliest years. Pauline much preferred to spend time with her mother rather than play with other children. While her mother would sew, young Pauline would read romance books she found stored away in the home. Quote, My eyes would often fill with tears, forcing me to stop reading. My dear mother would also cry and we dry our tears with exchanges of kisses. Her mother would say, My dear little boy, you have a good heart. The Countess described the first part of her life as one long musical poem.

12:28Her mother loved singing, and the pair sang together every day. Quote, These golden hours developed a powerful taste for singers and concerts in me. I specifically mean female singers, because my frivolous nature was seduced by the brilliance of their appearance. Her mother often took her to shows at café concerts, which were popular, accessible alternatives to cabarets. Pauline, quote, drank them all in with my ears and my eyes wide open, and dreamed of one day being on stage. Many of her mother's clients were actresses in the theater, and they liked to spoil Pauline with gifts of candies and books.

13:17She reflected,

13:31She remembers running her fingers over the lace of their dresses and playing with their jewels while she'd sit in their laps. Her most prominent memory is of a blue satin dress with gold spangles. A theater owner had sent the dress over to have her mother make a copy, and Pauline became fixated by the dress on the mannequin. She wrote, That blue satin gown had obsessed me ever since it had been brought in. I looked at it. I touched it. I took it off the mannequin and I managed to put it on myself, even though it was too big for my little body. She knew the tricks of the trade from her mother and her clients and pinned the dress at the front so that she could walk in it.

14:18She then picked up her mother's fan and began to show off for herself in the mirror. Absorbed in her fantasy, she didn't hear the delighted giggles of her mother and her assistants having returned to the studio. When her mother asked what she was doing all dressed up, Pauline replied with a little embarrassment, Mama, I'm playing diva. Her mother smiled and simply replied, that's nice, but you must take off Madame D's gown. You might damage it. Pauline's father also simply laughed at the anecdote. He did not enforce masculinity on his young son. While Pauline loved women's dresses and accessories from a young age, she would burst into tears at the sight of boys' shorts, refusing to wear them unless they were decorated with embroidery and lace.

15:14Pauline believed both the innate tendencies of her character, her shyness and sensitivity, and the chance of her mother's profession, developed in her, quote, love of beauty and style that would later degenerate into a frenzy and cause the disorders and missteps that mark my life, end quote. Despite that perspective, she cherished that time. She wrote, my whole childhood was spent in an atmosphere of graciousness, delicacy, and lovely faces, and neither the passage of time nor misfortune nor the cruel disappointments of life nor the long hours of imprisonment can ever tarnish that glorious memory.

16:04As an adolescent, she was sent to a boys' boarding school very close to her home. Her first sexual experiences happened there, masturbating with older male peers, namely one boy called Charles. Pauline recalls she didn't think much of the, quote, evil she had committed, only the desire to do it more. She wrote, Having indulged in pleasure, I had drunk deeply from the source of those predilections, that make a man prostitute himself not by circumstance, no, by starting out with a boy four years older than myself, I was destined always to play the woman's role, the role of the mignon, that distinct, separate type among all men with similar passions.

16:58It was during her time at boarding school that Pauline began to realize she would never be like her peers. She wrote,

17:35had in concealing my sex beneath a woman's exterior, end quote. It is an evocative, early description of what we today would recognize as gender dysphoria. The Countess tells the reader that she still sees Charles sometimes, and declares that by seducing her, he had, quote, broken down the barrier that my shyness would have raised against the desires that the sight of me kindled in the mind of the Marquis d 'Ex. The original Marquis d 'Ex was her father's employer, and we do not know his identity beyond the mysterious moniker. Marquis d 'Ex died when Pauline was just an adolescent, and then his son inherited his title.

