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the book collector How, I wondered, did a society perfect prostitution to such a degree that a dictionary of hookers could be published as easily as a glossary of words, a bibliography of books or a tourist’s vade mecum? With this little guidebook in hand, a man in the 1820s could save the wearand-tear of prowling the streets in order to find an appealing nymphe to suit his erotic tastes—it was almost like choosing a chocolate from a box of assorted flavors, or even a breeding stallion from a stud book.3 And who was the gentleman, the homme de bien, who wrote it? In a short preface, hoping to avoid complications lest he be discovered and considered a pimp, he disavows knowing any of the women described, claiming that he merely received the information from others. Somewhat unexpectedly, he then rails against a society that preaches morals but permits vice, and urges fathers to protect their children against prostitution. How? By reading his book. The list of nymphs begins immediately after this peculiar suggestion. Intrigued, I began to piece together what I knew about postRevolutionary France with the mystery of my little dictionary. It took me thirty years to solve the riddle of the nymphs, which I will get to shortly. But before I was able to zero in on that, I began to look for clues in other books, and started to assemble a collection of material on Parisian prostitution—from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of the Eiffel Tower—and discovered an entire genre of books and prints devoted to it. In fact, I began to realize that prostitution was at the epicenter of the era. A frequent visitor to Paris, I was aware that the capital was (and still is) fueled by large quantities of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and sugar, but I was unaware, until I began my quest, that prostitution had formerly been as fundamental to Parisians as the those other stimulating staples. My next discovery, a major one, proved pivotal: Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet’s De La Prostitution dans La Ville de Paris, 1836.4 Issued in two thick 8vo volumes a decade after my petite Dictionnaire, it is not a guide to pleasure but rather, an extensive textbook, the 3. Louis-Sebastien Mercier, in his landmark work on Paris, observed: ‘Just as racehorse studs have their specific names, each woman [in a brothel] has her own nickname indicating her physical appearance.’ (Tableau de Paris, 1782–83, vol. 7, p. 4.) 4. It went through several editions in French (1836, 1837, 1838, 1857); was published in English in 1840 and 1845; and translated into Japanese in 1877. 48
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pavement nymphs and roadside flowers first attempt to investigate and analyze prostitution scientifically in order to create effective solutions to the problems it was creating. The alluring sirens described in my dictionary, the nymphs who had been sought by flâneurs, philanderers and married men, had become, within ten years, clinical objects of scientific inquiry. Studied as exotic specimens from the animal kingdom, they were probed, questioned and examined by doctors and experts in the newly emerging fields of hygiene, statistics and sociology. In ten years, a portable, somewhat prurient ‘gentleman’s guide’ had been displaced by a substantial, authoritative, government-sponsored work on prostitutes’ sexual habits, health and attitudes, one filled with analytic texts and tables based on facts; it became a shape-shifter. Parent-Duchâtelet (1790–1836), its author, was a medical doctor who had worked for France’s nascent public health services in the 1820s and had been successful in organizing the first campaign to clean and sanitize the sewers and cesspits of Paris, which were beginning to be recognized as sources of infectious diseases. His unstinting investigations (he regularly descended in the city’s foul lower depths) led to a major report advising on how best to unclog, clean and disinfect the sewers of Paris in 1824.5 Parent next turned his clinical, pragmatic mind to the public health problem posed by prostitution after being contacted by an unidentified colleague who wanted to research and publish a study of prostitutes in order to rehabilitate them but who could not afford to do so. When this gentleman unexpectedly died, Parent sensed an opportunity, and recognizing the importance of prostitution as a medical issue rather than a moral one, and with the resources of the state behind him, took on his colleague’s project, stating: ‘I have found in most minds a particular disdain attached to the functions of all who, in one way or another, deal with prostitutes…I could not understand this excess of delicacy… If I have been able, without scandalizing anyone, to descend into the cesspools, to touch putrid matter, to spend part of my time in the refuse pits and to live, so to speak, in the midst of all the most abject and disgusting products of human congregations, why should I blush to tackle a sewer of 5. A.-J.-B.-B. Parent-Duchâtelet Essai sur les cloaques ou égouts de la ville de Paris. Paris: Crevot, 1824. 49

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the book collector

How, I wondered, did a society perfect prostitution to such a degree that a dictionary of hookers could be published as easily as a glossary of words, a bibliography of books or a tourist’s vade mecum? With this little guidebook in hand, a man in the 1820s could save the wearand-tear of prowling the streets in order to find an appealing nymphe to suit his erotic tastes—it was almost like choosing a chocolate from a box of assorted flavors, or even a breeding stallion from a stud book.3 And who was the gentleman, the homme de bien, who wrote it? In a short preface, hoping to avoid complications lest he be discovered and considered a pimp, he disavows knowing any of the women described, claiming that he merely received the information from others. Somewhat unexpectedly, he then rails against a society that preaches morals but permits vice, and urges fathers to protect their children against prostitution. How? By reading his book. The list of nymphs begins immediately after this peculiar suggestion.

Intrigued, I began to piece together what I knew about postRevolutionary France with the mystery of my little dictionary. It took me thirty years to solve the riddle of the nymphs, which I will get to shortly. But before I was able to zero in on that, I began to look for clues in other books, and started to assemble a collection of material on Parisian prostitution—from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of the Eiffel Tower—and discovered an entire genre of books and prints devoted to it. In fact, I began to realize that prostitution was at the epicenter of the era. A frequent visitor to Paris, I was aware that the capital was (and still is) fueled by large quantities of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and sugar, but I was unaware, until I began my quest, that prostitution had formerly been as fundamental to Parisians as the those other stimulating staples. My next discovery, a major one, proved pivotal: Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet’s De La Prostitution dans La Ville de Paris, 1836.4 Issued in two thick 8vo volumes a decade after my petite Dictionnaire, it is not a guide to pleasure but rather, an extensive textbook, the

3. Louis-Sebastien Mercier, in his landmark work on Paris, observed: ‘Just as racehorse studs have their specific names, each woman [in a brothel] has her own nickname indicating her physical appearance.’ (Tableau de Paris, 1782–83, vol. 7, p. 4.) 4. It went through several editions in French (1836, 1837, 1838, 1857); was published in English in 1840 and 1845; and translated into Japanese in 1877.

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