Eugène-François Vidocq: From Criminal to Master Criminologist

The latest Vidocq’s reincarnation in the movie The Emperor of Paris starring Vincent Cassel (2018)

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In the heart of Paris lies a tale as complex as the city itself: the story of Paris Sûreté and its legendary founder, Eugène-François Vidocq, the criminal who became the first modern criminologist.

An investigation bureau composed of undercover officers was established in 1812 under the name Brigade de Sûreté ((French for “safety” or “security”). Its head, Vidocq, spent the first fifteen years of his adult life either in prison or on the run. He was a poacher turned gamekeeper, a genius innovator—and later a best-selling author—whose adventures captured the imagination of his contemporaries, and inspired many renowned writers of his time.

Vidocq was born in 1775, a baker’s son. His was a perfectly ordinary and relatively well-to-do family in Arras, northern France. However, ordinary life was not good enough for Eugène-François. By fourteen, he had sold off the family’s finest china to finance his quest for adventure. He ran away, heading for America. Unable to afford the voyage, he joined a travelling circus as a human cannibal. This unusual career ended when he refused to eat a live chicken and got a beating.

The boy ran away again. He joined an itinerant puppet show, but was caught in bed with the puppet master’s wife. After taking a few more unexpected detours, he returned home a repentant yet unchanged prodigal son: a womanizer and fan of drink and brawls. Father Vidocq, disappointed with the young man’s behavior, was glad when his troublesome offspring joined the army.

Like his previous employment, Vidocq’s military career was short-lived. Flighting and hopping from regiment to regiment, once deserting to fight on the enemy’s side, he ended up in a roving militia composed mostly of petty criminals and deserters. Until the age of thirty-four, Vidocq spent most of his time in and out of prison. He escaped from all France’s galleys and more than twenty prisons under different disguises, including that of a nun.

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Galleys were ships recycled as prisons. Cramped conditions, appalling lack of hygiene, and forced labor awaited the inmates.

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In 1809, residing on a galley once more, and realizing his life was a vicious circle, Vidocq decided to reform. In exchange for his liberty, he offered to act as an informant. He was sent to a regular prison, where he gathered information from his fellow inmates. Happy with his work, the authorities promoted him to head of a newly formed unit, the Brigade de Sûreté. Its agents were responsible for apprehending murderers, forgers, and thieves, securing stolen goods, and arresting escaped convicts.

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Vidocq and his agents arresting brigands

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The institutionalized police force was still in its infancy, and the resourceful Vidocq became an innovative criminalist. He developed policing methods still widely used today, including crime scene security, detailed written records, indelible ink and unalterable bond paper (he held patents on both), ballistics (the flight characteristics of bullets), sending undercover agents to prisons to familiarize themselves with convicts susceptible to re-offend, or preserving footprints with plaster of Paris. Vidocq’s Sûreté laid the foundation for Scotland Yard, established in 1829, and also served as a blueprint for the FBI a century later.

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The first agents, men and women, were questionable characters. The “Vidocq’s gang”, was a common nickname for the Brigade de Sûreté at the time

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The very successful Vidocq’s team grew from four to twenty-eight agents. Most of them were ex-convicts. He did not hesitate to recruit women: a step Scotland Yard took a whole century to adopt. The Sûreté faced ongoing scrutiny due to its agents’ questionable backgrounds. Complaints were brought to the attention of Vidocq’s superiors that he and his team were taking bribes, engineering crimes, and profiting from them. As a fact, when Vidocq left–before being forced to leave–in 1827, he had half a million francs to his name. How he amassed such a fortune on his police officer’s salary is everyone’s guess.

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Vidocq aged 52: A retired police chief, paper manufacture owner, and bestselling author

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With time on his hands, Vidocq set to work on his memoirs. They were an instant hit and attracted new friends. Dumas the Elder, Hugo, Balzac, and other literary giants dined and wined Vidocq to hear more of his exciting and inspiring tales. The memoirs, translated into English within a year, eventually gave birth to the detective novel and the true crime genre on both sides of the Channel.

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Although Vidocq’s memoirs are embellished for dramatic effect, and not entirely reliable, they remain valuable historical documents. One of the most fascinating aspects of the memoirs is the insight into the criminal underworld of early 19th-century France. Vidocq provides detailed descriptions of the various criminal gangs and their methods, offering a view of the social and economic conditions of the time.

Vidocq’s own experiences as a criminal led him to advocate for rehabilitation over punishment. He understood that social and economic circumstances pushed many individuals towards crime. This perspective influenced his efforts to recruit former criminals as informants and undercover agents, giving them a chance to reform. He called for improvements to prison conditions, including better sanitation, education access, and vocational training. His ideas and actions laid the groundwork for modern approaches to law enforcement and criminal justice.

Vidocq put his theory into practice after leaving the Sûreté by founding a paper factory with a workforce composed exclusively of former convicts. The experiment was unsuccessful, and Vidocq became bankrupt. He returned to the Sûreté where his absence had been noticed as crime rates shot up after his departure. From a mere agent, he was soon reinstated as chief. His second tenure was of short duration – a mere six months – before he was forced to resign again.

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The Gallerie Vivienne, a prestigious address on the Right Bank, was chosen as the seat of Vidocq’s detective agency, the first of its kind

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Soon after his demission, Vidocq founded the Bureau des Renseignements, opening another new chapter in crime history by introducing the concept of hired investigators. This gave birth to the private detective job. Vidocq’s detective agency offered a wide range of services from surveillance, background checks, undercover operations, and forensic analysis to delicate bedroom secrets.

