NOVELIST. PANTOMIME. SEXUAL OMNIVORE. STATESWOMAN. VOLUPTUARY. GODDESS OF THE SENSES. EROTIC DOMINATRIX. UNABASHED PAGAN: SIDONIE- GABRIELLE SET 20TH-CENTURY PARISIAN LIFE ON FIRE WITH HER WIT, PEN, AUDACIOUSNESS & CURVES—AND THAT RIOTOUS, ILLICIT KISS AT THE MOULIN ROUGE. TREATS! LOOKS BACK AT THE LIFE OF THE FIRST MODERN WOMAN WHO DARED TO CHALLENGE SOCIAL DECORUMS, SHARED HER BED WITH MEN & WOMEN—INCLUDING A LOVE AFFAIR WITH AMERICAN ACTRESS JOSEPHINE BAKER, AND A MRS. ROBINSON ROMANCE WITH HER STEPSON—PUBLISHED DOZENS OF NOVELS EXPLORING THE KALEIDOSCOPIC EMOTIONS OF LOVE—AND HAS THE COOLEST STORE IN THE WORLD NAMED AFTER HER IN PARIS by Sarah Hassan

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series. Willy was especially interested in the new pantomime “Marquise de Belboeuf”) was one of the more colorful creatures entitled Le Rêve d’Egypte (Egyptian Dream), as his beautiful in all of belle époque Paris and an impressively blue-blooded young wife, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was headlining alongside aristocrat. She was not only the daughter of the Duc de Morny—a a cryptic actor named “Yssim.” French statesmen and half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III— Willy, a top-hat-wearing, walrus-mustachioed, ladies’ man, but also the former wife of a Spanish duke and a prominent and one of the show’s writers, was sitting next to his new Norman nobleman, Jacques Godard, marquis de Belboeuf. mistress in a theater box as he watched Yssim play the role In fact, Missy and Colette’s kiss was no mere indulgence in of archaeologist. Clad in a velvet suit and tie, Yssim putters theatrics, but a proud display of their lesbian love affair. Both over dusty books in search of an answer to the silent riddle women were recently estranged from their husbands and living presented by the linen-bound sarcophagus that stood before separate lives together, far from heterosexual conventions. The him. Yet this was no ordinary ancient figure from the Nile delta. Marquise, no fan of the horizontal dealings between man and As the linen was unwrapped, a beguiling and breathtaking wife, and Colette, who had suffered a nervous breakdown due woman appeared, cloaked like an Egyptian mummy in a in part to her husband Willy’s chronic infidelity, now indulged calf-grazing gauzy skirt, golden breastplates and a headdress. in the familiar comfort only another woman’s body could Wearing serpentine bracelets, her legs, midriff and feet were provide. The pair could often be seen strolling the streets of bare. This Cleopatra-esque temple dancer began to undulate Montparnasse, Colette wearing a dog collar that brazenly read, and fall to the feet of her master in a passionate spell, recalling “I belong to Missy.” Their appearance on stage together rocked the seduction of the Dutch exotic dancer and accused German the very foundations of French social order—not withstanding spy, Mata Hari, and her famous striptease at the Musée Guimet the blatant and inexcusable use of the de Morny coat of arms that had captured the imagination of Europe’s fashionable on the promotional poster for Le Rêve—and both women salons only two years before. (In 1931, Greta Garbo famously became instant caricatures: the long-limbed and deliciously played the dusky double-agent enchantress in the Hollywood curvy Colette caught in the spidery arms of her androgynous, movie, Mata Hari, slithering and writhing around in Paris marquise-cum-prince-charming outfitted in her trademark top THE SCANDAL OF THE MOULIN ROUGE sex trade; when they married their clients, these emancipated clubs while donning a nude bodysuit and jeweled bra.) As hat, suit, cigar, waistcoat and boots. (Missy would later commit if rewarding his newly revived and richly adorned slave, the suicide by putting her head in a gas oven as the Nazis were In 1905 the French medical doctor Julien Chevalier, and author women would “spread their sapphist practices to their new k pole /T ime L ife P ictures P hoto : eter S tac of La corruption Fin-de-Siècle, boldly announced, “Lesbianism female acquaintances.” However, at the time, this was just an archeologist, planted a deep and erotic kiss on the eager mouth closing in on Paris during World War II.) is spreading like an oil stain throughout the French capital, insecure male doctor’s theory—but those who read his words of his Egyptian dream girl, leaving her left breast exposed under Willy, not one to usually shy away from a scandal, tried making its way from legal heterosexual brothels to the homes couldn’t imagine such demimonde in their beloved City of Lights. the torn slip of white linen, which also revealed her perfectly to escape with his mistress from the pandemonium, but was of respectably married women and for the past few years With its seductively warm red-hued interiors, saucer-like round thigh. Outrage erupted in the audience over the brazen met with angry fists from the audience and was pummeled lesbianism has grown in disconcerting proportions in Paris golden chandeliers floating from its soaring ceiling, and act. Candy, cigarette butts and bouquets of garlic showered the with umbrellas until the police led him to safety. The show was and other [European] capitals; we can no longer pretend to spindly red windmill adorning its roof, the Moulin Rouge lovers on stage, the orchestra pit of 40 musicians drowned out closed down on the spot and the theater was evacuated. The ignore its existence, its influence, and its danger…priestesses (“red windmill”) was the birthplace of the cancan dance by the boos and cries of disgust. Apparently, it was not only a evening was forever immortalized by the press that called it of the new cult have become