If we are to believe the authors of The Pretty Women of Paris, lesbianism, or ‘tribadism’ as they so quaintly put it, was common practice amongst Parisian prostitutes, although its extent may well have become exaggerated in their overheated imaginations. These lesbian encounters are described in the book with that curious mixture of moral disapproval and salivating prurience that still characterises attitudes to sex in much of the British popular press.

 

So we read of the ‘disgusting caresses’ common to French prostitutes and the ‘Sapphic ties, of which Parisian unfortunates are generally so fond’, and of Janvier, ‘an insatiable devotee of lesbian love’, who ‘pursues her prey in the corridors of the Opera like a man’, of Nina Melcy, mistress of a British Member of Parliament, who ‘adores her own sex, but only when there is an important debate in the House’, and of Juliette Grandville who is ‘often Sappho by day and Messalina by night, rushing eagerly to the arms of her masculine adorer with the glorious traces of some girlish victim’s excitement on her feverish ruby lips.’ To see lesbian acitivity was clearly exciting to many men in nineteenth-century Paris.

 

We are told of Thérèse Bréval that ‘a favourite after-supper diversion is the spectacle of Thérèse making love to one of her own sex.’ Still closer to Degas’ print is the description of the love-making of Laure Heymann with the black Countess Mimi Pegère: ‘It is a glorious sight to see the fair Laure locked in the serpentine embrace of the lecherous little Sappho, who is as black as coal, being a native of Haiti.’ In its listing of the licensed brothels of Paris, The Pretty Women of Paris describes the brothel at 12 Rue de Charbanais as ‘The finest bagnio in the world. Each room is decorated in a different style, regardless of expense... A negress is kept on the establishment. This is a favourite resort of the upper ten, and many ladies, both in society and out of it, come here alone, or with their lovers, for lesbian diversions.’ The monotype prints of brothels are among the most private and personal of Degas’ works. It was rare for him to treat the theme of prostitution as directly and openly in his larger-scale and more public works.

 

An exception, though, was Women on a Café Terrace, Evening, which Degas showed at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877. Like Madame’s Name-Day (p. 39) it is executed in pastel on top of a monotype print, but on a considerably larger scale. It shows gaudily-plumed and fashionably-dressed prostitutes going about their business of attracting passers-by on a busy gas-lit boulevard.