Mademoiselle Read online

  Not just anyone could achieve cocotte status, of course. One had to be blessed with just the right combination of looks, charm, patience, guts, and savvy. But for those who managed to join the ranks, being a cocotte was not always such a bad career. Although dependent financially on lovers, if these “irregular” women were clever (and lucky) they might save enough to retire comfortably once they’d aged beyond their category. (In some cases, the former lovers actually paid out a kind of pension, in clear acknowledgment of the businesslike nature of these dealings.) Such success on the margins of society, though, was a rare and difficult accomplishment, and a cocotte virtually never wound up marrying a fils de famille—a society man. Life was a minefield.

  While Gabrielle, Adrienne, and, for a time, Antoinette (who followed her sister to Moulins) survived their unmoored youth, Julia Chanel stepped on a mine. Like her mother before her, she succumbed to the charms of a local peddler and became pregnant. She had left the convent and run off with her young man, with whom she had a son—out of wedlock—on November 29, 1904. Julia christened the boy André Palasse, apparently after a certain Antoine Palasse of Moulins who, while not the child’s father, agreed to accept paternity in exchange for payment. She and her lover moved in together, but their domestic arrangement collapsed. Julia then moved on to another disastrous love affair, this time with a young officer. When that officer also abandoned her, a desperate Julia added her name to the long list of Chanel family tragedies, taking her own life in 1910, at age twenty-eight.

  Gabrielle later told people that Julia had killed herself by rolling repeatedly in deep snow until she froze to death—a story undermined by the fact that Julia died in the month of May. Perhaps Chanel had reason to obscure the details of her sister’s death, for she might have felt some personal responsibility for it. On a few occasions, Gabrielle hinted that Julia’s officer boyfriend had been so attractive that she had also fallen in love with him, raising the possibility that Gabrielle might have seduced her sister’s lover, driving the bereft Julia to take her own life. While we can never know for sure, such behavior would not have been out of character for Gabrielle. Having been so forlorn as a child, she came to regard love as a zero-sum game, in which one woman’s gain was always another’s loss. Any other woman could be a potential rival, including members of her own family. This pattern would repeat itself often in Chanel’s later life, which featured quite a track record of liaisons with married men—some of whom she seduced away from women close to her, including friends and clients.

  Upon Julia’s death, care of her orphaned six-year-old son, André, fell first to a local parish priest, who took the boy in for a time. But soon, his aunt Coco stepped in, unofficially adopting André and treating him as her own son. Chanel may simply have acted out of love and compassion for her nephew, or she may have devoted herself to him to assuage her guilt.

  Biographers and journalists have often floated a third explanation for Chanel’s lifelong attachment to André: that he was not her nephew, but her son. Rumors to this effect persisted for years, suggesting that Gabrielle, not Julia, had borne a child while in Moulins and then quickly hushed it up by arranging for the pliable Julia to care for the boy. No firm evidence will likely ever be found to corroborate this story. Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie—André’s daughter—says she never asked her aunt Coco about the past, knowing it would upset her. “She had a very motherly feeling for my father” is all Labrunie permits herself to say on the subject. If André really was Chanel’s biological son, she never admitted it to a soul—not even the many friends who later suspected this and repeatedly asked her about it. But whether he was her son or nephew, something about André allowed Chanel to welcome him (and later his children) into her life, even while she disavowed nearly every other member of her family.

  If, in fact, André was Coco’s son, there is one candidate most likely to have been his father: the first young man with whom Chanel permitted herself a relationship, one of her many admirers from La Rotonde, Etienne Balsan (1878–1953). A kind but unprepossessing man, not especially handsome or tall, he hailed from the haute bourgeoisie rather than the aristocracy. Balsan was also jovial, easygoing, and very rich. He made for an ideal, even comforting, entrée into a new world. Coco was about to cross the border between her humble youth and an extremely upper-class adulthood. Balsan was her passport.