Just as he did with the Sûreté, Vidocq introduced several innovations. He continued to refine his use of disguises and undercover work, employing these tactics to gather information and solve cases discreetly. He continued to emphasize the importance of meticulous record-keeping and documentation.

The Bureau des Renseignements benefited from its founder’s fame. It employed forty agents and saw many clients a day. Alas, Vidocq’s unconventional methods and controversial past did not please the powerful, and police repeatedly attempted to destroy his business. Fraud was mentioned, along with corruption of civil servants, defamation, usury, selling honours, stealing letters, providing substitutes for conscripts hoping to avoid military service, and many other offences. While Vidocq was ultimately acquitted by a public jury, two lengthy and costly trials and the confiscation of his precious files forced him to close.

In 1845, aged 70, and with his fortune lost, Vidocq travelled to London, in the hope of opening up a private detective agency. That project did not materialize due to funds shortage. In reduced circumstances, he wrote letters to the new Sûreté head appealing for a government pension.

When Vidocq died, aged 82, his assets amounted to less than three thousand francs. Even after his death, he managed to create trouble when eleven women claimed to be his sole beneficiaries.

Vidocq continues to live in many reincarnations, both in literature and in movies. 

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Related posts:

The Policeman’s Work Is Never Done

Casque d’Or: The Low-Life Femme Fatale

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The Illuminating Legacy of Louis Braille

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Innovation often stems from adversity and the story of Louis Braille shines brightly in that context. His ingenious system of raised dots revolutionized the way the visually impaired interacted with the written word. As we delve into the life and legacy of this remarkable man, we uncover a testament to human ingenuity and determination.

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Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we [the blind] are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about.” Louis Braille

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Louis Braille’s portrait. Lithograph made from a post-mortem daguerreotype image

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The fourth child of saddle and harness maker Simon-René Braille, Louis was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France. When Louis was three years old, he injured one of his eyes playing with his father’s sharp instruments. An infection attacked both his eyes, and by five, he was completely blind. 

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There were few options for blind people at that time, but Braille’s parents wanted their smart son to be educated. Louis attended a village school. He learned by listening, and despite his blindness, he surpassed his classmates. At ten, he received a scholarship to attend the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.

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Founded by Valentin Haüy (1745-1822) to educate blind students, the National Institute was the first school of its kind. Valentin Haüy was a pioneering figure in the field of education and accessibility for the blind. His interest in their welfare was sparked by a chance encounter with a group of blind musicians playing in the streets of Paris. Struck by their talent and the potential for their education, Haüy was inspired to take action. In 1784, he founded the world’s first school for the blind, known as the National Institute for Blind Youth (Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles), in Paris.

Haüy believed strongly in the importance of education and vocational training for blind individuals, empowering them to lead independent and fulfilling lives. At the institute, he developed innovative teaching methods tailored to the needs of blind students. He introduced tactile teaching materials, such as raised letters and embossed maps. One of Haüy’s most significant contributions was his development of the first systematic method for teaching reading to the blind. He created large embossed letters made of leather or cardboard, which could be arranged to form words and sentences. This method, known as “Haüy’s system,” laid the foundation for future developments in tactile reading, including Braille’s famous six-dot alphabet.

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In Paris, Louis Braille learned both academic and vocational skills. He became an apprentice teacher at the National Institute for Blind Youth when he was 19, and then a teacher when he was 24. Braille was well aware of the limitations of existing methods of reading and writing. They relied heavily on bulky and impractical things like raised print and embossed letters. Fueled by his own thirst for knowledge and desire to empower his peers, Braille set out to create a better solution. His inspiration came from a military cryptography system called night writing, or sonography, developed by Charles Barbier. During his time in the French army, Barbier invented a code that used a variety of combinations of 12 raised dots to represent different sounds. It was devised for soldiers to communicate silently at night. Sonography proved unsuccessful as a military tool; however, Barbier speculated on its potential usefulness for blind individuals.

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Braille was one of many people at the school who found Barbier’s system promising; but he also discovered its shortcomings. Sonography was quite complex and difficult to learn. It was based on sounds rather than letters. Braille spent three years developing a simpler system. It had only six dots — three dots lined up in two columns. He assigned different combinations of dots to different letters and punctuation marks, with a total of 64 symbols.

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No innovation is without its detractors. Despite the groundbreaking nature of his invention, Braille faced considerable resistance from authorities at the institute and beyond. Many educators and administrators were skeptical, clinging to traditional methods out of habit or prejudice. However, Braille’s persistence and belief in the transformative power of his invention never wavered. By 1850, when tuberculosis forced him to retire from teaching, his six-dot method was well on its way to widespread acceptance. Louis Braille died of his illness on January 6, 1852 at the age of 43.

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Louis Braille’s legacy extends far beyond the dots on a page. His invention not only revolutionized literacy and communication for the blind, but also served as a catalyst for social change. Braille’s system empowered blind individuals to access knowledge, pursue education and employment, and participate fully in society in ways previously unimaginable.

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Today, Braille remains a cornerstone of accessibility for the blind and visually impaired. It is taught in schools, printed on signs and labels, and integrated into countless technological devices. Advances such as refreshable Braille displays and Braille-enabled digital platforms have further expanded Braille’s reach and utility in the modern world.

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Related post:

The Martyrdom of Education

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Casque d’Or: The Low-Life Femme Fatale

The romanticized story of Casque d’Or has become part of Parisian folklore. As the trailer shows, the core of this 1952 French film classic is a love triangle between a gigolette and two Apaches. (If the vocabulary is confusing, you are a newcomer to this website. Gigolettes and Apaches, members of the specialized Parisian fauna, are described in separate posts – see below.) 

