Madame Gourdan

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Marguerite Gourdan († 1783), called la petite comtesse

Madame Gourdan , b. Marguerite Stock (* in Béziers ; † November 28, 1783 in Paris ), known as the little Comtesse , was a French brothel owner and entrepreneur. There are various details about their first names, some sources mention Alexandrine-Ernestine , other Marguerite there are also uncertainties about the dates of their lives, only their place and date of death are certain. Gourdan was a famous and influential brothel owner in Paris.

Live and act

She began as a saleswoman in the fashion store commerce de modes and came to Paris with a young officer, from whom she soon separated to marry François-Didier Gourdan from Larzicourt . In 1759 Marguerite Gourdan founded her first brothel on Rue Sainte-Anne . Chevalier Jean-Baptiste du Barry was one of her early customers .

Brothel and country house

Her brothel, called Chateau de Madame Gourdan, was on rue des Deux Portes at the corner of rue Saint-Sauveur . Rich and influential politicians, nobles and even clergymen came and went in their establishment. It was one of the largest brothels of its time, spread over various houses and even streets. The most notorious was the Salon de Vulcan ; an isolated, soundproof torture chamber for BDSM games. In his review of Marquis de Sade , Iwan Bloch describes how the writer and the son of Cardinal Richelieu , Sire de Fronsac , enjoyed themselves in this chamber on a special chair, which was equipped with shackles and other accessories.

Gourdan also had a house in the country, which the rural population ironically called the monastery , monastère , and to which sick and pregnant girls were brought to "cure themselves" there. This monastery is in an erotic text of an anonymous author called Mademoiselle Sappho , where there is a nature spoiled goes Bauer girl lesbian nobles of Tribadinnen sect sect Anandryne a whore made , used as a literary motif.

Sex toys

Gourdan specialized in lesbian customers. Her artfully crafted dildos , hollow and with an opening at the tip, from which liquid could be squirted like a piping bag, were known and sought-after . Gourdan was the first to sell such dildos professionally, so that she ran a real dildo shipment , the replicas of which are still shown at various exhibitions today.

Historical and literary references

Title page of the 1783 edition of Correspondance

A special footnote in the story should give her one of her best whores: Under the name of Mademoiselle Lange , a young girl was working in her establishment, which later under the name of Madame du Barry, you comtesse Barry as mistress of Louis XV. Should make history. In Madame Gourdan's establishment, the attractive Marie-Jéanne met Jean-Baptiste du Barry . The latter hoped through the mediation of Mademoiselle Lange as the mistress of Louis XV. To increase his influence at court, he arranged a marriage with his brother Guillaume du Barry (1732-1811). The noble from Languedoc had married a wealthy heiress, which improved his financial situation, and had come to Paris to work in the diplomatic service, which however no longer happened.

Gourdan's brothel was named, among other things, as a source of inspiration for the novels of the writer Marquis de Sade. She ran the institution until her death.

Shortly after her death in 1783 an anonymous author (probably Charles Théveneau de Morande (1741-1805)) published the pornographic work Le Porte-feuille de Madame Gourdan dite La Comtesse (also under the title Correspondance de Madame Gourdan dite Petite Comtesse ) as a biography of the Madame Gourdan. The publication was reissued again and again in enthusiastic editions until the 20th century.

literature

  • Anonymous: Le Portefeuille de Madame Gourdan . Presumably reprint of the mentioned first edition from 1783 (by: anonymous, presumably Charles Théveneau de Morande), publisher / editor unknown, London 1783.
  • A. Londres: J. Nourse . Probably reprint of the anonymous edition of Le Portefeuille de Madame Gourdan , publisher / publisher unknown, London 1784, digitized
  • Charles Théveneau de Morande: Correspondance de Madame Gourdan . 1784, digitized
  • Anonymous (Madame Gourdan, dite La Comtesse): Correspondance de Madame Gourdan . Limited reprint of the work J. Nourse by A. Londres, with an introduction by Jean Hervez, Verlag Bibliotheque de Curieux (ed. Georges and Robert Briffaut), Paris 1924, 188 pp.
  • Anonymous (Madame Gourdan, dite La Comtesse): Correspondance de Madame Gourdan . Reprint, Ed .: Le Livre Du Bibliophile, Paris 1954, 186 pp.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Incorrectly named as Alexandrine-Ernestine Gourdan
  2. ↑ Eroticabibliophile.com , No. 25
  3. ↑ Blogspirit.com
  4. ↑ bandoli.no ( Memento of March 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Genealogy of Jean-Baptiste du Barry
  6. ↑ Today N ° 23, rue Dussoubs (2nd arrondissement) .
  7. ↑ Today at N ° 12 rue Saint-Sauveur
  8. ↑ La maison close de la Gourdan ( Memento from December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ LA SECTE DES ANANDRYNES ( Memento of December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Iwan Bloch: The Marquis de Sade and his time. A contribution to the cultural and moral history of the 18th century. With special reference to the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis (1900, under the pseudonym Eugen Dühren)
  11. ↑ Mademoiselle Sappho ( Memento of March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) - Text of the version published in 1789, translated into German by Conrad Heinrich (1907)
  12. ^ Eugen Defrance, La Maison de Madame Gourdan, Paris, 1908
  13. ↑ Simon Burrows: A Literary Low-Life Reassessed: Charles Theveneau de Morande in London, 1769-1791 . Eighteenth-Century Life - Issue 22, Number 1, February 1998, pp. 76-94
personal data
SURNAME Gourdan, madame
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stick (maiden name); Gourdan, Alexandrine-Ernestine; Gourdan, Marguerite
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French brothel operator
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1783
Place of death Paris