legion.” In fact, the doctor had routine and the artistic heart of belle époque Paris; it was the kiss to wake the dead—but one to enrage the living. All this fuss “The Scandal of the Moulin Rouge.” no idea, really, what was lurking in the shadows of turn-of-the- undisputed crown jewel of bohemian nightlife in Montmartre. over…a kiss? The fallout of the kiss meant that Missy and Colette were century Paris. Although mainstream society tried to cast a Courtesans, artists, clowns, demigod noblemen and dancing Thanks to the stars of the short-lived show, which saw a not allowed to openly continue their affair—but for Colette blind eye, fashionable ladies, or “priestesses” as he called them, girls all mingled underneath the illuminated windmill and in casting change and reopened for only 10 more performances, it meant the beginning of shedding her skin and eventually looking for a partner in vice routinely drove through the Bois the garden, where a giant model elephant stood taking in the there was plenty to fuss over. You see, the voluptuous Colette becoming France’s most infamous woman of the 20th century, de Boulogne in open carriages, scanning the women on the sights of debauchery induced by Champagne and song. It was wasn’t kissing a handsome man-of-the-world archaeologist at affectionately known as “The Goddess of the Senses.” Champs-Élysées, their cotton-white lapdog poodles curled up the shank of the evening on January 3, 1907, when the Rouge’s all—but an anti-heroine transvestite by the name of Sophie- on their warm thighs, a bottle of nice wine uncorked and ready curtain rose on an Oriental tableau. Thanks to a sassy and well- Mathilde-Adele-Denise de Morny (known as “Missy”), who VENUS, MOON & MARS: A REBELETTE IS BORN to go. Out of the dark alleyways, the women who returned distributed publicity poster for a new pantomime added to the claimed a laundry list of strange sexual peccadilloes. A French Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette began as all women do, as a beautiful the glances of the elegant women in carriages would make a nightly performance roster, the packed hall was swarming with newspaper claimed that Missy was a necrophiliac and possibly little girl. She had a perfect rosebud mouth, waves of hair distinctive, almost horse-like sound—a rapid movement of the members of the aristocracy, including everyone from Prince a transsexual who had had her breasts removed. Salonistes framing an oval milk-white face beset with startlingly moss- tongue and lips to signal “’I go with women.” Murat to leading members of the Jockey Club to the notorious whispered that she allegedly bit the clitoris off of her former green eyes, both steely and amorous. To say the least, Colette He also warned of the threat posed by prostitutes who left the cultural critic Henri-Gauthier Villars, or “Willy” as he was known lover after a tempestuous quarrel. Missy (also known as the was a striking child, a rare combination of luminescent tomboy from the covers of the enormously popular book

42 treatsmagazine.com treatsmagazine.com 43 and coquettish femininity, especially in the backwater town of a picturesque backdrop for Colette’s vivid imagination. As if Burgundy. She was the youngest of three children: half-brother any child who dreams of being abducted can only exist in the Achille who was “full brother by choice and heart”; somber half- lush green of the countryside. Colette’s childhood home was sister Juliette; and brother Leopold, known as “the sylph.” She stately and somewhat forbidding, with ever-blossoming gardens was the only daughter born to Adéle-Eugénie-Sidonie Lando (or of wisteria and begonia tended to by Sido’s expert hands. “Sido” as she was called) and Jules-Joseph Colette, a former Exposed to an early love for plant-pruning and lazy afternoons captain in the Algerian light-infantry unit, who lost his left leg in the garden with a book, Colette became a creature of the in battle. When Jules met Sido, he was a newly appointed tax earth like her mother, never losing her provincial tastes, even collector—and figure of provincial romantic intrigue. She was when Paris became her adopted home. Today, the throngs eight months pregnant by Jules Robineau-Duclos, her moody, of “Colettolatres,” as the French call her disciples, travel to mean-spirited alcoholic first husband. The death of Duclos in Puisaye to find on her house a simple rose-marble marker 1865 left Sido a wealthy land-owning widow with two children, stating “Here, Colette was born.” Named in her honor, Rue and that same year she married ‘Le Capitaine,’ whose main Colette leads pedestrians through the town. Puisaye was known concern until his own death were the many ways to adore his as the “poor Burgundy,” so as not to confuse it with the rich headstrong wife who never ceased to be embarrassed by the Burgundy of vineyards and summer homes, but Colette left her depth of his love. indelible mark on that modest spot as one of France’s richest Sido went through a difficult 48-hour labor with Colette, who immortal icons. came into the world blue and mute on January 28, 1873. Sido attributed the painful birth of “her masterpiece” to their strong THE GHOST WRITER OF 28 RUE JACOB attachment, and Colette would remain ever her mother’s child, Despite an education by way of her progressive mother Sido,