  The Balsan family, from the central France region of Châteauroux, was known for both its immense textile fortune and its generations of expert equestrians. When Gabrielle met Etienne, sometime around 1904, he had recently left the army and, having lost both of his parents, was now free to enjoy his vast inheritance as he wished. Still in his twenties, independently wealthy, and seemingly unfettered by family obligations, Balsan lived a life of many pleasures—chief among which were women, polo, and horses. Yet, despite his bachelor lifestyle, Balsan was actually a married man and father to a young daughter when he met Coco. According to his granddaughter Quitterie Tempé, when Balsan was in his early twenties, he married Suzanne Bouchaud—who was pregnant at the time of their wedding with the couple’s only child, daughter Claude. Suzanne and Etienne had almost immediately thereafter settled into amicably separate lives, with Madame Balsan “turn[ing] a blind eye to his mistresses,” according to Tempé.

  To provide an appropriate backdrop to his high living, Etienne was about to purchase his own country estate—the Château de Royallieu, in the town of Compiègne, originally a fourteenth-century monastery that had served as the royal residence of King Philip IV.

  At the time Coco met Balsan, her burgeoning fame as a singer in Moulins seemed to promise a better future for her. As precarious as her situation still was, she did have a few advantages—most important, her aunt Adrienne. Offering moral support and steadfast companionship, the lovely Adrienne served as Coco’s “wingwoman.” It is possible that the two girls took several train trips to Paris during this time. Chanel dropped hints of such excursions in conversations with Marcel Haedrich, but offered no details of what they did or whom they saw in the capital city. We can only speculate about how two lovely, unsupervised, poor young girls found the money to underwrite their time in the big city, and this is likely one of the times when Chanel tried her luck at some casual and discreet prostitution.

  Etienne Balsan on horseback, 1900 (above). Chanel and Balsan riding donkeys with friends. Left to right: Maurice Cailloux, Mlle. Forchemer, Suzanne Orlandi, Baron Foy, Chanel, and Balsan (illustration credit 2.1)

  The bond between the two young women helped offset the pressures and risks they continually encountered. When, for example, Henri and Virginie-Angelina tried to force Adrienne into an arranged marriage with a local notary—a much older man she found repellent—Coco’s presence helped her stand up to her parents. Without Coco, the meek Adrienne might never have found the strength to break off the engagement.

  Freed from that constraint, Adrienne soon came to the attention of one of Moulins’s most influential socialites, Maud Mazuel, a woman who’d made a career playing salonnière and chaperone (and, perhaps, madam) to legions of beautiful but socially marginal young women. Elegant and worldly, Maud held regular tea parties in her home where wellborn young men could mingle with her stable of beauties. Both Coco and Adrienne attended these events, but Adrienne fit into this environment especially well. A number of local aristocrats began vying seriously with one another for her favors.

  Vichy … that doesn’t exist.

  —COCO CHANEL

  Adrienne enjoyed, then, uncommon romantic success for a girl of her background. She would never weather the kind of personal tempests that would bring Coco so much heartache. But in the realm of ambition and hunger for the world, Coco was always one step ahead of Adrienne. Understanding that La Rotonde was a small-time establishment, Coco set her sights on the one glamorous city she knew, Vichy. She persuaded Adrienne to join her, and the girls set off to pursue Coco’s dream of a career in operetta.

  Balsan, who was already at this
time a “special friend” to Coco, tried to convince her of the folly of her plan. While moved by her charm, Etienne had no illusions about Coco’s unexceptional singing voice. “You won’t get anywhere.… You have no voice,” he told her. Nevertheless, he helped both girls prepare for their trip, paying for many of the provisions they would need and the fabrics from which they were sewing new travel wardrobes for themselves.

  In Vichy, Coco and Adrienne—age twenty-two and twenty-three respectively—rented a tiny room together, as they had done in Moulins. Vichy, however, operated on another scale altogether. Here, charm and good looks only went so far. With little money and no connections, Coco and Adrienne foundered. Although Coco managed to score an audition at the famous Alcazar theater, which produced variety shows and operettas, the management there was unimpressed with her voice. Taking note of her charm, though, they encouraged her to take singing lessons and to return later. Adrienne was rejected out of hand and soon returned to Moulins and her bevy of suitors. Once back, she took up residence with her good friend Maud, moving into her villa in the town of Souvigny, a few miles west of Moulins. She continued to enjoy the amorous attentions of several noblemen, including the Baron Maurice de Nexon. Although Adrienne took her time selecting among her suitors, she eventually fell in love with Nexon, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Unlike most men of his class, the baron remained steadfast and faithful to his cocotte mistress, despite her unsuitability and his parents’ adamant refusal to permit the couple to marry. Defying his parents’ wishes, Maurice remained devoted to Adrienne for the rest of his life, later living with her outside of marriage for decades.

