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the book collector Veux-tu monter, mon Bel-homme? Je suis bien Aimable, bien Complaisante.... [Hey, handsome, would you like to come upstairs? I’m easy...] Fold-out hand colored etched frontispiece to [ Jean]-[Pierre]. Cuisin. Les Nymphes du Palais-Royal. Paris, 1815. A young gentleman being restrained by his coachman and a friend from the invitation offered by one of the prostitutes in front of the infamous gambling den at the Palais Royal known only by its address: 113. Noticeable as well are two signs for other nearby establishments: Corcelet, whose shop “Au Gourmand” sold delicacies from around the world; and Café des Aveugles, a celebrated café named for its blind musicians. Located in a basement, it had twenty cave-like rooms where customers could buy sex along with some refreshments. Prostitutes of the lower ranks were known to congregate there. It was rumored that if a man was unfortunate enough to be lured in, he would have trouble finding his way out again. © Victoria Dailey printer, publisher and three booksellers also had to face the tribunal for ‘facilitating vice’ by circulating the addresses of prostitutes and for violating several statutes of an 1819 censorship law. The lawyers for the accused presented their case in a very clever, droll and literary way by first asking the court how it could prosecute those involved in a book on prostitutes when prostitution itself was legal. As one said: ‘I blush to say it, but prostitution is in the public domain.’ They went on to describe Lepage as a young man, 62
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pavement nymphs and roadside flowers just out of college, whose innocence was equal to the indecency of his ‘heroines’ and that the book was a reflection of nothing more than Lepage’s naïveté. The lawyers suggested that instead of sentencing the author to prison, the court should require him to read his dictionary for eight hours a day, which, they assured the court, would be punishment enough. They concluded by reminding the court that the dictionary was nothing more than a pale imitation of an actual visit to the Palais Royal (the center of Parisian prostitution), which could be truly upsetting. The conclude by quoting Horace’s Ode IV, To Sestius, a paean to pleasure. With their adroit arguments, they won the case. Lepage destroyed the remaining books, and the Dictionnaire was duly placed on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books. Later, it was cited in several bibliographies and generally forgotten. But I still had a further question: Why was this book singled out for prosecution? There had been a flurry of dictionaries of prostitutes in the 1790s, when flaunting decadence and vice became de rigeur during the Revolution and when the unprecedented porno-libertine works of the Marquis de Sade were published; other such books were published well into the early 19th century.24 Yet this little dictionary, a pale descendant of its predecessors, was scandalous enough to initiate a criminal prosecution. I surmise that in the 1820s the book evoked the licentious and radical early-1790s, the memories of which would have been especially disturbing to the conservative Bourbon king Charles X and his prime minister, Joseph de Villèle, an ultra-royalist known for imposing strict antipress and anti-sacrilege laws.25 24. Among these cheeky works, mostly pamphlets, are: Florentine de Launay. Etrennes aux Grisettes. Paris, 1790 and I. F. X. Villeneuve. Les Fastes Scandaleux, ou la Galerie des Plus Aimables Coquines de Paris. Paris, c. 1796. Each contains a list of nymphes, the former with street addresses, the latter with addresses and physical descriptions. Les Sérails de Paris, a three-part work containing anecdotes about Parisian brothels, madams and prostitutes, appeared in 1802. J. P. R. Cuisin wrote scores of little books on Parisian vices, including Les Nymphes du Palais-Royal, 1815. 25. Severe censorship laws were passed in March, 1822 in which nearly any book could be judged an ‘outrage to public morals and religion.’ It resulted in numerous editors and publishers being arrested for having published the philosophical and scientific works of Helvetius, Holbach and Dupuis. The popular writers Etienne Jouy and Antoine Jay were sent to prison for a month in 1823 for having written something slightly deroga- 63

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the book collector

Veux-tu monter, mon Bel-homme? Je suis bien Aimable, bien Complaisante.... [Hey, handsome, would you like to come upstairs? I’m easy...] Fold-out hand colored etched frontispiece to [ Jean]-[Pierre]. Cuisin. Les Nymphes du Palais-Royal. Paris, 1815. A young gentleman being restrained by his coachman and a friend from the invitation offered by one of the prostitutes in front of the infamous gambling den at the Palais Royal known only by its address: 113. Noticeable as well are two signs for other nearby establishments: Corcelet, whose shop “Au Gourmand” sold delicacies from around the world; and Café des Aveugles, a celebrated café named for its blind musicians. Located in a basement, it had twenty cave-like rooms where customers could buy sex along with some refreshments. Prostitutes of the lower ranks were known to congregate there. It was rumored that if a man was unfortunate enough to be lured in, he would have trouble finding his way out again.

© Victoria Dailey printer, publisher and three booksellers also had to face the tribunal for ‘facilitating vice’ by circulating the addresses of prostitutes and for violating several statutes of an 1819 censorship law.

The lawyers for the accused presented their case in a very clever, droll and literary way by first asking the court how it could prosecute those involved in a book on prostitutes when prostitution itself was legal. As one said: ‘I blush to say it, but prostitution is in the public domain.’ They went on to describe Lepage as a young man,

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