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citing Sido as the most important person in her life. In return, Colette’s true schooling, at the hands of a man, no less, wasn’t Sido adored her “minet-chéri” and christened her with such far from her 18th birthday. Henri Gauthier-Villars (or “Willy”), nicknames as “Bel-Gazou” (meaning “beautiful language”) and a learned, eccentric dandy, had been a friend of the Colette “Jewel-of-pure-gold.” According to her horoscope, Colette was family for quite some time before the young Sidonie-Gabrielle Venus moon/Mars-ruled, no stretch to the imagination even Colette began to show an interest in him in 1891. The son of in her early years; one only has to look at photographs of her an important publisher of scientific books, Willy was a balding at age 11, a predestined seductress in a pinstriped dress with 32-year-old bachelor with a serpentine mustache, pendulous a dreamy look; and at 15, two braided plaits tumbling from belly, a taste for imported shirts, biting social satire, scandal, a straw hat down to her knees as she relaxes in a hammock, and relentless skirt chasing. As one of the belle époque’s all too aware of the camera’s gaze. Sido educated her petite most defensive cultural critics and accomplished hacks— beauty from the beginning, counseling Colette never to marry he would consistently churn out books by a cadre of ghost the man she was in love with, lest she lose power—and, most writers, splashing his playful name across the covers. Willy importantly, to never doubt that she was equal to, if not better was to be Colette’s first husband and mentor, if not her master than, any man. These blueprints for bittersweet happiness and introduction to heartbreak. He oozed a charm that only did come to pass later in the unconventional arrangements a man who knows he’s no treat for the eyes can, but, more explored in the romances of her best-selling books and short importantly, he made the nubile Colette laugh. After an intense, stories and Chéri, proving that the lessons of children two-year love affair conducted through letter-writing and eventually spill into the learnings of adults. Freedom, wit, familial resistance, Colette, now 20, and Willy married on May atheism and modernity were what mattered most to Sido—and 15, 1893 in a private church service in Châtillon, France. Early Colette would live her life in fevered pursuit of them all. Her photographs predict a parody of teacher and pupil older than exploration of adolescent love, love rebuked, jealousy and lust time: the fleshy conniving man and his beautiful child bride, a were way ahead of their time—especially for a female novelist. most delicious recipe for matrimonial disaster. More ominous, Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in Burgundy, France, awash in a however, were Colette’s own words: “The day after that wedding sea of flowers, endless meadows and serene canals, provided night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and

44 treatsmagazine.com Burly phenom, Divena, doing her signature routine in a Plexiglas aquarium, Follies, 1950.

created a type of pop-culture figure with Claudine, and Willy CLAUDINE EN MÉNAGE was nothing short of a publicity genius. In an attempt to delight Long before Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Bridget readers with a truth more scandalous than fiction, Willy began Jones’s Diary and Harry Potter, there was the phenomenon of to appear in public with Polaire and Colette dressed as twins Claudine. Adopted into an eventual four-part series beginning after the release of Claudine en ménage, a novel which features with Claudine á l’école—and a cover suited to meet the a very Parisian love triangle. Although readers could not get fantasies of any French Humbert Humbert—Colette’s writing enough of the sensual and provocative books, critics were not gave birth to the modern teenage girl: a saucy, rebellious, as kind, calling the works “vulgar,” “perverse,” and “soulless.” red-cloaked scribbler who waxed over her own inclinations It was then that Willy ordered, to Sido’s devastation, for Colette towards pleasure, purity, individualism, forbidden desires and to cut her hair short in order to match Polaire’s bob. Gone was the complexities of love. Paris at the beginning of the 20th the famous plait—and with it went Colette’s last ties to her century was a city in full artistic bloom and was in the first already strained marriage. After years of playing the diligent and throes of a feminist movement. (When asked by a reviewer if willing prisoner-writer, Colette was slowly venturing towards she was a feminist, Colette responded, “Me, a feminist? You’re independence. Capitaine Colette was to die in 1905, and in 1906, kidding. The suffragettes disgust me. You know what the after training with the celebrated mime Georges Wague for some suffragettes deserve? The whip and the harem.”) It was also the time, Colette made her debut as a faun in Le désir, l’Amour et le beginning of the Art Nouveau movement; Van Gogh had his first Chimére. Outfitted with horns and perspiring under the lights, posthumous art gallery show; the Champagne riots had turned Colette had come to a new and very satisfying home: the stage. the city upside down, Italy returned the Mona Lisa to France, and the belle époque period was at its zenith. And, well, all of Paris was in a spell for Claudine, the coltish little creature discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from Colette was no less stunned, and at 20, keeping back the tears whose influence spread all the way to the provinces. Selling Curabitur sem eros, cursus non the day before.” she found so hard to expel, she suffered her first broken heart 40,000 copies in four weeks, an astronomical sum for the time, consequat at, molestie consectetur So, Colette Willy, as she was now known, said goodbye that bitterly morphed into a nervous breakdown. Bedridden and Claudine á l’école had Willy rolling in dough over the demand to Sido and her country childhood and moved with her new without an appetite, Colette