Tullia D'Aragona was clearly not a courtesan at heart. Perhaps the most typical example of the Renaissance courtesan at her best is furnished by Veronica Franco, born in 1546 at Venice, of middle class family and in early life married to a doctor. Of her also it has been said that, while by profession a prostitute, she was by inclination a poet. But she appears to have been well content with her profession, and never ashamed of it. Her life and character have been studied by Arturo Graf, and more slightly in a little book by Tassini. She was highly cultured, and knew several languages; she also sang well and played on many instruments. In one of her letters she advises a youth who was madly in love with her that if he wishes to obtain her favors he must leave off importuning her and devote himself tranquilly to study. "You know well," she adds, "that all those who claim to be able to gain my love, and who are extremely dear to me, are strenuous in studious discipline.... If my fortune allowed it I would spend all my time quietly in the academies of virtuous men." The Diotimas and Aspasias of antiquity, as Graf comments, would not have demanded so much of their lovers. In her poems it is possible to trace some of her love histories, and she often shows herself torn by jealousy at the thought that perhaps another woman may approach her beloved. Once she fell in love with an ecclesiastic, possibly a bishop, with whom she had no relationships, and after a long absence, which healed her love, she and he became sincere friends. Once she was visited by Henry III of France, who took away her portrait, while on her part she promised to dedicate a book to him; she so far fulfilled this as to address some sonnets to him and a letter; "neither did the King feel ashamed of his intimacy with the courtesan," remarks Graf, "nor did she suspect that he would feel ashamed of it." When Montaigne passed through Venice she sent him a little book of hers, as we learn from his Journal, though they do not appear to have met. Tintoret was one of her many distinguished friends, and she was a strenuous advocate of the high qualities of modern, as compared with ancient, art. Her friendships were affectionate, and she even seems to have had various grand ladies among her friends. She was, however, so far from being ashamed of her profession of courtesan that in one of her poems she affirms she has been taught by Apollo other arts besides those he is usually regarded as teaching:
"Cosi dolce e gustevole divento,
Quando mi trovo con persona in letto
Da cui amata e gradita mi sento."
In a certain catalogo of the prices of Venetian courtesans Veronica is assigned only 2 scudi for her favors, while the courtesan to whom the catalogue is dedicated is set down at 25 scudi. Graf thinks there may be some mistake or malice here, and an Italian gentleman of the time states that she required not less than 50 scudi from those to whom she was willing to accord what Montaigne called the "negotiation entière."
In regard to this matter it may be mentioned that, as stated by Bandello, it was the custom for a Venetian prostitute to have six or seven gentlemen at a time as her lovers. Each was entitled to come to sup and sleep with her on one night of the week, leaving her days free. They paid her so much per month, but she always definitely reserved the right to receive a stranger passing through Venice, if she wished, changing the time of her appointment with her lover for the night. The high and special prices which we find recorded are, of course, those demanded from the casual distinguished stranger who came to Venice as, once in the sixteenth century, Montaigne came.
In 1580 (when not more than thirty-four) Veronica confessed to the Holy Office that she had had six children. In the same year she formed the design of founding a home, which should not be a monastery, where prostitutes who wished to abandon their mode of life could find a refuge with their children, if they had any. This seems to have led to the establishment of a Casa del Soccorso. In 1591 she died of fever, reconciled with God and blessed by many unfortunates. She had a good heart and a sound intellect, and was the last of the great Renaissance courtesans who revived Greek hetairism (Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento, pp. 217-351). Even in sixteenth century Venice, however, it will be seen, Veronica Franco seems to have been not altogether at peace in the career of a courtesan. She was clearly not adapted for ordinary marriage, yet under the most favorable conditions that the modern world has ever offered it may still be doubted whether a prostitute's career can offer complete satisfaction to a woman of large heart and brain.