18:27This new, younger Marquis, whom Pauline refers to as M, began to come to her family home often, maintaining a friendly relationship with her father. When Pauline was a young teen, M began to court her. He was, in her words, a tall, handsome man of 26. With her parents' permission, he would take Pauline for rides in his coach, where he would praise her beauty and tell her, if you wished, dear, you could be happier than a king's son, and you could have all the lovely things that you want so much. He laid out his wishes plainly for her. He would take care of her generously, giving her as much money as she needed each month, and she, in turn, would provide him pleasure.

19:20Pauline was, according to her, thrilled by the splendors. Everything he had told me seemed so special that, with my regret dissolving into my desire, I was eager to latch onto this man, who said that he loved me like a friend and like a lover. The Marquis also charmed her into sharing her secrets. I'd tell him everything about my wild dreams and the frustrations that I felt at not being a woman, since I was so ill-suited for being a man. He replied, You are so unlike a man that it would be very easy to change you into a charming lady. M told Pauline's parents that he would take her in to further her education.

20:07That was one word for it, she quips to the reader. Pauline's mother was hesitant at first, distraught to part with her dear child, but M persuaded her that Pauline could pursue her talent for art with his connections and opportunities. Perhaps by 21st century standards, we might identify M's tactics as grooming. Instead of enrolling Pauline in art school, M took her to meet a courtesan, Paula, who styled Pauline into a courtesan herself. Paula acquired her dresses, found her an apartment nearby, and gave her lessons on how to walk and talk the part of a courtesan. Paula was very influential to young Pauline.

20:58It was she, not coincidentally, who offered the name Pauline as Pauline's first chosen name. The name was in full Madame Pauline de Florange. This woman, who quickly became my friend and confidant, was my first true platonic love, she wrote. With her, I experienced the charm of exquisite and intimate friendship. After Paula's lessons, M took Pauline out in society as a woman for the first time. At the popular Restaurant de Madrid, he introduced her to his noble friends and their own kept women. She wrote, It took some nerve, and in spite of my confidence, the confidence I had in my luxurious wardrobe, I could feel myself blanching under my pancake makeup, and my heart was thumping.

21:56To Pauline's delight, everyone was cordial, and she saw the women paying close attention to the details of her fashionable outfit. After recounting this day, we get one of the most arresting passages of the autobiography. The Countess reflected years later, There's one thing in my life that made me so happy that it alone banished all my regrets and my sorrows, at least temporarily. It was the realization of my most bizarre dream of seeming to be something that I was not. The desire to dress as a woman, to be accepted in the eyes of the world as an elegant lady, pleased me so much that when I was able to do it, it took the sharp edge off my regrets.

22:50She continued, With a great deal of patience and effort, I had succeeded in resembling the finest being in all creation. I was a woman, and when people talked about me, they referred to me as the lovely, the charming Pauline. With that, I was able to forget my feeble body and enjoy hours and hours of an enchanting illusion. Her euphoria jumps off the page. It's especially remarkable when you remember she was writing this in 1874. Her relationship with M wasn't always as joyous. While she claimed to have accepted his offer without a second thought, she was conflicted over the nature of their relationship and the nature of her role as a mistress.

23:43Sweet words from M would placate her doubts. She explained, The source of much of the Countess's shame around her gender and sexual identity was, it seems, inextricably intertwined with the grief she felt about her profession and position in the world. She declared,

24:34Because she could not live as a woman until she had become a courtesan, One became forever associated with the other in her mind. It's tragic, and Pauline was certainly not the only queer person of the time to feel similarly. Around three years into their arrangement, Em grew distant. He eventually ended things, leaving her a letter enclosed with some money. Pauline claimed she was 16 or 17 at the time, and she worried about what would happen to her now. She could not return to her parents, because they would ask too many questions she couldn't or didn't want to answer. She also admitted she had no desire to return to the, quote, straight and narrow, as she called it, after time in the vibrant circles of Parisian society.

25:28And so she made her debut in the café concerts. She used the parting money the marquee had left her to buy exquisite stage costumes and considered herself a, quote, passable singer. This is the time in which she became truly immersed in the Parisian queer community, for they were her fellow performers and audience members. One group was known as the tribids, a term allegedly coined from the Greek verb to rub, which had long been used to describe women who had sex with other women. In Pauline's words, these women came usually in pairs and were charming priestesses of that enormous cult that worshipped at Sappho's altar.