worried her doctor and unnerved sapien. Donec ac nunc lectus, vel for everything Claudine—from ice cream and cigarettes to husband to Paris, occupying first Willy’s cramped “Venusburg” a guilty Willy who waited on her hand-and-foot before Sido collars, hats and perfume. Willy, now able to rent a more convallis justo. Donec pulvinar turpis bachelor pad, named after Wagner and strewn with naughty appeared at her daughter’s side. Colette did not, however, like spacious apartment for his newest child-bride ghostwriter, did ac augue ullamcorper tincidunt. German postcards, before finding a more suitable love/hate nest so many young brides at the time, succumb to a melodramatic not want to waste time over the next installment. “Quickly, in the Latin Quarter. death birthed by betrayal—but rather she came back, newly my dear, quickly!” the pudgy control freak would shout at Thanks to his position as music critic for Echo de Paris, revived from the disappointment of first love and a jealousy she Colette as she spent her afternoons writing under lock-and-key Willy’s social circle was far-reaching and friends and enemies embraced. And, apparently, with her sense of humor in tact. at 177 bis, rue de Courcelles (where she reportedly installed Colette famously quipped, “On this narrow planet, we have only alike were eager to glimpse his new bride. Her angular face, “Give me a dozen such heartbreaks, if that would help me lose a a trapeze and parallel bars in the studio upstairs to blow off the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts striking eyes and schoolgirl fashions did not go unnoticed in couple of pounds,” she famously said. steam), letting her out only after she had given him what us—ah! what a dream, to live in that!—the other stifles us at the the cafés, nor did her laugh or her hair “long enough to let the Since women are forgiving, not forgetful, creatures by nature, she had written. It is easy to make the argument for Willy as first breath.” bucket down the well with.” No sooner had the couple settled Colette stayed with Willy— who never ceased sticking his Colette’s oppressor during this period, but by trapping Colette into domesticity at 28 rue Jacob, a mere two blocks away poker in the fires of others—and began again her fashionable with nothing but her talent and writing essentials to occupy GERMAN ACROBATS, BASTARD CHILDREN & POODLE-TAIL from where Stendhal had lived in 1810 and where Wagner had life as the toast of the Parisian elite. Funds, however, were her time, he did reveal her greatest gifts. Even after her love MUSTACHES completed “The Flying Dutchman,” was Colette thrust into continually low and, in 1894, Willy had an idea for a literary for him had soured, Colette would credit Willy as her greatest Fancying herself a “woman writer who had turned out badly,” the salons of Paris with access to the most important cultural cash cow: Colette was to write her memoirs of her school days teacher, forcing her to learn and embrace a craft she otherwise Colette began to tour the music halls and theaters of France, figures of the day. Already testing the clandestine gender- in Burgundy, a topic she visited when feeling homesick for found tedious. Belgium and Switzerland, headlining a series of pantomimes bending underground world of Paris, she dressed in jaunty Puisaye. “Don’t be afraid of the spicy details,” Willy naughtily Claudine was too bold and iconic a figure to live merely on the with Wague while she continued to publish articles and stories sailor suits as she met and charmed a who’s who of Paris’s most advised his newest protégée. Not that he could’ve guessed page, and in 1902 she made her stage debut in Claudine á Paris, exposing the life of the stage. Attacking her new vocation with distinguished men: the man of letter himself, Anatole France, what creatures he was bound to release from the corners of played by the music-hall singer and actress Polaire, an intensely the hunger of a newly christened nun, Colette was reinvented composer Claude Debussy, Marcel Proust—who would later Colette’s mind with his request for erotic juvenilia, but that soulful Algerian beauty with a legendary 16-inch waistline. by the power of performance, welcoming the grueling hours of be moved to tears by the final pages of her novel Mitsou—and first “assignment” began a cycle and a reluctant life-calling The show, featuring Polaire in fantastic schoolgirl garb, was rehearsal, the blue grease pencil that ringed her eyes and the was sent compositions and gifts by a smitten Gabriel Fauré, the for Colette. However, filling the margins with his own edits, a success and ran for over 100 performances. Willy’s fame sore yet happy muscles from show after show. Her life on the most famous pianist in Paris. Despite his many literary outposts Willy was unimpressed by his wife’s efforts and stuck her exceeded that of his contemporaries, inspiring Sacha Guitry, road was immortalized in the beautifully written Music-Hall and fancy dress, Willy, ever anxious over his dwindling fortune, compositions in his desk drawers, much to Colette’s relief. Five the celebrated stage actor and playwright, to suggest “only God Sidelights, whose characters include German acrobats who talk began disappearing for days. Colette tried in earnest to please years later, as they were continuing their modern life together, and maybe Alfred Dreyfus are as famous as [Willy].” Imitation stocks in the wings and dancers who nurse bastard children his many appetites and soothe his nerves, yet inevitably, Willy’s Willy was cleaning out his desk and came across the set of is the sincerest form of flattery, and Claudine à Paris inspired between costume changes, and in the