Ninon de Lenclos, who is frequently called "the last of the great courtesans," may seem an exception to the general rule as to the inability of a woman of good heart, high character, and fine intelligence to find satisfaction in a prostitute's life. But it is a total misconception alike of Ninon de Lenclos's temperament and her career to regard her as in any true sense a prostitute at all. A knowledge of even the barest outlines of her life ought to prevent such a mistake. Born early in the seventeenth century, she was of good family on both sides; her mother was a woman of severe life, but her father, a gentleman of Touraine, inspired her with his own Epicurean philosophy as well as his love of music. She was extremely well educated. At the age of sixteen or seventeen she had her first lover, the noble and valiant Gaspard de Coligny; he was followed for half a century by a long succession of other lovers, sometimes more than one at a time; three years was the longest period during which she was faithful to one lover. Her attractions lasted so long that, it is said, three generations of Sévignés were among her lovers. Tallemant des Réaux enables us to study in detail her liaisons.
It is not, however, the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a prostitute, but the nature of her relationships with them. Sainte-Beuve, in an otherwise admirable study of Ninon de Lenclos (Causeries du Lundi, vol. iv), seems to reckon her among the courtesans. But no woman is a prostitute unless she uses men as a source of pecuniary gain. Not only is there no evidence that this was the case with Ninon, but all the evidence excludes such a relationship. "It required much skill," said Voltaire, "and a great deal of love on her part, to induce her to accept presents." Tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing beyond what is contained in Voltaire's remark, and, in any case, Tallemant's gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always reliable. All are agreed as to her extreme disinterestedness.
When we hear precisely of Ninon de Lenclos in connection with money, it is not as receiving a gift, but only as repaying a debt to an old lover, or restoring a large sum left with her for safe keeping when the owner was exiled. Such incidents are far from suggesting the professional prostitute of any age; they are rather the relationships which might exist between men friends. Ninon de Lenclos's character was in many respects far from perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly feminine; she hated hypocrisy, and she was never influenced by pecuniary considerations. She was, moreover, never reckless, but always retained a certain self-restraint and temperance, even in eating and drinking, and, we are told, she never drank wine. She was, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, the first to realize that there must be the same virtues for men and for women, and that it is absurd to reduce all feminine virtues to one. "Our sex has been burdened with all the frivolities," she wrote, "and men have reserved to themselves the essential qualities: I have made myself a man." She sometimes dressed as a man when riding (see, e.g., Correspondence Authentique of Ninon de Lenclos, with a good introduction by Emile Colombey). Consciously or not, she represented a new feminine idea at a period when—as we may see in many forgotten novels written by the women of that time—ideas were beginning to emerge in the feminine sphere. She was the first, and doubtless, from one point of view, the most extreme representative of a small and distinguished group of French women among whom Georges Sand is the finest personality.
Thus it is idle to attempt to adorn the history of prostitution with the name of Ninon de Lenclos. A debauched old prostitute would never, like Ninon towards the end of her long life, have been able to retain or to conquer the affection and the esteem of many of the best men and women of her time; even to the austere Saint-Simon it seemed that there reigned in her little court a decorum which the greatest princesses cannot achieve. She was not a prostitute, but a woman of unique personality with a little streak of genius in it. That she was inimitable we need not perhaps greatly regret. In her old age, in 1699, her old friend and former lover, Saint-Evremond, wrote to her, with only a little exaggeration, that there were few princesses and few saints who would not leave their courts and their cloisters to change places with her. "If I had known beforehand what my life would be I would have hanged myself," was her oft-quoted answer. It is, indeed, a solitary phrase that slips in, perhaps as the expression of a momentary mood; one may make too much of it. More truly characteristic is the fine saying in which her Epicurean philosophy seems to stretch out towards Nietzsche: "La joie de l'esprit en marque la force."
The frank acceptance of prostitution by the spiritual or even the temporal power has since the Renaissance become more and more exceptional. The opposite extreme of attempting to uproot prostitution has also in practice been altogether abandoned. Sporadic attempts have indeed been made, here and there, to put down prostitution with a strong hand even in quite modern times. It is now, however, realized that in such a case the remedy is worse than the disease.