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The plot of the movie was inspired by an actual criminal case, and the film release was briefly delayed by the widower of the real-life Casque d’Or in a judicial attempt to preserve his late wife’s reputation. While love and mutual sympathy were also present, the actual motive of the gang war was the control of a valuable asset: a profitable prostitute. Loss of income and the gang leaders’ honor played a significant role in the case.
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The true actors of the story

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Who truly was this Casque d’Or, a prostitute two gangs fought over with bloody results? And what does Casque d’Or mean?

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Amelie Ellie portrayed on one of the postcards that sold at profit when she reached fame. She was called Casque d’Or (Golden Helmet) because she sported a chignon of abundant blond hair.

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Amélie Élie was born in 1878 to a tinsmith’s family domiciled in Orleans. She discovered Paris when her parents settled in the 11th arrondissement. It was a working-class neighborhood, where children’s life expectancy was seven times lower than in healthier parts of the city, and where one girl in ten ended up as a prostitute, the highest rate in the capital.

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Amelie “writing” her memoir: My Days and Nights as the Casque d’Or, the Queen of Apaches

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According to her memoir, collected by journalist Henri Frémont, the precocious girl started a relationship at thirteen with a 15-year-old boy nicknamed “the Matelot” (Sailor). Found at the Hôtel des Trois Empereurs, they were separated by force. The young lovers divided their time between reformatories and escapes. The love adventure lasted a year. After several attempts at correcting their daughter’s behavior, Amélie’s parents gave up.

At fourteen, Amélie Élie lost her mother and found herself on the streets. She abandoned her boyfriend, and preferred the more comforting company of a prostitute, who called herself Hélène de Courtille. The little girl and the woman became friends and lovers. Amélie adapted to Paris at night and to the world of thugs and pimps.

In a bistro called La Pomme au Lard, Amélie met her next companion, Bouchon. Tired of Hélène’s jealousy, Amélie let herself fall into his arms, or rather, onto his corner of the sidewalk. In her memoir, Amélie praises the Parisian prostitute to whom she attributes a humanitarian role. The prostitute “provides dreams for men” and “relieves wives and saves families”. She takes in “young clerks and pampers them in her arms” and thus plays an economic role by “promoting public wealth circulation ”.

Bouchon set a daily quota for Amélie. He became demanding and violent. One evening, when Amélie was nineteen, she was beaten by Bouchon and an acolyte. He criticized her for taking time out for herself. She fled the brute and drifted across the city for several days until she met Joseph Pleigneur called Manda, a 22-year-old gang leader. Manda had a way with knives and when Bouchon claimed his rights to Amélie, he was stabbed.

Manda essentially made a living from his manual skills, manufacturing burglary tools. On the surface, he was a pleasant man to be around, but his long absences for business or other women annoyed Amélie. Instead of waiting for him at home, she returned to the streets and forgot her solitude there.

On her forays, Amélie Élie met Dominique François Eugène Lecac, better known as Leca. Manda reappeared, upset. He started hostilities by stabbing Leca. Manda was arrested, but was immediately released because Leca did not recognize him in front of the police. Among thugs, there was strict mutual silence when confronted with law and order.

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Criminal gang members, suspected of talking to the police, were separated from their noses in a surgery without anesthesia. Reporting a gang member was met with death.

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Manda was not done. He attacked the hotel where Leca and Amélie were staying. This time, no one was hurt, but war was declared. A pitched battle took place a week later between the Manda’s band and that of Leca’s. Leca took two revolver bullets in the arm and thigh. He refused medical help for three days before being treated at Tenon hospital, where the police came to question him and before whom he observed the same law of silence.

During his cab ride home from the hospital, the Manda’s gang stabbed Leca three more times. The Manda-Leca affair was making headlines. A journalist from the Petit Journal, Arthur Dupin, was outraged: “These are Apache customs, from the Far West, unworthy of our civilization. For half an hour, in the middle of Paris, in the middle of the afternoon, two rival gangs fought over a girl from the fortifications, a blonde with a high bun, her hair styled like a dog!“

The police questioned Leca again and were met with the same silence. Leca’s father, who had already lost three other sons to violence, was exhausted by these incessant attacks on his son. He revealed Manda’s name, who then fled. After a week’s exile in London, Manda returned to Alfortville, where he was recognized, denounced and picked up by a detachment of around fifty police officers.

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Fame embraced Amélie. Press coverage rushed at full speed. Writers produced songs and plays with all their might. Painters asked Amélie to pose. Postcards with her portrait were produced. The Theatre Les Bouffes du Nord hired her to play herself in a drama.

Leca and Amélie benefited from this and lived off the unexpected income. A short-lived happiness, since the Manda-Leca battle continued. This time, Leca was no longer a victim. Researched for attempted murder, he sought refuge in Belgium, where he was arrested.

Large crowds attended Manda and Leca’s trials, mainly to see the famous Casque d’Or. Manda and Leca were sentenced to forced labor.

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Once a year, a ship took convicts to the penal colony of French Guyana, South America. Manda and Leca were aboard. Neither returned to France.

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 Amélie’s fame quickly faded. She married André Alexandre Nardin, a shoemaker, and raised his four children. In 1925, the journalist Jacques Roberti found her running three brothels called “Les Rosiers”. Responding to his interview, she told him: “I have managed these establishments since their foundation. I have been at Les Rosiers for seven years. Never any scandal, never any noise. These gentlemen from the prefecture will tell you… Please say, if you write an article about me, that I am now a good wife and that I earn my living honestly.”

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Amélie died in April 1933 from an attack of asthma, aged 55. She is buried in the Pasteur cemetery in Bagnolet.