26:19They belonged to that strange sect, that incomprehensible love from which men are excluded. They were, as Pauline described them, women who loved women and dressed like men. She analyzed, such a woman so comfortable dressed as a man usually has a masculine personality and masculine tastes. Like Mignon, as described earlier, Tribed also applied to a broader queer identity. Pauline's illustration of one Tribed friend, B, is included in the autobiography. She wrote, The despair that B felt at the age of 15 was the same one that I felt. So she adopted men's clothing and looked ravishing in them. Even men were fooled and women went wild over her.

27:13Another part of the audience was made up of, quote, mincing perfumed young men fitted out with the finest gloves, makeup, and professionally curled hair, a group sometimes known as Fee. An illustration of a Fee and good friend of the Countess, LaCharles, is also featured in the book. Within their group, all of these terms applied to one born as a man who either identified as a cross-dressing man or as a woman. Specific terms were also seemingly associated with sex work. Pauline was also engaging in sex work as a performer, taking audience members on as clients after the shows, as the other fee performers did.

27:59She also found two more, quote, protectors following M's departure, but neither lasted as long as her original affair. The group she worked with had a tradition of, quote, baptizing new members of their circle. One night, drinking champagne, a fellow feed adorned Pauline with a new name. On behalf of all these young ladies, as well as our dear sisters who are assembled here, I, Auguste D., now baptize Arthur W., the Countess. The Countess noted how seriously everyone took the ceremony. For the Tribeds and the Mignons who were there, this was a well-known and powerful act. For me, I thought that it was just a joke, but when Dee, taking his seat again, added, My lovely, I dubbed you the Countess, and I swear that this name will remove all traces of your real one, he was only too accurate.

29:02She found genuine friendship and community. She commented on the solidarity between Trabades and Phil, writing that Trabades were, quote, deeply sympathetic toward Phil and Mignon, since, like them, they have an unnatural love. They're indulgent and have a soft spot for the young men whom they call their sisters. And that feeling is genuinely reciprocated. In her early 20s, now years into her career, the newly named Countess rekindled her relationship with her mother. Her father had died, and she wanted to bring her mother as much joy as possible. It was around this time as well that she was required to participate in the conscription lottery.

29:51Drawing the number 180, she was in the reserves and eventually deployed. Not only was the Countess afraid to join the regiment, being an army man meant living as a man again. The Countess eventually was given leave to visit a fictional uncle, and she was able to see her beloved Paris again. Returning to her mother's home, Pauline threw herself into her arms, weeping that she could not return to the regiment. Her plan to desert was simple. Arthur could not be found if only the Countess existed. She told her mother that she was quite comfortable as a woman, and rather than just playing the part when she performed, she would become one forever.

30:40Her mother, whose, quote, dearest wish had been to have a daughter, was pleased with the idea. The Countess told her that she would return the next day transformed. When the police were sent to find the lost soldier, the Countess's mother told them she hadn't seen him. The soldier in question was naturally standing in the very same room. The Countess returned to the theater and for years continued living life as before. In 1860, after a brief illness, the Countess's beloved mother died. Falling into a depression, Pauline lost much of the desire and energy to dress up and perform. She stole from the home of her mother's former employer to pay off her debts and was later caught and identified as the missing soldier.

31:31She was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

31:39As she wrote in her autobiography, At the beginning of September 1861, I arrived, chained to another inmate, at the Central Prison. The countess claimed that less than two hours after her arrival, all of the inmates had learned her life story. Naturally, she claimed she gained many admirers. According to her, Those who had had unnatural sexual urges outside of prison would have more so inside, and those who had never experienced those thoughts would adopt them easily. So my arrival stirred up many thoughts and unleashed many desires. She eventually accepted the proposal of a particularly devoted admirer she calls R in the autobiography.