Seductress (57 page)

Authors: Betsy Prioleau

164
The most exacting . . . :
Quoted ibid., 74.

165
She gained international . . . :
These can still be heard on
Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord,
vol. 3, Pavillion Records Ltd. The grainy and overmiked recordings, however, give only the faintest idea of the éclat of her playing.

165
She bought a . . . :
Sitwell,
Noble Essences,
283, and quoted in Douglas-Home,
Violet,
94.

165
Part “czarina,” part . . . :
Quoted in Douglas-Home,
Violet,
267.

165
An infatuated clavichord . . . :
Quoted ibid., 242-43.

165
Two women developed . . . :
Ibid., 227.

165
“You are the . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 285.

165
Violet spent her . . . :
Ibid., 299.

166
The obituaries called . . . :
Quoted ibid., 306.

166
If at all . . . :
Quoted ibid., 175 and 103.

166
The Sitwells put . . . :
Quoted ibid., 311.

166
She switched on . . . :
Sitwell,
Noble Essences,
283. Robert Jourdain points out that finely wrought music with its Piranesi towers of tease-and-anticipation and swooping resolutions creates the same ecstasy of successful lovemaking. Unlike other female musicians of the time, such as Amy Beach, Violet frankly put this primordial aphrodisiacal charge in music to her own uses.

166
Sexual rapture promoted . . . :
“Sensual desire and religious emotion,” say anthropologists, are “indissolubly bound,” and the first humans “danced out their religion.” Neumann,
Great Mother,
293, and E. O. James,
From Cave to Cathedral,
18.

166
The sex goddesses . . . :
Wolkstein and Kramer,
Inanna,
41.

167
Lamia wore a . . . :
Quoted in Nickie Roberts,
Whores in History
(London: HarperCollins, 1992), 30.

167
When she was . . . :
Plutarch, “Demetrius,”
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans,
1088.

167
Though ten years . . . :
Basserman,
Oldest Profession,
227.

167
“I do not fear . . .”:
Quoted in Hayward,
Dictionary of Courtesans,
11.

168
At the end . . . :
Phyllis Rose,
Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time
(New York: Doubleday, 1989), 31.

168
She was the Ebony . . . :
Quoted in Lynn Haney,
Naked at the Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981), 101, and quoted in Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase,
Josephine: The Hungry Heart
(New York: Random House, 1993), 3.

168
Yet when she . . . :
Quoted in Rose,
Jazz Cleopatra,
14.

169
Like the barrelhouse . . . :
See Angela Y. Davis’s discussion of the strong, sexually pioneering blues singers and their tradition of female autonomy, promiscuity, and erotic pride. They sang, “I ain’t gonna marry, ain’t gonna settle down”; “I’m a good woman and I can get plenty of men”; “I’m a young woman and ain’t done runnin’ round.”
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
(New York: Vintage, 1998), 17 and passim.

169
“I have no . . .”:
Quoted in Rose,
Jazz Cleopatra,
140.

169
The chorus girls . . . :
Quoted in Baker and Chase,
Josephine,
57.

169
Refusing “to be . . .”:
Quoted in Haney,
Naked at the Feast,
28.

169
The artist Paul Colin . . . :
Quoted ibid., 104.

170
According to lovers, . . . :
Quoted ibid., 87.

170
For her, the mix . . . :
Rose,
Jazz Cleopatra,
263, and Baker and Chase,
Josephine,
243.

170
An “adorable” despot . . . :
Haney,
Naked at the Feast,
180.

170
Singing French torch songs . . . :
Quoted ibid., 87 and 165.

171
Beneath the elegant . . . :
Frymer-Kensky,
Wake of the Goddesses,
48. Here Frymer-Kensky is speaking of the nonproper “divine” “embodiment of sexual attraction and lust,” Inanna, 47.

171
For five years . . . :
Quoted in Haney,
Naked at the Feast,
220.

172
A splurge queen . . . :
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Birth of Tragedy,
trans. Francis Golffing (New York: Anchor, 1956), 35.

172
As she traipsed . . . :
Quoted in Haney,
Naked at the Feast,
308.

172
But like other seductresses . . . :
Ibid., 69.

172
Racist critics called . . . :
Quoted ibid., 246.

172
Yet Josephine was . . . :
Quoted ibid., 278.

173
The Brazilians believed . . . :
Quoted ibid., 99.

173
But she must have found . . . :
Friedrich,
Meaning of Aphrodite,
58 and 144.

173
That’s why great lines . . . :
See Norman O. Brown, “Poetry, the creative act, the act of life, the archetypal sexual act. Sexuality is poetry,” quoted in Gilbert and Garber,
Madwoman in the Attic,
13. Emily Dickinson and Montaigne, “On Some Verses of Virgil,”
Complete Essays of Montaigne,
vol. 3, 66.

173
Women may have . . . :
Neumann,
Great Mother,
296. Also see Norma Lorre Goodrich,
Priestesses
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1989), 1-11, and Davis,
First Sex
and Drinker,
Music and Women,
68-69.

173
The cosmic sex . . . :
Wolkstein and Kramer,
Inanna,
16, 17, and 37.

173
In ancient Greece . . . :
Friedrich,
Meaning of Aphrodite,
144.

174
Maria de Ventadorn, (c. 1165):
Meg Bogin,
The Women Troubadours
(New York: Paddington, 1976), 168 and 101.

174
Light-years ahead . . . :
Dorothy O’Connor,
Louise Labé, sa vie et son oeuvre
(Paris: Presses françaises, 1926), 86.

175
After this volume . . . :
Kenneth Varty, “The Life and Legend of Louise Labé,”
Nottingham Medieval Studies
3 (1959), 108.