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Related posts:

The Gangs of Paris: Les Apaches

Parisian Prostitutes (2): La Gigolette

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The Gallery of Achievers

This blog has quietly passed the 10-year anniversary. We met many remarkable personalities along the way, and I want to recall some of them in this post. Not all were paragons of virtue, but they were bursting with enthusiasm, perseverance, and unlimited energy. The combination of all three is what leads to high achievement. Here then is a collection of five exceptional go-getters:

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Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III

(1808-1873)

His megalomaniac uncle ravaged Europe, wasted a whole generation of Frenchmen on battlefields, and caused untold suffering to people across the continent, from Spain to Russia. Napoleon III, on the contrary, ruled for eighteen prosperous years with modernization and progress as his goals. For some strange reason, Napoleon the Great found his historical place among the admired personalities instead of being sent to hell along with Hitler. His industrious nephew, on the other hand, is called Napoleon le Petit (Napoleon the Small) by the ungrateful French. And yet! Where are the glorious conquests of Napoleon I now? Gone, long gone. Only the legend remains. The legacy of Napoleon III, far less glorious, but far more useful, is still with us. It’s time to do this remarkable man justice. His life story is just as colorful as his uncle’s. Read The English Courtesan Who Made a French Emperor…

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the man who transformed Paris

(1809-1891)

Better known as Baron Haussmann, this man was chosen by Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive urban renewal of Paris. Never before had a city been transformed so fast and so completely. Never again will we see such a ruthless urban upheaval for greater good. What was possible then, under the imperial absolutism, is no longer doable in a democratic state. Nevertheless, whichever way we look at it today, we cannot deny Baron Haussmann’s genius. Read more…

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Countess of Castiglione, professional beauty, secret agent, and pioneer of photography

(1837-1899)

Virginia Elisabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Maria Oldoïni, the Countess of Castiglione by virtue of her marriage, and the most notorious narcissist of the century, led a busy life. Still in her teens, she became the mistress to a king who then sent her to conquer an emperor. After bedroom diplomacy in her youth, she spent the rest of her life posing for portraits of her gorgeous self. While doing so, she rewrote the rules of photography. Read La Castiglione: The Too Much Countess

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Charles F. Worth, father of the haute-couture and fashion dictator

(1825-1895)

When Charles Worth died, queens and other wealthy women around the world wept. In his egalitarian establishment, Rue de la Paix, royalty met with high-ranking prostitutes and the common language was money. This former printer’s apprentice, ended with 1,200 employees and a huge fortune. How did it all happen? Read it here…

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Sarah Bernhardt, the drama queen who conquered the world

(1844-1923)

The Divine Sarah as she was known worldwide, was a woman of many talents, and even more eccentricities. She possessed the energy of a power plant and an extraordinary courage to fight adversity. When she stood in the US Congress, pleading for America to join the WW1, no one had to ask who was this small, one-legged, old Frenchwoman. If you lived in a civilized country you would have heard her name. She’d made sure of that. Read The Inescapable Sarah Bernhardt here…

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Just published:

ONE FOR ALL

After twenty years apart, the Three Musketeers reunite to right a wrong.

Madelon-la-Belle left Paris twenty years ago to escape her damaged reputation. She abandoned her infant daughter, Louise, in the care of her sister. Now she is back, a wealthy widow, and she plans to be a caring mother. Her idea of caring motherhood is to make Louise a high-born heiress. It only needs a little deception.

This does not sit well with Louise’s father, Captain d’Artagnan of the Royal Musketeers, who finds Madelon’s plan unsound. He wants to see Louise married as soon as possible, before she becomes a slut like her mother, and has already found a good husband for her. Unfortunately, the formidable Madelon does not agree with d’Artagnan’s choice. A battle of wills ensues, involving d’Artagnan’s long-lost friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

A screenplay inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel.

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Professor Charcot and the Amplification of Hysteria

André Brouillet – A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière ( 1887)

Professor Charcot in his French Academy uniform

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Hysteria, although no longer a recognized disease, is still a word that refuses to die. We use it whenever someone’s behavior exceeds the norm. In the 19th century, hysteria was often paired with an exceptional scientist. His name was Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot was born in 1825 and began his medical carrier at La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, studying pathological anatomy. He was utterly fascinated by the many strange and seemingly incurable neurological afflictions he encountered there. At the time, the asylum/hospital of La Salpêtrière was a prison-like institution housing all the female detritus of Paris: all the social outcasts that could cause contamination, either physical or moral. Beggars, prostitutes, and the insane were picked off the street and brought to the asylum by cartloads. Up to ten thousand inmates, caregivers, and guardians populated this city within a city.

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La Salpêtrière

To Charcot, the outcasts represented a treasury of unsolved medical mysteries. He plunged into this unknown territory with the same zeal seen in globe-trotting explorers. In1862, he founded a neurological clinic—the very first of its kind worldwide—where he reigned for the next 31 years. During that time, Charcot made important discoveries and advances in his field of expertise, and his vast merits should not be overshadowed by his exploitation of hysteria.

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Hysteria

Hysteria was one of the oldest and the most mysterious nervous pathologies. The name came from the Ancient Greek word for uterus (hystera). By far, most patients diagnosed with this condition were women. The Ancient believed that the strange behavior of the afflicted was caused by the uterus wandering inside the woman’s body and causing all sorts of problems, such as violent attacks and infirmities without apparent physical cause.