semi-autobiographical eye began to wander. In the winter of 1893, Colette was given notebooks containing Colette’s writing. Perhaps it was the a number of parodies before it toured the countryside, with novel La Vagabond, published in 1910 to critical acclaim. Yet an anonymous warning over her husband’s amorous deception fresh eye given to desperation but Willy was convinced he had Colette even taking over the role in 1908 in Brussels and Lyon. Colette’s departure from the salon was not without notice. The that led her to a small apartment where she found Willy and something with her schoolgirl prattle, upon second reading. Colette—who in 1905 wore the schoolgirl dress herself alongside negative consensus after her first performance allowed Willy Charlotte Kincelear, his squat, dark-haired mistress, engaged No sooner had he finished the fifth page was he dashing to his her beloved dog Toby-Chien in a promotional photograph—had to come to her defense, stating that the public had wanted over an account book, rather than in the act of love. The young publisher, ready to become the “father of the Claudines.”

46 treatsmagazine.com treatsmagazine.com 47 “to punish Colette for having definitely declared herself for with strange ease, while traipsing on the stages across Europe. professionalism.” Whether on stage or at the writing table, Seaside vacations to Missy’s villa in charming Le Crotoy (Jules work was a specific indicator of independence for Colette, Verne wrote the epic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in the and the training that came with learning a mime’s craft was no quaint beach town) were common, as was catching the lovers different than the training Willy had subjected her to on the rue exercising together on their homemade gym—Colette was the de Courcelles. Not for nothing, it was the only occupation short epitome of a physical creature. On occasion, Willy was known of prostitution in which a woman could earn a living with her to be their neighbor in Crotoy, keeping house with his mistress body, something that naturally spoke to the sensuous Colette. next door. Finally, in 1909, Colette and Willy divorced, following

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Yet, even Colette was unable to escape the titillation only a the bitter realization that he had sold the rights to the Claudine lavished on Colette left Sido at ease in a way that Jouvenel did with the rest of Europe as it found itself no longer a glittering, skimpy costume could provide, and she found herself in a books. Colette was now a free woman—but it was a freedom not. Perhaps she could see the smoke before the fire, recalling spoiled child but a somber and war-ravaged adult. number of salacious roles, including the wife of a cuckold in La hardly felt by a heart so hungry. the physical and emotional torment the unfaithful Willy had Chair. During a heated scene with her lover, played by Maurice caused Colette in her youth, sick from betrayal and wanting THE BLACK PEARL, CHÉRI & FORBIDDEN FRUIT Chevalier, she bared her perfectly round white breast to the A LONG GESTATION IN THE CITY OF LIGHT nothing more than the man she loved to love her back. Paris in the 20s was a place like no other—past or present. The audience. When one knows her breasts,” an observer remarked, Despite Colette’s wanderings outside the perimeters of her Now working as a reporter, Colette learned the tools of streets were thick with expatriate artists, poets, composers, “one adores them.” To Chevalier, she wrote on a photograph of love nest with Missy, her affairs during their years together another satisfying trade, this one allowing her to fly on the writers and mystics—Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, Salvador the erotic scene, “Hide discreetly...what I am displaying with rarely came to anything serious. Enter in Caudron airbus and in a hot air balloon. But the adventures Dali, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Edgar Degas, Ernest such generosity.” Chevalier would go on to play one of his most 1911, the second mustachioed lothario to capture Colette’s would not last long—at least for a short spell: Colette Hemingway—and bohemian haunts like Les Deux Magots, famous roles, Honoré Lachaille, in Vincente Minnelli’s screen attention and voracious affections. One of the editors-in-chief discovered that she was pregnant. Nearly 40, she married Café de Fiore, La Rotonde, La Coupole and Le Dome were adaptation of Colette’s popular story Gigi. of the influential newspaper Le Matin, 35year-old Jouvenel Jouvenel on December 19, 1912, becoming a wife for the awash in a newfound intellectual and artistic freedom. (At La All the while Colette was indulging in her new occupation, was an educated member of the bourgeoisie. He had two sons: second time and a reluctant mother-to-be for the last. Maternal Rotonde, its owner, Victor Libion, occasionally held raffles at a lover was still financially supporting her—though this time Bertrand, from his first marriage to the daughter of Alfred instincts were not a part of Colette’s make-up. Her ripening the end of the night for the starving artists who couldn’t pay the sex was of a different kind. Colette was no stranger to Boas, and Renaud, by his mistress Isabelle de Comminges. belly embarrassed her and she often compared herself to “a rat their booze bill until a “later date.”) By 1924, the amount of female attraction—there were childhood crushes on music With his rugged, handsome face and luxurious tastes, Colette rolling away a stolen egg.” Giving birth to a daughter, Colette Americans in Paris had swelled to almost 30,000—none more teachers and infatuations with beautiful American wives found herself