  • • •

  Coco was not yet ready to relinquish her Vichy dream. She knew she needed to make her own way, she knew she needed money, and she retained her passion for all things theatrical. Only one career seemed open to her—and she was determined to have it. She began taking singing and dancing lessons in Vichy, hoping to land the role of gommeuse at some theater. Like the poseuses, gommeuses were backup singers and dancers, eye candy in black sequined dresses who performed numbers between scenes. (Little black sequined dresses would later be an evening staple of Chanel couture.)

  Coco was happy for a time in Vichy. She loved practicing singing and dance; she loved the hum and bustle of the international resort town. But her funds were running out, and no stage job materialized. Balsan probably helped her out somewhat, and she took in some odd sewing jobs. But to make ends meet, Coco needed more. At this point in her life, Chanel may well have once more allowed some men to pay for her favors—the quickest and easiest route to cash. According to Edmonde Charles-Roux, though, Coco soon found herself the most iconic position possible in Vichy: “water girl” at La Grande Grille, one of the city’s premier thermal spas. Clad in white apron, matching cap, and little white boots, Coco would have joined the legions of young women dispensing glasses of warm mineral water to the curistes seeking relief for everything from hangovers to gallstones.

  Standing for hours in a kind of circular well, surrounded by large faucets, several feet below where the customers walked and sat, the famous Vichy water girls were something of an amalgam of nurse, waitress, and showgirl. Such a job was a far cry from the stardom Coco sought, and she surely chafed at having to stand literally below her well-dressed customers. As the warm-weather “cure” season drew to a close, so did Chanel’s Vichy adventure. Realizing she would never make a career of singing, and not planning on a career serving glasses of water, Coco returned to Moulins. As with every other episode she deemed shameful, this brief stint in Vichy disappeared from all official versions of Coco’s life. She did recount having visited her grandfather at Vichy, when, she claimed, he was taking a cure. This is possible but not likely. “I think she closed all the doors to her past when she became Balsan’s irrégulière,” said Edmonde Charles-Roux. “She never again spoke of her mother, her father, or her brothers.”

  Returning to Moulins, Coco, now twenty-three, was somewhat at sixes and sevens. With Adrienne off at Maud’s and in love with Maurice de Nexon, Coco understood that she, too, needed protection. She would not return to life as a seamstress in a rented room. Instead, she took a considerable leap—she moved into the Château de Royallieu, Etienne Balsan’s vast stone property. It is worth noting that this is the first episode of her life that Coco seemed willing to acknowledge to her biographers. This is not to say that she told a single, coherent story about her Royallieu days, but rather that Balsan did not get expunged. He remained a clear, knowable character from her past, as well as a lifelong friend.

  Balsan bought Royallieu in 1904 and turned it into a major center for breeding and racing horses, and for entertaining women. Balsan was an expert at all of these activities. In an era when “gentlemen riders” were ranked like tennis players, Balsan was considered a top seed, officially a “number one” rider, and—had such ratings existed—he would have earned similar marks in casual love. Along with the breeders, trainers, and jockeys who frequented Royallieu, Balsan hosted a constant stream of bachelor friends and beautiful cocottes.

  As was typical for her, Chanel had multiple accounts of how she came to live with Balsan. She told Paul Morand that Etienne had helped her escape the evil clutches of her elderly aunts. In this version, she shaved years off her age, claiming that she was so young at the time—merely sixteen—that Balsan feared the police would arrest him. “His friends would tell him: ‘Coco is too young, send her home,’ ” she told Morand. Chanel said she entered the Royallieu household after Balsan had broken off with the famous cocotte and Folies-Bergère dancer Emilienne d’Alençon—a voluptuous bisexual demimondaine.