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Before Charcot stepped onto the world stage as the King of Hysteria, this illness was considered to be madness and the place for the mad was the asylum for the insane. Charcot saw the problem in a different light. He diagnosed hysteria as a neurological pathology which could be observed in both sexes. In his opinion, the basis for hysteria was some trauma faced by the patient which left a lesion on the nervous system. He noticed that hysterical attacks would happen several days after a traumatic incident. Further observations lead him to believe that attacks of hysteria occurred in a self-induced hypnotic state, and he decided that the patients should be treated under hypnosis.

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It worked to a certain degree. Under hypnosis, Charcot brought on the hysterical attack, making it visible and treatable. What’s more, he was able to reproduce it on demand in front of an audience of students. Up to this point, hypnosis had been associated with occultism and frowned upon by science. Charcot made it into a scientific and empirical method to study hysteria.

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Hypnosis consists of three stages: lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism. To reach the first stage, the patient has to be induced to the hypnotic state. Charcot had several tricks up his sleeve, from the usual swinging pocket watch, to a blinding light, or the loud vibrations of a giant tuning fork. For more resistant patients, he applied metals, magnets, or static electricity.

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Inducing hypnosis with light

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Induction by sound (left) State of lethargy (right)

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If the induction is successful, lethargy sets in. In this state, the patient collapses and has to be supported by assistants to prevent a fall. Lethargy is characterized by complete relaxation, inattention, and amnesia. Charcot would use this stage to test the muscle contractions. Most hysterical attacks were accompanied by strong contractions he would call neuromuscular hyperexcitability. While the patient was unconscious and totally relaxed, Charcot could ascertain whether the case was a legitimate neurological disease or not.

Catalepsy

The next stage is named catalepsy. During this stage the patient is under the hypnotist’s control, obeying his commands, and can communicate to a degree. Free of conscious thought, the person cannot dissimulate and answers with all sincerity. Her limbs can be manipulated by the hypnotist’s commands and the patient is able to stiffen and remain in uncomfortable positions without a sign of fatigue. Many hysterics claimed numbness in certain parts of the body. In their conscious state, they could be poked with sharp objects without feeling pain. Under hypnosis, the numbness was gone and Charcot could demonstrate that there was no physical damage to the body.
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The third stage, somnambulism, opened more communication between patient and doctor. Charcot believed that it represented the self-induced state of hysteria during which the attacks occurred. The patient was more conscious at this point and able to accept healing suggestions.
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All this turned Charcot’s lectures into exciting stage productions with light and sound effects, with half-clad women fainting or screaming, thrashing about or slavishly obeying orders, and stiffening in unnatural positions in front of a fascinated masculine audience. As Charcot’s fame grew in medical circles, his neurological clinic saw students from far abroad. By that time he had his stars: Blanche, Louise, Augustine, and others/ They were young, pretty, and skillfully playing the part.

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Charcot and his patient: The show could not go on

Toward the end of his life, Charcot admitted that hypnosis was not really used to treat the symptoms of hysteria. He could alleviate them, but in most cases it was only temporary relief. He used hypnosis to exhibit hysterical symptoms: it was a teaching tool, not a cure. After Charcot’s death, in 1893, hypnosis would continue, but in different forms. It was abandoned as a medical procedure, mainly because very few people had the ability to induce hypnosis the way Charcot could. Sigmund Freud, Charcot’s pupil, and great admirer failed at the task and developed psychoanalysis instead. Hypnosis returned to the occult and stage entertainment.

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Modern medicine buried hysteria in the 1980s when it was eradicated from the official medical diagnoses list. It’s been replaced by the vague label of dissociative disorders.

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Next: The Madwomen’s Ball at La Salpêtrière. (When the Parisian high-society went to the madhouse for entertainment.)

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Related posts:

Murder Most Horrible: The Bloody Trunk Case (Hypnosis and crime)

Louise and Jeanne: The Two Antipodes of Moulin Rouge (Child abuse and mental illness)

Poor and Helpless in 19th Century Paris

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Haussmann: The Man Who Transformed Paris

Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891)

In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: “Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.”

Paris before Haussman

Indeed, urban reform was long overdue in Paris. Neglected by the kings, who preferred Versailles, the city was overcrowded and dirty. In the narrow crooked streets, diseases spread quickly as did social unrest. Napoleon I made a few attempts at beautifying and sanitizing the capital but, being too busy with disseminating misery across the European continent, he never really got down to it on a large scale. After the Waterloo defeat, plans for a better capital were shelved and it took his nephew, Napoleon III, to begin the greatest urban project ever achieved. Napoleon III might not have been the greatest warrior–the French still prefer his (in)glorious uncle–but he was a mover and shaker of the practical sort. Paris still benefits from his industry while Napoleon I’s conquests are long gone.

Having spent part of his exile in London (see The English Courtesan who Made a French Emperor published here) he brought to France the idea of English urbanism. He found a man with a similar vision and with boundless energy in Haussmann, the Prefect of the Seine. Together, in seventeen years, they made Paris what it is today.

Piercing a new boulevard during the Haussmannian transformation

Announcing his motto Paris embellished, Paris enlarged, Paris cleaned up, Haussmann didn’t take prisoners in his war against the old. All that was ugly, dirty and disease-ridden became history. He pierced wide avenues and established rules for standardized buildings. He created a square in each district and envisioned dozens of parks, gardens, and woods. He built new churches, bridges, theaters, and railway stations. He enlarged the city from 12 to 20 arrondissements. Underground, Paris got a sophisticated water and sewage system that – to this day – is one of the tourist’s sights of the city.

Paris after Haussmann (Place de l’Etoile)

The titanic work has always been controversial in view of the methods used to achieve this incredible result. To modify Paris in this way, Haussmann did not hesitate to destroy nearly 18,000 houses that hampered his vision of straight and wide boulevards. He excluded the working classes for whom the new dwellings were unaffordable. Haussmann was finally deposed in 1870, a few months before the fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire.

