Free The Book of the Courtesans by Susan Griffin

Though the modern reader may simply shrug her
shoulders at this slightly sordid initiation to sexuality, in that period, Cora
was ruined. Which is to say, she would never be able to make a respectable
marriage.
    Whichever version we read, she must have felt at least a moment of fear, when
waking disoriented in a strange room, she realized what had happened to her.
Both versions of her memoirs, written to raise money, have the exaggerated
style of a book written to be salacious. But there must be a seed of truth in
each description. She was spirited even as a young woman. Which is to say that
she would not have let the moment grow into despair but instead moved within
herself, in a timely fashion, to leaven her despondency with humor and resolve.
If on seeing the five pounds Mr. Saunders had left her she felt tempted toward
shame, she did not allow the mood to take hold, but swiftly calculated instead
how much more income she had just gained, more than a milliner would earn over
several weeks.
    The young courtesan managed the new profession that fate had thrust upon her
with a vengeance. Her first lover, Robert Bignell, who was the owner of the
Argyll Rooms in London, a “notorious pleasure haunt,” supported her
well. But she was not satisfied. And from the day that Bignell suggested she
accompany him to France, her life was to take on a momentous change.
Masquerading as husband and wife, they toured Paris and the French countryside,
traveling afterward to the spa at Baden-Baden in Germany, where she spent 200 , 000 francs of Bignell’s
money. Still, at the end of the trip, she sent him back to London alone. She
preferred life in Paris, where she quickly became a favorite of the most
powerful and wealthy men; soon she was wealthy herself, her private collection
of jewelry alone worth a fortune. Over time, more than one man exhausted his
inheritance for the love of her. If once a single man had had the power to ruin
her, now she was coolly ruining many men.
    That she served herself as dessert could easily be read as an extreme form of
servility. But this reading of the event would be too simple. As she records
the incident in her memoirs it is clear that she took enormous pleasure in her
seductive powers. She tells us that even as the prank was being prepared, one
of her servants was taking great interest in the chef’s work, “and
the state of his breeches proclaimed that his attitude to his employer was one
of greater warmth than respect.” She reveled even more in the awe she
struck when her footman raised the silver lid that concealed her body. “I
was rewarded,” she wrote later, “by finding myself the centre of a
ring of round eyes and half open mouths.” Her memoirs make the power of
her presence evident. “M. Paul,” she tells us, “was the first
to recover,” after which her dinner guests, in the posture of petitioners
paying homage to a goddess, kneeled “on their chairs or on the table 
. . . their tongues busy at every part of me as they lifted and
licked the sweetness from my body.” The reversal is clear. If once she
had been abandoned by her father and mother, now she was the undisputed center
of attention. If she had been seduced by a gentleman, now she was the seducer
of many; if once she had been fed a drink that made her lose her better
judgment, now she herself was the libation that drove men to a frenzy of desire,
while calmly she enjoyed the effect.
    Her Blue Dress
    Nana dazzled him and he rushed over to stand on the step of her
carriage.—Emile Zola,
Nana
I was able to start a high fashion shop because two gentlemen were
outbidding each other over my hot little body.—Coco Chanel
    Let us return to the party of 1906 with which our exploration of this
virtue began. This was a pivotal moment in the life of that woman with such
good timing, called Gabrielle. Like many courtesans, she was born poor.
Abandoned by her father, she was raised in