176
“Kiss me. Again . . .”:
Labé,
Louise Labé’s Complete Works,
trans. and ed. Edith R. Farrell (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing, 1986), 114.

176
In the “Debate . . .”:
Ibid., 36.

176
“You must be . . .”:
Ibid., 34 and 39.

176
Men must “do . . .”:
Ibid., 83.

176
We can only imagine . . . :
Ibid., 67.

176
André Malraux called . . . :
André Malraux, intro.,
Louise de Vilmorin: Poèmes
(Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 14.

177
Preposterous though it . . . :
Quoted in Jean Bothorel,
Louise ou la vie de Louise de Vilmorin
(Paris: Bernard Gasset, 1993), 290.

177
“Laughter,” she quipped . . . :
Quoted ibid., 41.

177
Sexual conquest “lights . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 316.

178
He also fell . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
32.

178
For him, she . . . :
Stacy Schiff,
Saint-Exupéry
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 96, and Christine Sutherland,
Enchantress: Marthe Bibesco and Her World
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 260. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Southern Mail,
trans. Curtis Cate (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971 [1929]) 28, and Schiff, 98.

178
First came André . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
67.

178
Her novel sold . . . :
Quoted ibid., 90.

179
Pali Palffy, count . . . :
Quoted ibid., 114.

179
There, ensconced as . . . :
Ibid., 173, and Vilmorin,
Julietta,
42.

179
Another Hungarian count . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
140.

179
Unlike lesser seductresses . . . :
Vilmorin,
Julietta,
117.

179
Afterward, Louise treated . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
291 and 159.

180
“You are a . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 160.

180
When the ménage . . . :
Louise de Vilmorin,
Madame de,
trans. Duff Cooper, intro. Susan Minot (Canada: Helen Marx Books, 1998), 7, 17.

180
Approaching fifty, she . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
230.

180
“I have no . . .”:
Quoted in Schiff,
Saint-Exupéry,
104.

180
Welles, a notorious . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
230.

180
One conquest, Pierre . . . :
Quoted ibid., 268 and 269.

181
She got, however . . . :
Quoted ibid., 312.

181
After he buried . . . :
Quoted ibid., 290.

181
Louise returned the . . . :
Quoted ibid., 182. Her view of her own sex stood in blatant contradiction to her life. Having endured female hatred and rivalry since childhood (beginning with her mother), Louise saw women as the archenemy, best kept off her freeway in domestic subjection.

181
“You are magical” . . . :
Quoted in Bothorel,
Louise,
302 and 161.

181
Louise always claimed . . . :
Quoted ibid., 70.

182
And the original . . . :
Frymer-Kensky,
Wake of the Goddess,
48.

183
She loosed the . . . :
Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted on the subject of the comic muse in Paul Lauter, intro.,
Theories of Comedy
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1964), xvi.

183
An infatuated Samuel Pepys . . . :
Quoted in Bryan Bevan,
Nell Gwyn
(London: Robert Hale, 1969), 52.

183
In each, she . . . :
This is James Howard’s
All Mistaken or, The Mad Couple,
1667, in which she played Mirida.

183
“I am the . . .”:
Quoted in John W. Wilson,
Nell Gwyn: Royal Mistress
(New York: Dell, 1955), 82 and 83.

184
Without a trace . . . :
Quoted ibid., 115.

184
Though women came . . . :
Quoted ibid., 152.

184
By the end . . . :
Quoted ibid., 115 and 149.

184
She told his . . . :
Quoted ibid., 103, 120, and 146.

184
Whenever Charles strayed, . . . :
Quoted ibid., 154.

184
He also came . . . :
Ibid., 149.

185
During the conflict . . . :
Quoted ibid., 222.

185
A “lovely” lieutenant . . . :
Quoted ibid., 203.

185
“Pray good people . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 196.

185
“Let not poor Nelly . . .” :
Quoted ibid., 215.

185
Too big for her britches . . . :
Quoted ibid., 188.

186
Like Inanna, “the . . .”:
Frymer-Kensky,
Wake of the Goddess,
48.

186
Men trembled and . . . :
Quoted in Rachel M. Brownstein,
Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie Française
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1913), 226, and in Joanna Richardson,
Rachel
(New York: Putnam’s, 1957), 121.

186
A diva of “demonical . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 18.

186
She seemed closer . . . :
Quoted ibid., 57.

187
“She’s my discovery . . .”:
Quoted in Brownstein,
Tragic Muse,
102.

187
She was nothing . . . :
Quoted in Richardson,
Rachel,
20.

187
At the play’s . . . :
Quoted ibid., 121.

187
A steely victrix . . . :
Quoted ibid., 42.

187
“I am
free
” . . . :
Quoted in Brownstein,
Tragic Muse,
151.

187
In common with . . . :
Ibid., 151, and quoted ibid., 103.

188
Lovers called her . . . :
Quoted ibid., 15.

188
In 1841, with . . . :
Quoted in Richardson,
Rachel,
41.

188
But the “Jewish . . .”:
Quoted in Brownstein,
Tragic Muse,
207.

189
“I love to . . .”:
Quoted in Brownstein,
Tragic Muse,
151.