smitten in the offices of Le Matin, which had, de Jouvenel, whom she called “Bel-Gazou” as her mother famous or glamorous than the banana-belt-wearing, bead- peppering her early years, but the lesbian underground of Paris ironically, been publishing her stories since the success of had lovingly called Colette herself, Colette was nonplussed shaking Josephine Baker, a breathtakingly exotic figure even held a serious court. Sophisticated cross dressers met in secret La Vagabonde in 1910. Their affair was kept under wraps by the joys of a new baby and soon found an English nurse in 20s Paris. Her stage shows were legendary worldwide. Her caverns while enjoying fine wine and cigars. One of the most until 1911, when signs of a scandal began to show. Using the for her “little pet,” seeing her only during the holidays or by pet cheetah, swathed in jewels, would leap from the stage notorious lesbians of the belle époque, and master ringleader theater as an alibi to a fuming Missy and concerned friends, the seaside. Despite a blissful summer in Rozven in 1914, into the orchestra pit and all hell would break loose. She in the sapphic circles, was Sophie-Mathilde-Adéle Denise de Colette would meet Jouvenel in Paris in secret and became the Colette’s world was soon delivered a terrible blow after the instantly became a quixotic muse for painters, writers and Morny, the Marquise de Belboeuf (Missy). Ten years Colette’s object of death threats from de Comminges (nicknamed “The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, sculptors. Upon seeing her on stage one night, Hemingway senior and staggeringly aristocratic, Missy played the role of Panther).” Colette proudly declared to de Comminges, “I am plunging Europe into a great and devastating war that would blurted that Baker was “the most sensational woman I’ve ever a man with ease, with her short haircut, round figure stuffed the other woman.” Hearing of this episode through the Parisian last longer than anyone could have predicted. Returning to a seen.” And the papers blazed with headlines such as “The Most into overalls, and penchant for mustaches made from the tails grapevine, Missy, disgusted and dejected, left Colette with ghostly, panicked Paris, Colette did her best to stay strong in Spectacular Singer and Performer in the World” and “Josephine of poodles. She and Colette met by way of power lesbian and only the house they shared in Rozven, and would end her days the absence of Jouvenel, who had donned a uniform to fight. Baker: La Grande Diva Magnifique.” (There were even rumors salon holder, Natalie Barney, and embarked on a love affair ruined and insane, dying at the age of 81 in 1944 after a bungled Leaving her daughter with her nurse in the safety of Rozven, that the ingénue helped smuggle anti-Nazi intelligence in that would last for five years. In 1906, Colette began living with suicide attempt. Great love offers the heart a second chance to Colette wrote articles for Le Matin, penned the first-person her sheet music and underwear during World War II.) Don’t the marquise, who had been divorced from her husband since grow, and Colette embraced her passion for Jouvenel, whom narrative La Vagabonde, about a 30-something working- think for a moment that the dusky, intense, “queer” sexuality 1903. Colette’s husband Willy was only faintly estranged from she called “Sidi,” (or “lord” in Arabic), and followed him to the woman’s addiction to men, and shared her shopping, cooking of the so-called “Black Pearl” didn’t catch Colette’s eye. his wife, leading a very public affair with a plump 22-year-old vocation of journalist after a few more goes on the stage. Sido, and cleaning with friends who were determined to become It’s not clear when they met exactly, but meet they did in the by the name of Marguerite “Meg” Maniez. Protected, spoiled, by now aging in Châtillon, was not exactly thrilled with the useful by way of a new patriotism. She and Jouvenel exchanged seamy cobblestone jungle of 1920s Paris. According to Baker’s mothered and adored by her masculine marquise, Colette had new man in her daughter’s life. Like any mother, she worried a correspondence, continually interrupted by cut telephone son, Jean-Claude, she had many lesbian affairs, purportedly gone from a kept wife to a kept lover, making the transition for the health of her children; the attention and care Missy had lines and the post that wouldn’t arrive, and trudged along including Clara Smith, Frida Kahlo, and one Sidonie-Gabrielle

48 treatsmagazine.com treatsmagazine.com 49 Colette. According to his book, Josephine: The Hungry came to light when asked by a newspaper reporter about a woman conflict of Europe’s Second World War took a more personal found the perfect lead for the Broadway adaptation of Gigi. Two Heart, Jean-Calude maintains that not only were Colette and winning the honor: “When women get hold of power they’re toll on Colette. On December 14th, Maurice was arrested years before her death in 1954, Colette had been made, quite Josephine lovers, they remained lifelong friends. absolutely frightening—worse than men. I know many intelligent by the Nazis and taken to a camp in Compiégne. Showing fantastically, Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour, granting With the publication of Chéri in 1920, a novel about an women who would be great judges and ministers, except for the strength in a state of terrible worry, Colette appealed to her a state funeral—the first woman to have such a ceremony affair between a much older woman and a handsome wild- fact that they get their period every month!” anyone and everyone she knew who had connections to the —attended by throngs of admirers and mourners who