9 minute read
MARTHE DE FLORIAN
from The Chap Issue 111
by thechap
Mystery
A PECULIAR PARIS APARTMENT
Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe on the startling discovery of a perfectly preserved belle epoque timelock capsule in Paris
With gratitude for the help of Raechel Leigh Carter
The French of today are mesmerised by Michel Houellebecq’s depressive purr. There are even lost Gallic souls who sadly believe it when President Macron – a big fan of the ‘Iron Lady’ – proclaims that there is no such thing as French culture. It’s ironic that we need Americans like Michelle Gable, with her rose-tinted bestseller A Paris Apartment, to remind us that, at the end of the 19th century, sophisticated ladies like Marthe de Florian were all the Parisian rage. The whole of the Parisian social elite gathered in her boudoir, where they could view her painted likeness captured for eternity by the most fashionable portraitist of the day, Giovanni Boldini.
Believe it or not, the following story is true. In 2010, auctioneer Maitre Olivier Choppin de Janvry
The apartment had been perfectly preserved for over 70 years
discovered a 1900 Bonbonnière (a bijou apartment) in Paris at the Square La Bruyère. Under a thick layer of dust, he couldn’t believe his eyes: he was entering into a 140-metre square flat, and not your usual 9th Arrondissment pad. This was a real palace of wonders, untouched by human hand for a century. It was like being the heroes of Irwin Allen’s 1960s TV show The Time Tunnel. He felt he was witnessing the life of a demi-mondaine who seemed to have left the place just a few minutes ago. In the boudoir stood a never-seen-before portrait by Boldini. There was also a remarkable psyche console (a kind of dresser); drawers full of letters; a multitude of trinkets; faded lace and even an extravagant stuffed ostrich in the entrance. Try to imagine the amazement of Maitre Olivier Choppin de Janvry upon discovering this place, entirely frozen in its 1900 state.
Everything was made of quiet luxury and voluptuousness, all in the full rococo style so typical of Paris at the turn of the century. Through the grey fog of dust and the saturated atmosphere, a bright life could be imagined. An existence frozen in time, not unlike the hands of time on the dial of the small golden alarm clock, situated in the middle of hairbrushes and mignonette perfumes. Ming vases and Louis XVI shepherdesses were shaded by dusty curtains with shell prints. The first time he entered this chamber, Maitre Choppin de Janvry made a spatio-temporal journey that the Situationists would have described as psychogeographical; entering this apartment, untouched
Mignonette perfumes under a carpet of 100-year-old dust
for almost a hundred years, was like visiting Marthe de Florian’s inner self.
Marthe de Florian was what was then called a demi-mondaine, or courtesan. Today we would say she was a call girl or a ‘Pretty Woman’. This woman, who was actually named Mathilde Beaugiron, was born in 1864 from humble beginnings. Thanks to her great beauty, she was able to wine, dine and charm the whole of the French Third Republic cognoscenti.
Indeed, fiery missives signed by French statesmen, including Prime Ministers and Presidents such as Georges Clemenceau,
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Raymond Poincaré and Paul Deschanel, were found in a drawer, along with others from wealthy businessmen such as Aristide Boucicaut, (the founder of the world’s first department store Le Bon Marché) and Ernest Cognacq (founder of the Parisian store Samaritaine). These letters were tied up in bundles with ribbons of different colours for different senders of both sexes, for Marthe, like many cocottes of the time, was bisexual.
The features of Mademoiselle de Florian are known to us thanks to a handful of photographs and one painting. And not just any painting either, since the expert Marc Ottavi is categorical that it is indeed a 1903 canvas painted by Giovanni Boldini, a highly en vogue painter at the end of the nineteenth century. Readers of The Chap visiting Paris can admire Boldini’s master works exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay, ranging from portraits of people like the aesthete Robert de Montesquiou, to images of prostitution in the exhibition ‘Splendours and Miseries’. Many historians have wondered whether Marthe had paid the painter’s emoluments ‘horizontally’, since it would have cost a small fortune to obtain a portrait of such a large size by an artist of this stature.
The Boldini portrait was sold at Drouot for the modest sum of 1.8 million euros. On the day of the sale, the atmosphere was electric; everybody was excited by the louche yet glamorous legacy of its previous owner. It was eventually an Italian buyer who won the lot. The lucky bidder was then offered, as a bonus, some samples of Marthe’s saucy correspondence; letters which would have only previously been recovered by blowing up a safe with TNT.
One can only wonder about the incredible destiny of this woman whose parents were modest craftspeople. Despite beginning her professional career as an embroiderer, Mathilde Beaugiron managed to climb the social ladder courtesy of ‘the bedroom promotion routine’.
Let’s not forget that, at the time, the only way for an ‘ill-born’ woman to progress in society was to indulge in mutually beneficial exchanges in the form of bedroom sports sessions. Gil Blas, the popular periodical of the time, did not mince its words when evoking Marthe as “A blonde frivolous woman with chubby and pink flesh like cherry blossoms, a baby face lit up by two pretty eyes. She lives in a charming apartment where the more refined luxury is combined with the best comfy facilities. A Louis XV living room, a renaissance dining room, a bedroom... all invisible to the common man.” The author went on to describe, “We meet her in Longchamp, dressed in a white suit like Marguerite de Faust, or in the Bois de Boulogne, very flirtatious with a gallant Boyar. Marthe de Florian is beautiful, of a chatelaine-like aristocratic beauty, for whom spears were broken in the age of chivalry.”
Readers would be entitled to wonder, ‘But how can you keep an empty apartment in such a pristine state for so long?’ The key to the mystery lies with Solange Beaugiron, Marthe’s granddaughter, by then a 90-year-old woman, who had lived there in 1940 before moving to the Ardèche. Following Solange Beaugiron’s death, a notary was asked to carry out a furniture inventory at the apartment, which, for mysterious motives, Solange had kept and paid for, despite leaving it unoccupied for so many years. This mystery excited the interests of journalists as far away as the United States.
What we do know is that Marthe ended up marrying a merchant, allowing her to access the ranks of the bourgeoisie, before dying in Trouville on 29th August, 1939. As for Solange, she also followed a remarkable trail, settling for good in the Ardèche after the exodus of 1939, becoming the author of rose-tinted romantic dime novels for Jours de France. The lady who would never return to her grandmother’s apartment had published most of her novels, set in the belle époque period, under the pseudonym of Solange Bellegarde. One of these soap operas, Gloria, would even be adapted for the screen by renowned director Claude Autant-Lara.
Michelle Gable’s A Paris Apartment, published in 2014, was not very far from a rose-tinted dime novel, taking great liberties with the social and historical realities of Marthe’s time. The book is more reminiscent of Hallmark TV movies than serious literature. It depicts a kind of Paris emptied of its reality and adapted to the psyche of readers who dream of a postcard-sized Paris. You know, croissants, small puppies, glasses of Claret, guys wearing berets… the kind of stuff you would never find in real life but more likely in episodes of The Simpsons or Sex and the City. Those who would like to learn about the real Paris of La Belle Epoque would do better by reading The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, illustrated by Jacques Tardi, a cult graphic novel adapted into English by American publishers Fantagraphics.
Marthe’s Boudoir, now emptied of its past vestiges, refurbished and rented to new tenants, has not yet revealed all of its secrets. Now it is up to you to dream up your own version of the story. Jacques Derrida invented the concept of ‘Hauntology’, in order to create contemporary works inspired by past popular culture ghosts. We are still waiting for the film, the novel or the music album or even the video game that will synthesize this immobile time travel story. n
