The World of Courtesans c9.76

c9.76

She said, "This wrong doing of mine lay in the performance of my obvious duty. For obvious duty is as follows for the mother of a *fille de joie*: care of her daughter's person from the hour of birth; nourishment by a diet so regulated as to develop stateliness, vigour, complexion, intelligence...; not permitting her to see too much even of her father after the fifth year, festive ritual on birthdays and holy days; instruction in the arts of flirtation both major and minor; thorough training in dance, song, instrumental music, acting, painting, also judgement of foods, perfumes, flowers, not forgetting writing and graceful speech; a conversational acquaintance with grammar, with logical inference and conclusion; profound skill in moneymaking, sport, and betting on cockfights or chess; assiduous use of go-betweens in the passages of coquetry; display of numerous well-dressed attendants at religious or secular celebrations; careful selection of teachers to insure success at unpremeditated vocal and other exhibitions; advertising on a national scale by a staff of trained specialists; publicity for beauty-marks through astrologers and such; eulogistic mention in gatherings of men about town of her beauty, character, accomplishments, charm, and sweetness by *hangers-on*, gay dogs, buffoons, female religionists and others, raising her price considerably when she has become an object of desire to young gentlemen; surrender to a lover of independent fortune, a philogynist or one intoxicated by seeing her charms, a gentleman eminent for rank, figure, youth, money, vigour, purity, generosity, cleverness, gallantry, art, character, and sweetness of disposition; delivery, with gracious exaggeration of value received, to one less affluent, but highly virtuous and cultivated (the alternative is levying on his natural guardians, after informal union with such a gentleman); collection of bad debts by vamping judge and jury, mothering a lover's daughter; abstraction by ingenious tricks of money left in an admirer's possession after payment for periodical pleasures, steady quarrelling with a defaulter or miser; stimulation of the spirit of generosity in an over-thrifty adorer by the incentive of jealousy, repulse of the impecunious by biting speeches, by public taunts ... by simple contempt; continued clinging to the open-handed, the chivalrous, the blameless, the wealthy, with full consideration of the interrelated chances of money and misery."