The Book of the Courtesans, Part 2: Divine Aillot & Maison Boissier
images courtesy of Maison Boissier. Photo collage by me.
In the archives of the Paris police, there is a book. It contains the criminal files of a group of women called Les Insoumis— “the rebels” Some were actresses, some dancers, some world-famous comediennes. Others were playwrights or journalists who concerned themselves with a dangerous new concept: feminism. All of them, the vice squad decided, were “courtesans,” and must therefore be surveilled.
These are their stories.
Two: Divine Aillot
The Pastry Chef, by Célestin Deshayes, courtesy of Musée Carnavalet
THE FILE
November 16, 1871
Aillot, “Divine”
Mademoiselle Aillot was a very attractive young girl. She was a brunette, with beautiful eyes, a good education, and a “perfect” upbringing. She answered to the name Divine, but the police assumed this was a pseudonym. They didn’t know her age, either. For eighteen months she had worked at a candy shop called Maison Boissier. It was there, they said, that the pimp had found her.
This pimp put her into contact with Monsieur Odier, and she had since spent several months abroad in London in the company of a wealthy foreigner. She in turn “provided women” to one Monsieur Hirsch, a banker on the rue du Helder, setting him up with Anna Cowaleska, the sister-in-law of Madame Ferraris.
In an addendum to the file, written some two years later, in 1873, they note that Mademoiselle Aillot was currently living at No. 3 rue Clapeyron, and that her latest lover was “Monsieur de Ristang, the Ambassador in Florence.” She had been seen “going on dates,” and was “very clever when it came to intrigue.”
There was no attending photo.
THE RESEARCH
Parisian sweet shop, early 1800s, courtesy of Musée Carnavalet
“Sin became a luxury, a flower set in her hair, a diamond fastened on her brow.”
When the young Divine looked up from her candy counter at Maison Boissier as Adrien-Hippolyte Odier walked through the door, she saw a man in his late forties, very fat, with a snub nose, gray hair, and an enormous gray beard. A wealthy property owner, and well-dressed, there was nevertheless something of the Dionysian satyr about him, and he spoke with a voice as self-assured as a president. In 1873 he would be arrested along with six others as part of the notorious rue de Suresnes pimping case, accused of inciting minors to debauchery. (In cases like this, “minors” meant individuals under the age of 21.) Regardless of the age of the women or girls involved, men were not permitted to take part in the sale of sex. Odier was later acquitted.
Maison Boissier was a respectable establishment. Founded by Bélissaire Boissier in 1827, the house was famous as the inventor of the marron glacé, the candied chestnut, one of the most beloved confectionery delicacies of 19th century Paris. Boissier opened his first grand shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, in the 9th arrondissement, near the Paris opera house. Fine ladies and gentlemen were known to purchase packets of sweets there before attending an opera performance. As his success grew, he opened other locations throughout the city, and his candies were later mentioned in the works of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Émile Zola, and the Goncourt brothers. In 1857 he retired and sold the business to Cyrille Robineau, who would continue the house’s prestigious reputation for the next 35 years. The brand went dormant sometime in the twentieth century, but was resurrected in 2000, with care taken to reproduce as much as possible, or at least pay homage to, the house’s historic recipes and packaging.
Maison Boissier, advertising in the Gazette Alimentaire of 7 January 1858 (source)
More than just the candy for sale
Interior of the Maison Seugnot candy store at 28 rue du Bac, Paris, c. 1879. Illustration by unknown artist. Musée Carnavalet.
A Sweet Shop in Paris on New Years Eve, by Alfred Andre Geniole, c. 1850s (source)
In 19th century Paris, candy wasn’t just for children. There was a craze for hard candies specifically among the bourgeoisie, with favorite flavors of mint, rose, violet, jasmine, and pineapple. An illustration from the 1850s showed an upscale candy shop at night on New Year’s Eve, lanterns blazing, with guards outside and a line of well-dressed men and women out the door. It became customary to bring hard candies to performances, perhaps to stifle coughs. The bankers of the stock exchange neighborhood of the 9th arrondissement were so enamored of the candies that they were nicknamed “the pastille suckers.”
Naturally, wherever one found bankers, there were also courtesans. The fine shops staffed by pretty young girls around the stock exchange sometimes doubled as display cases for a different sort of commodity: the girls themselves. If Divine Aillot was talent-scouted by a pimp while working at Maison Boissier, he may have recognized her potential on his own, or else was contacted by a customer who wanted more from Divine than rose pastilles and hoped for an introduction.
It is difficult to tell the story of a woman’s life whose face is not revealed, and whose real first name remains a mystery. If she was well educated and perfectly brought-up, as the police said, she might have been the daughter of a successful merchant or artisan, later obliged to seek employment after her father’s death or a reversal of family fortune. Even without facing hardship however, it was common for young ladies of the educated working classes in Paris to take up professional employment of some kind in their teen years. Based on similar women’s stories from the same time period, she may have been fifteen or sixteen when she started doling out candies, sixteen or seventeen when the pimps got their hands on her, and twenty or twenty-one by the time she landed in the books of the vice squad. That would make her birth year sometime around 1850 or 1851. There were not many Aillots in Paris at that time. There was a cabinetmaker working in Belleville, and a gold jeweler near the Hotel de Ville who disappeared from the records in the mid 1860s. Beginning in 1856, the Widow Aillot, wife of the recently deceased J.-P. (Jean-Pierre? Jean-Paul?), inherited her late husband’s bookshop and small press on the rue Saint-André-des-Arts, near the royal mint. I have no proof that these latter Aillots were Divine’s family, but it could explain both her high level of literacy for a girl of the working classes, as well as the need to seek more lucrative employment. (The Widow Aillot continued to run this bookshop for decades, suggesting that she was not elderly at the time of her husband’s death.)
