Paris in the 1830s-1840s
Céleste de Chabrillan writes very little about the clients she saw during her time at a maison de tolérance. Parent Duchâtelet similarly does not touch very much on clients. Céleste does remark, however, that she remembers them all as being very distinguished and rich. She hears rumors of girls who have been saved by wealthy clients and hopes that she will meet someone soon who will “whisk [her] away.” She only describes one “love affair” in any detail. A wealthy man, who all the girls say is “brutish” and violent asks to see her. Céleste disobeys him when she refuses to drink with him. He initially interprets this as part of her attempts to seduce him. He offers her money if she’ll drink. She refuses again. He returns several times over the course of the following days and seems to enjoy her repeated refusals. She doesn’t specify what sexual activity they engage in. Eventually she gets fed up with him and says he is “nothing but a drunkard.” The next day he asks to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant just to dump a bottle of seltzer on her. [1] Literary critic Carol Mossman later identified this client as a "famous literary personality." [2]
Young Englishmen would also come to Paris, knowing that sex work was legal. Informal Tourist’s guides were published instructing these men where to go to find filles publiques or dance halls. The instructions for visits to maisons de tolérances include information about how much you have to pay, whether you should tip, and what rules the women were expected to follow, though there are no rules for visitors.[3]
Clients who had complaints, often took them to the state. The state had provided the problem and therefore should be the one to solve it. A letter to the prefect of police complains about the evil spread by filles publiques, focusing on the spread of venereal diseases as proof that they are poisoning society. The writer blames his affliction on his visit with filles publiques. He does not reflect on the possibility that he then spread it to other women who spread it to men he knows. He bemoans that his healthy looking colleagues are putting themselves at risk by visiting with filles publiques, without considering the possibility that they are spreading these venereal diseases to their wives. It’s also clear that everyone knows that men visit with sex workers, though it must never be discussed, and that they are not penalized for this.
All sorts of men visited the filles de maison of Paris. Wealthy men, middle-class men, single men, married men, even men from abroad. Even though seeking such pleasures was seen as immoral, as Parent Duchâtelet put it, “Taking forms that vary according to the social climates and national customs, prostitution remains inherent to large populations; it is and always will be like birth defects, against which experiments and systems have failed, and of which one confines oneself to reducing the devastating effects.” [Link to original French]. [4]
[1] Chabrillan, Celeste Venard de. 2002. Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 71-5.
[2] Mossman, Carol.2009. Writing With a Vengeance: The Countess de Chabrillan's Rise From Prostitution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 25.
[3] Anon. 1869. Guide to Paris by Night: The Gay Women or Cocottes. 2nd ed. Paris: Continental Book Sellers. p. 37-38.
[4] Parent-Duchâtelet, Alexandre Jean-Baptise. 1836. On Prostitution in the City of Paris. London: Chez J.-B. Baillière. Trans. Liam Oznowich, Georgia Lederman, and Thomas Rathe p. 512.