  The story Chanel told Claude Delay showcases more her love of horses and Balsan’s easy charm. She recounted an afternoon she spent entranced, watching the trainers and jockeys exercise the horses in the Royallieu stables: “You could breathe in the fresh smell … the sunlight was golden … the jockeys and the grooms rode in a line.… ‘What a beautiful life,’ I sighed. ‘It’s mine all year round,’ responded Etienne Balsan. ‘Why don’t you make it yours as well?’ ”

  What rings most true in this version is Chanel’s love for the beauty of the landscape, the animals, and the exhilarating freedom she sensed in country life. Royallieu enchanted her. She was a country girl and an athlete at heart, and fresh air and horses would always rank among her greatest passions. And whatever the original circumstances, Coco did wind up living in her own suite of rooms at Royallieu. Yet the claim that she had replaced Emilienne d’Alençon may not have been entirely accurate. In fact, Emilienne remained a constant visitor and sometime resident at the château. She had other lovers, including the famous jockey Alec Carter, but she and Balsan may well have fallen into bed together occasionally, given the relaxed, amorous atmosphere of Royallieu.

  Coco was never Balsan’s principal mistress. Her status was more on the order of amusing side diversion—one of many young women with whom Balsan dallied. Coco and Emilienne would become great friends for a time, but a remark made to Marcel Haedrich unmistakably reveals Coco’s resentment toward a woman she clearly perceived as a rival: “Etienne Balsan liked old women, he adored Emilienne d’Alençon. Beauty, youth, those things didn’t concern him.” In 1906, the elderly Emilienne was thirty-six and ravishing.

  Balsan hailed from a high-achieving family, whose fortune was already over a century old, dating back to the family’s days supplying uniforms to Napoléon’s army. By the age of twenty-four, Etienne’s older brother, Louis-Jacques, had established himself as both a pioneer of aviation and a successful industrialist. Jacques would later join his family to one of America’s greatest dynasties, marrying Consuelo Vanderbilt. Etienne evinced far less ambition. All he’d ever cared about was horses.

  Whatever Etienne lacked in ambition, though, he made up for with personal charm and resourcefulness. He was what the French call débrouillard—someone who just gets things done. Perhaps this was part of what drew Balsan to Coco, whom he surel
y recognized as a fellow débrouillarde—having already propelled herself so very far from her origins.

  Chanel was hardly a virgin when she arrived at Royallieu, but she was innocent of the ways of the leisured gentry. The exterior of the château may have looked reassuringly familiar to her—like Aubazine, it was a former abbey, a great medieval stone fortress—but what went on inside had little to do with religion. Balsan ran the estate like a kind of upscale fraternity house. No one had a job, everyone was young, and life revolved around horses by day and parties by night. When not in Compiègne, the gang traveled to other major horse-racing venues, including the Hippodrome de Longchamp and the Hippodrome de Vincennes, outside of Paris.

  The women at Royallieu may have been “irregulars,” but even within this group, Coco was an outcast. In addition to Emilienne, the celebrated courtesans frequenting Royallieu included dancer Liane de Pougy, beautiful singer Marthe Davelli (dark-haired and slim, she resembled Coco), and noted actress Gabrielle Dorziat.

  These women had all been consorts to royalty or the haute aristocracy. Davelli, for example, was the mistress of sugar baron Constant Say. Pougy (born Anne Marie Chassaigne, in humble circumstances) had a long affair with the Viscount de Pougy, whose name she took, and later married Prince Georges Ghika of Moldavia, becoming a bona fide princess.

  Not only were these women entirely at ease with wellborn men, they looked the part. These grandes horizontales—in the wonderful French expression—were professional beauties, experts in the art of self-presentation. They knew how to mold their generous figures with corsets. They wore their long hair in elaborate coiffures, topped with equally elaborate hats and veils. They traveled with trunks bursting with expensive dresses sewn from miles of silk and velvet, which they adorned with priceless jewels—badges of honor earned through distinguished service to “horizontality.” And unlike society women, these ladies—who had real stage experience—knew all about makeup and didn’t shy away from using it. In other words, the women of Royallieu were artists, and their masterpieces were themselves. They had learned long ago how to use their beauty to manipulate the world and one another. Many of them dabbled in lesbianism.