Interestingly, Divine was not just accused of being a courtesan, but of acting as a procuress. Specifically, she’s called out for supplying women to the banker Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a dashing German Jewish financier and philanthropist with a trim physique, a receding hairline, and an impressive dark walrus mustache with flamboyantly waxed tips. When he met Divine Aillot, he was in his late 30s or early 40s. Hirsch would later be known for setting up charitable foundations to promote Jewish education and to improve the lot of oppressed Jewish Europeans, as well as being a social butterfly in the most rarified of circles. An outspoken critic of the Russian Imperial family’s treatment of Russian Jews, he founded the Jewish Colonization Association, which sponsored large-scale Jewish immigration to Argentina.The newspaper Le Gaulois described him as having arrived in Paris from Central Europe “like some elegant Hungarian horseman,” with a nimble grace that won him the friendship of princes and grand dukes. Others accused him of crassness, particularly regarding the fairer sex. He built a palace-like residence on the Avenue Gabrial, facing the gardens of the Champs-Elysée, and repaired to country chateaus when it suited him. One of his last wishes was to cancel the debts of his friend the Prince of Wales.
Portrait of Baron Maurice de Hirsch c. 1890 (source)
Left: Portrait of Henri Kowalski, by Erwin Hanfstaengl, Musée Carnavalet. Right: Portrait of Marie-Louise Ferraris, by Erwin Hanfstaengl, Musée Carnavalet.
The specific woman whom Divine was accused of procuring for Baron de Hirsch was Anna Cowaleska, the sister-in-law of the actress Marie Ferraris. Despite having her own entry in the Book of the Courtesans, perhaps due to the lovers she had in her youth, Ferraris was married to the Polish pianist and composer Henri Cowaleska, who also went by the name Kowalski. The couple had traveled with Anna to America in the hopes of finding her a rich foreign husband. When those efforts failed, it seems, other options were explored. (More on this couple and Henri’s younger sister will be explored in a later post.)
Advertisement for Maison Boissier c. 1922 (source)
Divine Aillot seems to have been a true, if minor, demimondaine, appearing on the arms of important gentlemen and at the debauched secret parties of the rich and famous, setting her friends up with the men she met there. She may have continued to work at Maison Boissier, and she may not. Her 1873 address on the rue de Clapeyron was in a nice building near the Saint-Lazare train station. As far as I can tell she was not an actress or other kind of public performer, which may be why no photos turned up under her name—if that was indeed her real name at all. I could find no Florentine Ambassador Ristang either, but a C. de Rostang appears in the city directory as a high-ranking military officer. I likewise had little luck in searching for her in genealogical databases and the municipal archives, despite Aillot being a relatively uncommon name.
I did however find one entry that was of note. In 1884, when candy seller “Divine” would have been in her early 30s, a woman named Marie Anne Aillot gave birth in Paris to a baby girl called Emilie. No father was named on the declaration of birth, meaning she was conceived out of wedlock. On the 21st of October, 1899, the girl Emilie died at the age of fifteen. The death certificate noted that her mother had predeceased her. What caught my eye about this record, other than the name Aillot and the plausible dates, was the occupation of one of the witnesses: Louis Aubry, age 71, was a chocolatier.
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REFERENCES & LINKS:
Archives de la préfecture de police, BB1
Annuaire Général du Commerce, Firmin-Didot frères, 1850, p. 82 (link)
Almanach-Bottin du Commerce de Paris, Sebatien Botin, 1856, p. 66 (link)
Annuaire-Almanach du Commerce, Firmin Didot et Bottin réunis, 1858, pp. 682, 1148 (link)
Annuaire-Almanach du Commerce, Firmin Didot et Bottin réunis, 1860, p. 82 (link)
Annuaire-Almanach du Commerce, Firmin Didot et Bottin réunis, 1863, p. 1408 (link)
“Affaire des Bonbons Empoisonnés,” Le Petit Journal, 10 February 1869 (link)
“Nouvelles Diverse,” L’Univers, 18 February 1871 (link)
“Tribunaux: Affaire de la rue de Suresnes; excitations de mineurs à la débauche—sept accusés,” La Presse, 21 February 1873 (link)
“Gazette du Palais: Affaire de la rue de Suresnes, sept prévenus,” Le XIXe Siecle Journal Quotidien, 22 February 1873 (link)
“Les Petits Secrèts de la rue de Suresnes,” Le Petit Journal, 24 February 1873 (link)
Maison Boissier advertisement, Gazette Alimentaire, 7 January 1856 (link)
“Nécrologie,” Le Journal des Confiseurs-Pâtissiers, 1 May 1893 (link)
“Nécrologie,” Le Journal des Confiseurs-Pâtissiers, 1 December 1893 (link)
“Rapport sur la Confiserie,” Le Journal des Confiseurs-Glaciers, April 1901 (link)
Annuaire-Almanach du Commerce, Didot-Bottin, 1877, p. 103 (link)
Le Livre des Courtisanes: Archives Secrètes de la Police des Moeurs, by Gabrielle Houbre, pp. 48, 508, 522, 546
“L’Histoire des Barons de Hirsch, 6ème Partie: Maurice de Hirsch, Cosmopolite Mondain,” Noblesse et Royautés, 9 January 2017 (link)