passed child bad boy, Colette, now 47, had reached new emotional occupation forces to help save Goudeket from the horrors of by her tricolor-draped coffin in the Court d’Honneur of the heights. The story of Léa, an aging courtesan, and her beautiful SAINT-TROPEZ, NEW YORK, BELGIUM, MOROCCO the death camps. After two months, Goudeket, thinner and Palais-Royal. Thanks to her two divorces, Colette was denied playboy lover Fred (nicknamed “Chéri”), chronicled their In 1905, a 16-year-old Maurice Goudeket, son of a middle-class crawling with lice, was released and Colette was granted the the presence of a priest at her funeral by the Archbishop of intense and unexpected six-year romance, a heartbreaking Jewish family, was reading the work of Colette when he abruptly final comfort of having her best friend by her side until her Paris, a move denounced by British novelist Graham Greene tryst of a love felt too late but one, like most of her work, declared to his parents, “Someday I’m going to marry this woman. own death. in his book Le Figaro Littéraire. One only had to look at the where the woman is sexually fulfilled and in control. If one Only she will know how to understand me.” This like-minded But, of course, Colette wasn’t going to let the Nazis off that slew of flowers and the names who gave them to recognize believes Oscar Wilde’s prediction that writing terrible stories creature of the senses would meet the 52-year-old Colette at a easy. As a clandestine member of the resistance movement, how universal and celebrated a force Colette had been; Queen allows them to come true, then Chéri, though birthed by the dinner party when he was 35, after she had divorced Jouvenel and she routinely hid her Jewish friends in her attic and converted Elisabeth of Belgium, the Association of Music-Halls and seaside some years before, was such a story for Colette. Her broken off her ill-fated affair with Bertrand. Colette would go on her dilapidated castle in Correze into a safe refuge for those Circuses, the villagers of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye. Now, if young and fiercely protected stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel, to write La fin de Chéri in 1926, in which the still-young, rich and being hunted by the Nazis. Not being political by nature, the one wants to pay homage to that grand dame of letters, the was now a shy 16-year-old with dark hair and a chiseled face handsome Chéri shoots himself at the “hard and bitter” book’s rest of the war, according to her, was spent “le sage repliement country ingénue who became the darling of pantomime and who had never met his stepmother, though doubtless he had end over the hopelessness of his love for Léa, a sad parallel to the sur sol” (or “lying low”). scandal all while following a passion she could name, Colette heard some colorful stories of her character and escapades. maturity of Colette’s own Europe that had grown from the belle Around this time Colette received a visitor at her can be found in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, buried At Jouvenel’s insistence, his son was to spend the summer in époque into the twisted madness of the postwar years. Goudeket sumptuous Palais-Royal apartment near the Grand Vefour alongside other bohemian luminaries such as Edith Piaf, Rozven with Colette, who taught him to swim and luxuriate was by her side for 29 years, as her lover for the first 10 and— building, with a sublime view of the gardens. A wide-eyed, Oscar Wilde, Honore de Balzac, and Jim Morrison. Although in the joys only the ocean could provide. With her hands and everyone knows third times the charm, right? —her husband young American writer named Truman Capote entered her seemingly at home among the illustrious names marked on Sido’s own gardener, Colette spent her days tending to the for the last 19. Colette would call Maurice her “meilleur ami” room and was instantly besotted. the surrounding headstones, Colette, too alive even after more earth and furnishing her house—and taking the waters with her (best friend) and travel the world with him, from Saint-Tropez than 50 years gone, is more felt in a spray of ocean water, stepson before, after giving him a copy of Chéri, she became to New York, Belgium and Morocco, and write some of her most “She received me in her bedroom and I was astonished,” better seen in the faces of flowers blooming in a country Léa herself, planting a kiss on Bertrand’s innocent mouth one celebrated works while sharing her Parisian residence with her he said. “She looked precisely as Colette ought to have looked. garden, and remembered beneath the electric windmill of the evening as he was saying goodnight. She instructed a startled last—and certainly most devoted—husband. After decades of And that was astonishing indeed. Reddish, frizzy, rather now-modernized Moulin Rouge (not to mention the swank and aroused Bertrand to “hold the lamp steady,” and thus began wounds suffered from exciting and terrible loves, Colette had African-looking hair; slanting, alley-cat yes rimmed with kohl; citadel for a la mode fashion on 213 rue Saint-Honore that an exciting and forbidden love affair between a teenage boy and finally matured into a wizened woman, still snarling and pawing a finely made face flexible as water…rouged cheeks…lips thin is named after her); or when the heart recognizes the first his seductive stepmother on the brink of her fifties. at the forbidden, while realizing the true extent of her powerful and tense as wire but painted a really brazen hussy scarlet.” tender ache of new love. To be sure, writers and critics have Their affair, scandalous and forbidden in any century, gifts when she put pen to paper. Around