To Etienne's horror, his service saw him stationed with a foot regiment rather than the cavalry. This was insupportable, and he soon had himself transferred to a place where he could spend his time with horses. A series of events led to a posting to Algeria, in the African Light Cavalry, where he found himself very hot and very bored. Caught sleeping on sentry duty by the regimental governor, he was reprimanded for dereliction of duty. Etienne foolishly answered back (the regimental governor was in civilian dress and Etienne didn't recognize him), was thrown in the lockup and was then to put on fatigues to clean out the latrines. This dented neither the young cavalryman's confidence nor his unwavering purpose. It so happened that the regiment's horses were suffering from an unpleasant skin ailment, and the wily Etienne made a deal with one of his superiors. If he cured the animals, he was to be transferred to a regiment back in France. To the vet's amazement, Etienne succeeded, with a prescription he had learned about in England. And thus we find him in the 10th Light Horse at Moulins.
It was around 1904 that he met the pretty shop assistant Gabrielle Chanel and became one of the group of officers around her and Adrienne. Gabrielle would always remain secretive about this period, and would never say whom she had taken as her first lover. All we know is that at some point in the near future, she and Etienne Balsan would begin their affair. Meanwhile, her troupe of followers no doubt encouraged her in her belief that the stage was her calling. And so she left the relative safety of her job as a seamstress to try her luck on a grander scale. After much persuasion, the more cautious Adrienne followed Gabrielle's example, and together they set off for Vichy and the season.
Only thirty miles from Moulins, Vichy was then one of the most fashionable spa towns in the world. The restorative properties of its spring waters had long been recognized and by the 1880s, acres of landscaped gardens were well established, boulevards and streets had been laid out, elaborate chalets and pavilions had risen up and a rail link connected the flourishing spa town with Paris. By the end of the century, Vichy had become a resort renowned for its worldliness, its sophistication and its visitors. Among these were many of Europe's most eminent society figures and notable celebrities.
To while away the hours between one's “cure,” there were recreational activities as glamorous as any that could be found in the capital. Monotony was forbidden at Vichy, and performers of the highest rank came, ready to oblige for the season. The greatest of the courtesans as well as their their less exalted sisters saw millions won, and lost, at the lavishly appointed casino. And while theaters catered to every taste, and the recently opened opera house drew some of the most distinguished singers of the day. The racecourse was one of the finest in France, and old and new money flocked to take the waters and entertain itself with lovers, mistresses and sometimes wives, too.
The visitors wanted mansions for their annual stay, and Vichy's architects ransacked the history of architecture in a series of gestures, each more outlandish than the last. The anarchic mix of styles, from Byzantine to classical to the most grandiose art nouveau, reflected the baroque atmosphere of this glamorous and unreal town. Yet Vichy was not only for the rich; here all stations of society were accommodated and entertained.
The Chanel girls' ignorance partially shielded them from their limitations. In outfits made by her own hands, Gabrielle strode about airily with her “nose up in the air.” By contrast with the modest pleasures of Moulins, the girls saw that Vichy was a world unto itself. Its lavish indulgence made a deep impression upon Gabrielle, and although, years later, she described it as a “ghastly fairyland,” for now, it was utterly “wonderful to fresh eyes.” Comparing Moulins to this “heart of the citadel of extravagance,” with astonishment Gabrielle realized that “cosmopolitan society is like taking a journey without moving: Vichy was my first journey.”
2
Adrienne, meanwhile, quickly realized that the stage was not for her and made her way back to Moulins. Gabrielle was now alone for the first time in her life and struggled on. Even the support acts, the
poseuses
, in Vichy were superior to the proper singers of Moulins. Gabrielle paid for lessons, was obliged to hire expensive gowns for auditions and tried to find her forte. Doggedly persevering, she longed for a Vichy manager to hire her.
How she supported herself at this point we don't know, but any savings from her paltry wages can't have gone very far. There has been speculation that she indulged in some discreet prostitution, as did some of her colleagues living in the backstreet rooms nearby.