Notre Dame in 1852

Notre Dame after Haussmann’s intervention

Thanks to Napoleon III’s vision and Haussmann’s ruthlessness, Paris is the city we know today. Such a colossal project cannot be achieved without a totalitarian approach and would be impossible to realize in a democracy with its many rules and laws.

The Avenue de l’Opéra, one of the new boulevards created by Napoleon III and Haussmann. The new buildings on the boulevards were required to be all of the same height and same basic façade design, and all faced with pale-ochre stone, giving the city a unified look.

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The Eiffel Tower Story

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The Inescapable Sarah Bernhardt

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La Castiglione: The Too Much Countess

 

“I equal the highest-born ladies with my birth, I surpass them with my beauty, and I judge them with my mind.” Thus spoke Virginia Oldoïni, Countess of Castiglione, who was convinced that she was the most beautiful woman since God had created Earth. With this attitude, she managed to lead not one, but several lives. Conspirator, a diplomat in petticoats, an emancipated courtesan, a pioneer of photography,  an art director, and a producer, La Castiglione was, above all, a professional beauty. Aged only 18, married for a year, and mother of a male child, Virginia—Nicchia to family and friends—already managed to add several lovers to her stable of admirers in her native land. One of them was Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia, who dreamt of a united Italy.

 

 

A part of Northern Italy (in yellow) was then a territory of the Austrian Empire, and the Austrians were unwilling to part with it. An armed conflict could not be won without strong allies. One of the most desirable allies for this project was Napoleon III. Knowing the French monarch’s penchant for women, Victor Emmanuel and his minister Cavour (Virginia’s cousin) thought of the Pearl of Italy as Virginia was then known. They charged her with the mission of convincing the French emperor to lend a helping hand for the unification of the country. Impressed with the importance of the plot, she accepted eagerly. The king and his minister profited from their visit to France by spreading the rumor of her beauty so that when she finally appeared in Paris, in January 1856, she was the object of widespread curiosity at Court.

A costume ball saw La Castiglione in her famous Queen of Hearts outfit. She wears it without a corset and the transparent gauze reveals her bosom. Empress Eugenie remarked with open sarcasm that the heart was seated too low

The diplomatic task was not as easy as Virginia expected. Napoleon III, usually easily seducible, resisted for four agonizing months.  During that time, the countess spent heavily on extravagant outfits with very low-cut necklines. One wit observed that the deeper Virginia’s décolletages became, the less room there remained in men’s pants. She began to specialize in spectacular entrances, usually toward the end of social gatherings. On one such occasion, she entered the ballroom as Napoleon III was leaving. “You are too late,” he said to her. “No, Sire. You are leaving too early,” she retorted.

This marked a break in her bad luck. The emperor, who had considered her a dull doll, took notice. Her appearance at a masked ball as a Decadent Roman Woman finally brought result. With her abundant hair loose and her skirt split to show a nude leg, a ring on each toe, she caused a sensation. A crowd gathered around her to gape; some women even climbed onto the furniture to get a better view. Within a week, she became the emperor’s mistress, and her letters describing successful pillow talk reached the Sardinian embassy to be dispatched by diplomatic mail.

While Virginia enjoyed the status of the emperor’s mistress, her impoverished husband returned home to sell the family silver. His wife’s extravagance had ruined him and the pair separated for good. Virginia made no friends at the French court either. She was heartily hated by all for her stupid arrogance. They called her the Too Much Countess and when she kept bragging about her lover’s gifts, the emperor cut her off without mercy. Napoleon III would not tolerate indiscreet mistresses.

The Too Much Countess

After two years basking in the imperial favor, La Castiglione returned home to Turin, defeated, and soon sank into boredom. She brightened up when Victor Emmanuel granted her a pension for her diplomatic merits. She began to travel to the courts of Europe as her scandalous reputation led to invitations from people who wanted to satisfy their curiosity. During her stay at the court of the King of Prussia, she made the acquaintance of Chancellor Bismarck. Her second chance at diplomacy came much later (in 1871) when Napoleon III, ill, defeated, and with his empire in ruins, asked her to intervene with Bismarck to cancel his plan for the Prussian army to occupy Paris. Paris was spared the Prussian occupation.

During her first stay in Paris, Virginia posed for many photographs. She returned in 1861 with her son Giorgio to have more pictures taken. This was a hobby, and a passion, that was to last for the next forty years. She spent her fortune on elaborate costumes and props

In 1863, she was invited to a costume ball in the imperial palace. She appeared disguised as Queen of Etruria. Virginia rushed the next day to the photography studio to immortalize her outfit. Convinced of her success and her return to the upper echelons, she took lascivious and suave poses, miming innocence. However, the costume was judged scandalous. The press was unleashed and she was accused of appearing naked at the party.

Her husband, still in Italy, threatened to take Giorgio back. She responded with a photograph called “The Vengeance”. In this picture, she is dressed in the same costume of Queen of Etruria but with a cape covering her shoulders. Another addition is a dagger she holds in her hand. After this, her husband ceased to protest.

The volcanic countess continued to produce dramatic photographs of herself for many years. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a collection of some 400 of them. Virginia appears as a tragic victim,  a pursued virgin, a nun, an Odalisque, and many other incarnations. She was the first to invent dramatic poses. By choosing the costumes, the angles, and the shots, she wrote a new chapter in the history of photography.

 

La Castiglione in 1875. As the years passed, the mirror returned a less satisfactory image.

