Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe on the startling discovery of a perfectly preserved belle epoque apartment in Paris.
In 2010, auctioneer Maitre Olivier Choppin de Janvry discovered a 1900 Bonbonnière (a bijou apartment) in Paris at the Square La Bruyère. Under a thick layer of dust, he was entering a 140-metre square apartment untouched by human hand for seventy years. Choppin felt he was witnessing the life of a demi-mondaine who seemed to have left the place just a few minutes ago. In the boudoir stood a never-seen-before portrait by Boldini. There was also a remarkable psyche console (a kind of dresser); drawers full of letters; a multitude of trinkets; faded lace and even an extravagant stuffed ostrich in the entrance.
Everything was made of quiet luxury and voluptuousness, all in the full rococo style so typical of Paris at the turn of the century. Through the grey fog of dust and the saturated atmosphere, a bright life could be imagined. Marthe de Florian was what was then called a demi-mondaine or courtesan. This woman, who was actually named Mathilde Beaugiron, was born in 1864 from humble beginnings. Thanks to her great beauty, she was able to wine, dine and charm the whole of the French Third Republic cognoscenti. Indeed, fiery missives signed by French Prime Ministers and Presidents, such as Georges Clemenceau, Raymond Poincaré and Paul Deschanel, were found in a drawer, along with others from wealthy businessmen. These letters were tied up in bundles with ribbons of different colors for different senders, who were of both sexes, for Marthe, like many cocottes of the time, was bisexual.
The features of Mademoiselle de Florian are known to us thanks to a few photos and one painting, a 1903 canvas painted by Giovanni Boldini, a highly en vogue painter at the end of the nineteenth century. Many experts wonder whether Marthe had paid the painter’s emoluments ‘horizontally’, since it cost a small fortune to obtain a portrait of such a large size by an artist of this stature. The Boldini portrait was sold at Drouot recently for 1.8 million euros. On the day of the sale, the atmosphere was electric; everybody was excited by the louche yet glamorous legacy of its previous owner. It was eventually an Italian buyer who won the lot. The lucky bidder was then offered, as a bonus, some samples of Marthe’s saucy correspondence.
Despite her humble beginnings as an embroiderer, Mathilde Beaugiron managed to climb the social ladder courtesy of ‘the bedroom promotion routine’. Gil Blas, the popular periodical of the time, did not mince its words when evoking Marthe as, “A blonde frivolous woman with chubby and pink flesh like cherry blossoms, a baby face lit up by two pretty eyes. She lives in a charming apartment where the more refined luxury is combined with the best comfy facilities. A Louis XV living room, a renaissance dining room, a bedroom… all invisible to the common man.”
But how can a luxury apartment in Paris remain empty for 70 years, completely untouched since the Belle Epoque? The key to the mystery lies with Solange Beaugiron, Marthe’s granddaughter, by then a 90-year-old woman, who had lived there in 1940 before moving to the Ardèche. Following Solange Beaugiron’s death, a notary was asked to carry out a furniture inventory at the apartment, which, for mysterious motives, Solange had kept and paid for, despite leaving it unoccupied for so many years. This mystery excited the interests of journalists as far away as the United States.
What we do know is that Marthe ended up marrying a merchant, allowing her to access the ranks of the bourgeoisie, before dying in Trouville on 29th August 1939. As for Solange, she also followed a remarkable trail, settling for good in the Ardèche after the exodus of 1939, becoming the author of rose-tinted romantic dime novels for Jours de France. The lady who would never return to her grandmother’s apartment had published most of her novels in the belle époque under the pseudonym of Solange Bellegarde.
Marthe’s Boudoir, now emptied of its past vestiges, refurbished and rented to new tenants, has not yet revealed all of its secrets, and perhaps never will.