3
Another more likely possibility is that it was Etienne Balsan who partially supported her venture. We know that he visited her in Vichy, and by this point, they must have been lovers.
While Gabrielle complained that the resort was full of the elderly, she remained enchanted by its fantasy, admiring everything, even the engraved glasses used for the foul-smelling water gushing from the curative springs. Marveling at the cosmopolitanism of the town, she was entranced by the unintelligible foreign tongues she heard all around: “It was as if they were the passwords of a great society.” And in the midst of this “great society,” Gabrielle was led to a crucial personal insight: “I watched the eccentric people parade past and I said to myself, âThere exist in the world things that I should be and which I am not.'”
4
But for an epiphany to really change a life, it must be acted upon, and that would take some time.
At the end of the season, gravely disappointed, Gabrielle had to admit that no one was going to hire her, and she followed Adrienne back to Moulins. In spite of her retreat, she would always say it was Vichy that had taught her about life, opening her eyes and giving her a new goal. Meanwhile, Adrienne had fared well.
Maud Mazuel was a woman whom Adrienne and Gabrielle had known before they left for Vichy. Of undistinguished origin and unprepossessing looks, she had, nonetheless, created a discreet position for herself as chaperone and matchmaker at the center of local society. In her pleasant villa near Souvigny, outside Moulins, she brought women together with their lovers, without rousing the suspicion of their families. The local gentry and officers from the Moulins garrison knew that at Maud's gatherings, they would find an entertaining mix of people appropriate to their own caste. In addition they could find attractive young women whose backgrounds had none of the luster of the other guests. Adrienne was beautiful, well dressed and sparkled in company, and Maud had made her the offer of respectability by inviting her to be her live-in companion.
No less strong-minded or characterful than Gabrielle, Adrienne combined her quiet ambition with an uncomplicated femininity. Yet without a name or a dowry behind her, unless Maud Mazuel could find her a well-to-do suitor, Adrienne knew her prospects were few. She loved her family, but like Gabrielle, she wished to move beyond her roots. Unlike many socially ambitious women, Adrienne was also in search of love.
She was soon courted by no fewer than three aristocratic admirers and became one of the daring, finely dressed beauties seen with their lovers at the Vichy races. Adrienne's three most ardent admirers invited her to Egypt, where, away from prying eyes, she would be free to choose her man. Gabrielle was also invited on this adventure, but she said it would gain her nothing.
5
By the time the Egyptian party returned, Adrienne had made her choice. She had become mistress to the Baron Maurice de Nexon, and would faithfully devote herself to him for the remainder of her life.
A courtesan might bankrupt a family's son and also break his heart, but she rarely lived with her lover for any length of time. An
irrégulière
(a permanent mistress), on the other hand, was a threat involving a family's honor in a different way: a son might be mad enough to ask for his lover's hand, leaving his family's name stained for a generation and more. Adrienne's lover, the Baron de Nexon, would do just this. Despite his parents' outrage and the lovers' subsequent humiliation when the Nexon family refused to “receive” Adrienne, the young baron stood firm by his choice. He wanted Adrienne. But he also wanted his inheritance, which he would forfeit should they wed. Thus the couple lived discreetly in Paris and Vichy for many years, until the baron's parents' deaths meant he was finally able to marry.
When Gabrielle returned to Moulins, she was alone and without prospects. She had set her heart on the stage and her failure left her unsure of what to do next. Adrienne's success almost certainly spurred Gabrielle on to make her next move. Etienne Balsan, in the background for several months, had set up house and now invited her to live with him as his mistress. One suspects she accepted without too much hesitation, grateful for a means of escape from the servitude to which she would otherwise have been forced to return.
Some time before, first Etienne's father, then his mother had died, each leaving him a large inheritance, making him a very wealthy young man. Immediately after completing his military service, he had launched himself into his life's workâbreeding and training horses. To this end, he had bought and restored a small château, Royallieu, in the department of Oise, and it was here that Gabrielle now traveled with Etienne to begin a new life.