Women, who build their life on their beauty alone, suffer when old age hits.  A few of the lucky ones accept their fate and do not fight the wrinkles. Others hang on, using artificial means to preserve beauty until they become the caricatures of their former selves. Some go into hiding.  No longer able to admire herself in the mirror, Virginia banned all mirrors from her house. With her husband and son deceased, she ended her days alone, immured in a modest Parisian apartment with the walls covered in black and the shutters closed. She died in 1899, aged 62. The Italian embassy immediately dispatched an agent to burn all possibly compromising correspondence.

Related posts:

The English Courtesan Who Made a French Emperor

Disdéri’s Photo Studio: Kings, Queens, and Pretty Legs

Traveler’s Bonus: Top 10 Free Museums in Paris

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The Gallery of Achievers: The Inescapable Sarah Bernhardt

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Anyone who was literate during what the French call the Belle Epoque (1871-1914), would have stumbled upon the name Sarah Bernhardt, a French stage actress. People around the world paid good money to watch Sarah shock them with her latest extravagance or sell them a product of some sort or die in French. Never mind that they didn’t understand a word she was saying for they could announce with pride they’d seen the Greatest Tragedy Queen Ever.

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Just to show you the international weight of Sarah’s personality, here she is as an old lady in the US, urging America to enter World War One

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What The Divine Sarah meant to her own country is demonstrated in this video which shows that the French Republic staged a funeral worthy of a queen:

 

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A sight of Sarah Bernhardt in all her glory was a memorable event:

“…Into the gallery one day, as our obscure party moved about, there entered a Personage; a charming figure, with a following of worshipers. The lady was dressed in black lace, strangely fashioned. Though she was small, her step and carriage, slow and gracious as she moved and spoke, were queenly. She was a dazzling blonde, somewhat restored and not beautiful, as one saw her nearer. The striking point in her costume — and there was but one — was that the upper part of her corsage, or yoke, was made entirely of fresh violets, bringing their perfume with them. Everyone, artists and their friends, ceased their examination of the pictures, and openly gazed, murmuring their pride and joy in their idol, Sarah Bernhardt…”

Excerpt from the memoir of the American portrait painter Cecilia Beaux

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Quand Même, the motto of Sarah Bernhardt, can be translated in different ways but, in this case, it means Nevertheless. There may be difficulties on the path of life. Nevertheless, they will be overcome.

 

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One of the reasons for Sarah’s early success was that she was different in appearance.  While the beauty canon favored women of substance, she was thin. Where fashion dictated sculptured hairdos, Sarah’s hair was an uncontrollable puff of frizziness. Her Jewish nose was a little too prominent and her complexion a little too white. These differences, instead of being a burden, made her stand apart and be noticed. Her thespian talent, along with her flamboyant personality, both on and off the stage, did the rest. In fact, there was no difference between the theater and the off-stage, for wherever she was, Sarah never ceased to perform.

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Seduction was  Sarah’s main weapon on the road to fame. Seduction of the theatre critics, seduction of the theatre-goers, seduction of the press. And if the press reacted in a contrary way, that was good too. She was the first one to understand that bad publicity was better than none.

 

After having opened her own theatre, Sarah hired a Czech-born artist Alphonse Mucha for advertising. His posters are successfully sold to this day.

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A true Renaissance woman, Sarah had a second source of income: painting and sculpture. She was an excellent sculptor, to the point of making Rodin jealous. “She has the audacity to show this filth,” he was heard saying at one of her shows.  Really, Monsieur Rodin? Let’s scroll down to see what the venerable Master considered filthy:

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The Death of Ophelia by Sarah Bernhardt

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Like any queen she was, Sarah had her court. Every change of place meant the shifting of a great many objects, animals, and people. In her Paris apartment, she kept a small zoo, which accompanied her on her travels. The live alligator Ali Baba and a coffin featured among her luggage.

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Sarah in her coffin. A publicity stunt, no doubt about it, the photo made the rounds of the world. Sarah kept the coffin in her bedroom and claimed she slept in it.  She died some forty years after this picture was taken.

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Sarah was a woman of prodigious energy. As the manager of a theatre of which she was the principal attraction, she had little time for rest. She would see the author of a new play at two in the morning because that was the only time she could find in her busy schedule. Trips abroad meant careful planning and an exercise in logistics. While everything was done to make travel as comfortable as possible—a special train containing a luxury wagon for Sarah alone was the standard—the conditions in the places where she performed were often primitive. She would play in circus tents, suffer cold in unheated dressing rooms, go hungry when food was not readily available, and she would forge ahead quand même. Her support staff might suffer from exhaustion but Sarah would take it all in a stride with one lung, one kidney and, toward the end of her life, with only one leg.

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Sarah during one of her overseas travels

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In the American West, cowboys greet Sarah (on the right, in the dark coat) on her arrival. Later, during the performance, they would manifest their enthusiasm with aiming shots at the ceiling

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Sarah lived long enough to appear in the early movies. She hated to see herself on the screen: stripped of her voice, of her three-dimensional personality, and her interaction with the public, she was nothing more than an unappetizing shadow of her true self. By that time, she already suffered from excruciating pain in her leg. Furniture had to be strategically placed on the scene so that there would always be a point of support where she could take the weight off her aching leg. As her agony grew beyond endurance, she opted for amputation.

 

To be without a leg at the age of seventy did not slow Sarah down. She purchased a portable chair and off she went to war. Since the Franco-Prussian War, forty years earlier, she harbored a hatred for the Germans. The French troops needed to be cheered up with a good tragedy play.

