Sex in the Cities. Volume 3. Paris. Hans-Jürgen Döpp
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gossipers: “which is why one should never speak ill of ladies because of the consequences that may arise”. And he compared “married women, widows, and girls – to discover which is most ardent in love”. Brantôme’s work prefigured the Rococo era. He was a light-hearted and sensual early crusader for the freedom of the female gender – in bed. For him, the chastity of young girls and the faithfulness of married women were outmoded concepts, prejudices that did not accord with women’s social standing and which the nobility must abandon if it wished to perpetuate its delightful way of life. The customs of an outmoded sense of morality were, as Brantôme recounts with some satisfaction, already no longer adhered to.
According to Brantôme, a libertine lifestyle was certainly not considered a drawback for les grandes dames (high-society ladies). He believed that the only women to be branded prostitutes were those who gave themselves to ordinary men, whereas intercourse with royal personages, especially the King, was considered absolutely honourable. In his view there was not one unspoilt woman in the whole court. At court anything could be discussed without embarrassment. Brantôme heard about a grande dame who one day saw a young nobleman who had very white hands, and she asked him how that had come about. He answered laughingly in jest that it was because he washed them so often in sperm. “I’m less fortunate,” rejoined the grande dame, “I’ve been washing my little casket in that for the past sixty years and it’s still as black as before. Even though I wash it in that every day.” The same distinguished lady, who became famous as the Queen of France and a mother – Catherine de’ Medici – did not shy away from taking part in a competition with her ladies-in-waiting to describe the finest details of their most intimate charms. It took place so that the other gentlemen present could, for their part, declare quite openly to which ladies’ favour they owed the state of their male members. Catherine de’ Medici, whose father and mother died of syphilis before she married the future King Henri II when the two were fourteen, spoke frankly about her vagina. “I carry three lovely colours there at the same time: black, white, and red. For that mouth down there is as red as coral, the curly hair round about it as black as ebony, and my skin as white as alabaster.”
Just as Catherine de’ Medici showed no restraint in describing her charms, so Brantôme showed none either when criticising a lack of modesty amongst women. He treated readers to another lady’s witty complaint in the following words: “She complained that her vulva was like hens who, when they don’t drink enough water, get roup and die. Thus, her vulva would get roup if she didn’t get enough to drink, but she needed something other than well-water!” Another lady said “that she had the makings of a good garden for which the rain from heaven was not enough – she also needed a gardener in order to be fruitful”. In this respect, Brantôme had no intention of being malicious. He was an observer and reporter of the exuberant sensuality at the court of the French Kings, who not only had sexual intercourse indiscriminately with every woman who attracted them, but also wanted to hear and see anything that seemed likely to stimulate their lust.
Even ordinary objects at the royal court were calculated to arouse the senses. On platters and plates orgiastic scenes were engraved as “reflections of love”. On a goblet in the form of an enormous male member, which graced the king’s table, Brantôme writes:
This goblet was the cause of miraculous events. The ladies set their lips upon it, enfolding it tenderly. For they realised that the mouth is good for more than speaking and kissing. When a beautiful woman drinks lovingly she is demonstrating her love.
Brantôme then goes on to write that one of the ladies depicted in the book came to see it but was not in the least offended – on the contrary, she was extremely excited. Obscene conversations were perfectly normal, so that people saw nothing unusual in them. Brantôme never missed the opportunity to describe the ladies who took part in such conversations as “very honourable ladies”.
Erotica dominated both the thinking and the feeling of that period. In the world of the courts and the aristocracy, shame was virtually unknown. Since time immemorial, the French court had been the “figurehead of the nation’s morals”. “If one wishes to gain authentic information about a nation’s way of life and morality,” writes Jean Hervez in his contribution to The Moral History of Paris (1926), “then one only needs to study attentively the accounts contemporary authors give of their rulers.” The fact that the French example was also the model for the very smallest princedoms in Germany comes as no surprise, though most of them lacked the material basis for this kind of dissolute life.
Fragment with Renaissance motif, c. 1550.
Heinrich von Ramberg, 1799. Coloured lithograph.
In the course of the 17th century, for court circles in particular, the social postulate of emotional control gained absolute credence, and influenced the way in which one gender treated the other. Increasingly, gallantry and coquetry came to determine the manner in which love was expressed, with the result that it became harder “… to distinguish real from feigned love”. Jean de la Bruyère formulated this problem in a pointed way in Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce siècle: “It sometimes happens that a woman conceals from a man all the passion she feels for him, whereas he for his part feigns everything he does not feel.”
Nevertheless, lovers at the time still managed without recourse to complex hermeneutics, or interpretations, of love. They confessed their love without prevaricating. We hear an echo of this in the works of Brantôme. Neither men nor women – of whatever social stratum – show any compunction about expressing their feelings. “A careful weighing up, consideration, or a subtle assessment of the other’s feelings – which characterises 17th century erotic literature, defined as amour passion – plays no part in erotic novels of the Renaissance period,” writes Hiltrud Gnüg in her study, Der erotische Roman (The Erotic Novel). In his Illustrated History of Morals, Eduard Fuchs explores the “mutual forms of courtship” in the Renaissance:
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the forms of courtship were extremely primitive in almost all classes and nearly all countries, and thus consisted largely of what was called the primitive forms of gallantry. In other words, both genders paid each other homage almost exclusively in the unambiguous terms of “hands-on” intimacies. Eyes and hands assumed and were given every right. Certainly, procedure was coarser and more direct in peasant than in middle-class or aristocratic circles; and, again, German nobles were more uncouth than those from Italy or Spain, but in all cases one was concerned with differences of degree, not of character.
He closes with this conclusion: “To sum up, love on both sides followed the principle of the swiftest possible procedure.”
It was the evolution of civilisation which produced ever stricter controls on the expression of emotion, and that encompassed love in all its manifestations. By the 18th century, erotic libertinism no longer meant openly admitting to one’s erotic inclinations, the direct and undisguised expression of one’s desire. From this point on what was demanded was the art of indicating feelings without settling on one particular form of expression.
François Boucher, Blonde Odalisque, 1752. Oil on canvas, 59 × 73 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
The Golden Age of Eroticism
The Duke of Orléans’ “fêtes d’Adam”
Versailles, built by Louis XIV, became the glorious paradigm of all royal and princely residences in Europe. From early on, the French court, with its luxury and free morals, set the tone for a country which was entirely devoted to enjoyment and love.
In his memoirs, the Duke of Saint-Simon wrote the following about life at the Court of Versailles: “In his young days, Louis XIV was made for love like none of his subjects.” Louis needed only to drop his perfumed handkerchief at the feet of a beautiful woman; this signal was enough to put the woman so selected into a state of readiness for love. Here, no regard was paid to husbands. However, anyone who honoured the favour thus bestowed on his wife rose