this time, Colette would No stranger to suffering, Colette’s arthritis was worsening, not been at a loss of words when looking back at the effect which biographers have agreed was Colette’s attempt at often quip to her friends—or anyone that would listen in cafés or her stomach ached from years of gastronomic indulgence and Colette had on not only women—but the pillars of love and revenge on Jouvenel for his numerous infidelities, lasted an salons: “Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It radiation treatments, and her weight, which always tethered lust, innocence and louche, girly and steely, kept woman and impressive five years; no coincidence, of course, when Chéri may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime. I’m referring on an uncomfortable brink, was out of control. Some think the fierce libertine, sadist and masochist. Writer Judith Thurman, was adapted for the stage in 1921, Colette would play the role to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on weight was a deliberate statement about Colette turning her who penned Colette: Secrets of the Flesh, so colorfully of Léa for the production’s 100th performance. When it came a man. It’s extremely painful. I agree that it’s hardly bearable. But back on “thinness,” while others casually observed that she describes Colette: “Like the goddess Prosperina, she had two to pleasing his parents, Bertrand took no interest and stayed I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration just liked to be gluttonous. Her biographer, Judith Thurman, guises: one as a daughter, one as a queen…she was accessible faithful to Colette as long as they were together. Colette, at all. It’s no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.” summed it up this way: and elusive…greedy and austere…scorchingly honest surprised at the attachment she formed to her daughter’s “She wrote about misogynistic designers who were only and sublimely mendacious…an inspired consoler and an half-brother, embraced her passion for Bertrand with a coltish UNBEHOLDEN TO THE GODS OF MEN & BEASTS making clothes that thin women could wear, and that the existential pessimist, living her life as both a conservative and energy, despite her ripening years. When it came to sex, Colette would spend her last years traveling extensively on fashion for slimness was masculinizing them. She took a sort erotic militant…and, of course, seducer of her only stepson the once nubile slave to love was now into dominating her lecture tours, as a guest speaker in celebrated universities of ‘fat is beautiful’ stance before anybody did.” and neglecter of her only child…a restless ghost crashing lovers. She liked to joke that as she got older she kept going and exotic locales like Romania and North Africa, and writing Despite paying for her sins, and spending the remaining headlong and sidelong against that barrier reef, mysterious after much younger men by assuming the role of the seducer. cultural criticisms and works such as La Naissance du Jour, Sido decade of her life on her daybed, or “raft” as she dubbed it, and incomprehensible, the human body.” Bertrand would recall her on his deathbed: “She eagerly and the groundbreaking exposé on sexuality, Le Pur et l’impur. under her beloved reading lamp while gorging on her beloved But how did she, “the most famous woman in France,” want picked the fruits of the earth without discriminating those Translations of her work appeared in England, Italy, Germany shellfish, she was able to write and achieve new heights, to be remembered? Toward the end of her life she gave an which were forbidden.” and the United States and, in 1928, she was promoted from publishing groundbreaking “erotic wisdom” short fiction in interview to a magazine where she said: The same year she began indulging in one of her most Chevalier to Officier of the Legion, and then received the title of Gigi, Le Kepi, Le Tendron and L’Enfante Malade. And, in 1945, “Biographers generally believe that it is easy to be a shocking romances, Colette—the Captaine’s daughter after all— Commandeur in 1936, the same year she was made a member Colette was elected to the Académie Goncourt, becoming monster. It is even harder than being a saint…. Perhaps the was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest of the Belgian Royal Academy. Her fame was now far-reaching president of the jury in 1949. Worshipped by European royalty most praiseworthy thing about me is that I have known how to civil honor from the president of France itself (an honor that is from the Parisian social circles she frequented in her early years, like Prince Pierre of Monaco and old friends like artist and write like a woman, without anything moralistic or theoretical, usually bestowed upon kings, war heroes, doctors and business and such fame came with the irritating trappings of bona fide genius in his own right, Jean Cocteau, Colette bore the laurel without promulgating. I love my past, I love my present. I am tycoons). For a most unconventional woman, it was quite the celebrity: over-zealous fans and acolytes wandering into Colette’s crown of a living literary legend in France. One night in 1951, not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no conventional accomplishment, but it would not be her last, nor garden in Saint-Tropez and selling postcards of her house. Having she spotted then-unknown actress Audrey Hepburn in the longer have it. What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d her highest. Once again, her wit and seeming contradictions experienced the brutal depression of World War I, in 1941, the foyer of the Hôtel de Paris, deciding instantly that she had realized it sooner.”t!