Sarah died of uremia after an agony that was partly caught on film. She left behind an unfinished movie she was making during her last illness. Ever the hard worker, she took only three days off work to die. She was seventy-eight.

I purposefully left out Sarah’s rich private life which would need a separate post. To understand her drive for success, it is necessary to say that she was the neglected child of a Dutch courtesan. Her father could have been any of the rich and famous men her mother had serviced, among them Rossini, Dumas the Elder, or the Emperor’s half-brother, the Duke de Morny. It was to the latter that the mother turned for advice concerning the future of her awkward teenage offspring. It was he who suggested the stage.  And it was there, on the stage, that Sarah found the love, the adoration, she missed in her childhood.

In my opinion, the truly successful women of that age had this in common: they were mostly illegitimate, without the father’s authority figure. They had a wide range of freedom and their talent was not stifled by the bourgeois set of morals.

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And now some free advertising: The model in the picture Sarah is painting is the protagonist of the novel Fame and Infamy by the author of this post. More on the sidebar.

 

 

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Related post:

The Franco-Prussian War is described in The Bloodbath of the Paris Commune

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The Last Duel in Paris

 

 

In A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880, Mark Twain mocked the French practice of dueling:

“Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more—unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and droughts cannot intrude—he will eventually endanger his life.”

Paul de Cassagnac, who fought twenty-two duels, will be mentioned again in this post and in the embedded video you will be able to see his son follow the family’s dueling tradition.

Whatever Mark Twain might have said with his customary sarcasm, the duel was no laughing matter. In the Middle Ages, it was a legitimate procedure to settle a personal dispute. Yet as time went by, an excess of testosterone combined with personal pride made it the prime cause of death among young nobles, who felt obliged to fight for the slightest personal offense. At the rate of 500 deaths a year, France was in danger of losing all of her nobility to trivial disputes. Duels were outlawed by a royal edict. However, the social pressure remained strong and the image of a hero executing a mortal dance to avenge an insult had an irresistible pull. From public places, the duels merely moved to private enclosures or to forest clearings.

After the 1789 revolution, all the royal edicts were abolished including those banning duels. All citizens were allowed to carry arms which led to the democratization of the duel: now men of all classes could kill each other just as stupidly as the nobles had done for centuries. Fortunately, most of the duels fought in this period ended with the first appearance of blood. A mere scratch was often good enough to satisfy the offended honor. Even so, 200 deaths in duels were registered between 1826 and 1834.

Although in the 19^th century a duel kill could be punished as a murder, the authorities were generally indulgent if the result was a mere injury. For instance, in 1868, Paul de Cassagnac was condemned by the Sixth Chamber of the Criminal Court of the Seine to six days in jail and 200 francs fine after his victorious duel with his cousin Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray. The four witnesses were sentenced to 50 francs fine each. The victim was let off to lick his wounds. (Lissagaray was put to bed for a month. Barely recovered, he sent his witnesses to Cassagnac to continue the duel. Cassagnac replied: “No, sir. I left you on the ground riddled like a sieve. I could consent to be your opponent, it disgusts me to become your butcher.”)

Now we have heard enough about Paul de Cassagnac to be curious. Who was this duelist extraordinaire? A French Casanova?  Most would think that duels were fought mainly over a lady’s honor, especially in France, but that would be a mistake. Journalists and politicians were called out more often than wife’s lovers. De Cassagnac, both a journalist and a deputy at the National Assembly, made numerous enemies with his radical views. His son, Paul de Cassagnac Jr., inherited both his father’s dangerous occupations and his fiery temperament. You can see him fighting in the following video clip (second duel).

 

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the duel was a thing of the past in all countries except in France, where it was still going strong until the killing fields of WWI took away the lives of an entire generation. There were a few duels afterward, all duly caught on film, but one would believe that even the French would be entirely done with dueling after the horrors of WWII. Right?

The last duel in Paris (Ribière left, Deferre in the center)

Wrong! The last duel in Paris was fought in  April 1967. Again, the point of contention was not an affair of the heart fought over by two young bucks. The participants were two staid politicians in the French hotbed of disagreement: the National Assembly. Deferre, the mayor of Marseille, was constantly interrupted in his speech by the deputy of Val d’Oise, René Ribière. “Mais taissez-vous donc, abruti!” (Shut up, you half-wit!), shouted Deferre. Refusing to apologize for the insult, he was challenged to a duel. President Charles de Gaulle sent emissaries to cancel the duel, but without success. The participants avoided the police and organized a secret encounter on a private property. The duel lasted four minutes and the referee put an end to it after the second scratch.  Just as well because Ribière, the loser, was getting married the next day. And so, after all the politics, we can finally mention l’amour.

 

Related post:

Events in the Street: Female duel with sand-filled socks

 

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The Goncourts: Gossip Inc.

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, photo by Nadar

The brothers Goncourt were to 19^th century Paris what Samuel Pepys was to 17^th century London. Inseparable since birth, never married, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt went through life as a single mind until the premature death of Jules in 1870. They co-authored six novels, but are remembered chiefly for their diaries beginning in 1851. At home in the literary circles as well as in high society, the brothers gathered local gossip and their biting comments are a delight to read. The entries are remarkably sincere and colourful, sparing no one including the authors. The journals end in 1896, the year of Edmond’s death at the age of 74. By the terms of his will, he endowed the Goncourt Academy which has been awarding yearly the prestigious Prix Goncourt for the best novel.

Quotes

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. Jules de Goncourt

Man is a mind betrayed, not served, by his organs. Edmond de Goncourt

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Posts quoting The Goncourt Journals:

How to Succeed in Paris

Dinner with Courtesans

Degrees of Prostitution

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