While Adrienne's cohabitation with her lover must have shocked her sister Louise and the rest of their family, Louise would have appreciated Adrienne's discretion and, one hopes, been unprudish enough to rejoice at her sister's good fortune. Gabrielle's situation, however, was rather different. We don't know whether she hid her new life from her family for a time and was subsequently found out, or whether she told them immediately that she was going to live openly with a man out of wedlock. (As so often, it wasn't quite so much what one did but the way one did it that mattered; discretion counted above all.) Years later, when Gabrielle came to tell of her installation at the château of Royallieu, despite garbling the truth to throw her audience off the scent, one catches a hint of her misrepresentation, which clearly provoked considerable family disapproval.
Gabrielle told how she had run away. She said that her grandfather in Moulins believed she had returned to Courpière; that her aunts thought she was at her grandfather's house; and that, finally, someone “would realize that I was neither with one nor the other.”
6
Although nomadic, and at the lower end of the social scale, the Chanel family would have been quite aware that (unlike Adrienne), Gabrielle was jettisoning any chance of a good name by going to live at Royallieu.
7
Here she was not alone: her new lover's family regarded him as its black sheep.
From an early age, Etienne Balsan, a most sympathetic character, was both easygoing and provocative, habitually unsettling his family. They put his intermittent irritability down to the fact that he often starved himself so as to keep his weight down as a jockey. (Etienne frequently rode as the only gentleman rider with the professional jockeys.) When he wasn't working hard, one of Etienne's favorite pastimes was courting women. Then he was relaxed and amusing, with a famously caustic wit. Women responded to his cheerful demeanor, and were seduced by his lack of romance and unflinching confidence. One of his stable lads, describing him as a champion jockey, said his only criticism of Etienne was with regard to women: “He focused on them too much. And it tired him out, sometimes.” When he mistakenly gave Etienne the benefit of this opinion, he was called an “idiot,” and Etienne informed him: “It's no more tiring than riding horses!”
As a man of respectable pedigree and great means, Etienne could afford not to care about status. He had the freedom to do pretty much as he pleased, something very few women were permitted to any degree. Indeed Gabrielle's arrival at Royallieu to live with Etienne Balsan had made her entirely disreputable in the eyes of contemporary society.
Â
During the second half of the nineteenth century, under Louis Napoléon's Second Empire, Paris became associated with an ostentatious theatricality and a luxuriant, new kind of spectacle. Louis-Napoléon's mission was to promote his country's magnificence and superiority to the world, and in this he was assisted by his urban planner, Georges-Eugène Haussmann. This promotion of magnificence in turn contributed to a period of feverishly self-absorbed luxury. Gratification was the imperative, and entertainments of all kinds proliferated. Many of the now famous great restaurants and grand cafés appeared, as did sumptuous new theaters and concert halls, playing nightly to packed houses.
Another form of entertainmentâprostitutionâalso grew dramatically. At the end of the century, about a hundred thousand women plied their trade to a Parisian population of just under three million.
8
At that time, Paris had one of the most highly organized and regulated systems of prostitution in the world. The penal code discriminated against women, and female adultery was considered far worse than adultery committed by a man. The state's double standard assumed that male extramarital sex was inevitableâin fact, necessary. At the same time, the demimonde
,
the half-world beyond the bounds of respectability, inhabited by women selling their sexual favors, was rigorously controlled. In doing so, the state believed it was contributing toward the stability of the institution of marriage and simultaneously reducing the incidence of grim syphilis.
The myriad names for these women subtly delineated their variety, hierarchy and place in male fantasy. Many, such as the “kept” women, the
irrégulières
or
femmes galantes
, did their utmost to avoid being registered as prostitutes. Each category of the trade had its own epithet, including the street prostitute, the brothel prostitute, the
fille libre
,
fille en carte
,
fille de maison
or
fille de numéro
. Then there was the
grisette
, the young milliner, glover or seamstress, who often took lovers to boost her pitiful earnings.