Welcome to Red Poulaine's Musings. Here we hope to entertain and delight you with stories about the people and times from bygone eras and the vintage images that act as our windows into their times.
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On November 4th, 1868, in the town of Valga,
Galicia, not far north of Spain's border with Portugal, Agustina Otero Iglesias
was
born into poverty, but also into the very midst of the
Rexurdimento, the Galician cultural revolution, so that despite her poverty, she must often
have heard the folksongs in her native Galician tongue being reborn all around
her. Because of her family’s straightened circumstances, it was not possible
for the child to remain with them. As was true for many small children born
into poor families in those days, young Agustina left her home behind at a very
early age, having been placed in service as a household maid in Santiago de
Compostela, the capital city of Galicia.
It was while in Santiago de Compostela that,
tragically, ten year old Agustina was brutally raped, a hideous act that would
leave her physically incapable of conceiving a child.
By the early 1880's, Agustina, now fourteen, was already following the music in her heart. In the company of a
young man we know only as Paco, she traveled to Lisbon, where, with Paco as her
dancing partner, she began her career as a dancer and chanteuse. Youth and
inexperience stood in her way, but her beauty, vivacity, and natural ability worked in her
favor.
SOLD La Belle Otero, wearing a tambourine as a hat
Popular history suggests that shortly after
establishing herself in Lisbon, and while still only fourteen years old, the
young dancer made her first conquest as a courtesan, first enchanting, and then
marrying a Count Guglielmo, who whisked her away from poverty and, presumably,
away from Paco as well. With the new social standing gained by this marriage,
Agustina was said to have met with greater opportunities for advancement. That
is certainly one version of her story, though if it is true, how she ended up
still singing in cafes at 18 and 19 is difficult to explain. We do know that
she eventually met a "friend" with enough money to take her to
Marseilles and, while there, to support her ambitions, and that from Marseilles
she made her way to Paris.
While still in her teens, Agustina had changed
her name to Caroline Otero and reinvented her history as well, claiming to be
the product of a love match between a dashing nobleman and a dark-eyed Gypsy
princess. So it was that upon her arrival in Paris, she was no longer Agustina,
the poor peasant girl from a small town in Galicia, but "La Belle Otero," the seductive
Andalusian Gypsy dancer. Once in Paris, and surrounding herself with the
mystique of her new image, it wasn't
long before she found work as a dancer in the Folies Bergère. Before long, she
was the talk of that city of lights, a top billing attraction, and within a few
short years, one of the most famous women in France.
La Belle Otero was now a hugely popular performer, and also one of "Les Grandes Horizontales," an affectionate term that the people of France used for their great courtesans. She was, in fact, one of "Les Grandes Trois," or, "the three great ones." She, Liane de Pougy, and Emilienne d'Alençon, also famous music hall performers, were the three great courtesans of Europe. They granted their favors to kings and princes, but also to wealthy industrialists, amassing tremendous fortunes as a result of carefully planned liasons. Men fought duels over Otero's affections. It was claimed (though never substantiated), that six men took their own lives after she ended her affairs with them.
SOLD Emilienne d'Alençon, one of Otero's rivals
In this period known as La Belle Époque, Otero
and others like her were loved and admired by royalty and
commoners alike. They were made welcome at tables in the humblest of cafes, and
given access to the inner circles of the most exclusive social gatherings.
Their lives and loves, their rivalries, victories and defeats, were gobbled up
by a ravenous public, much as people wait today with bated breath for the
latest episodes of popular television dramas.
The fabulously costumed images of these stars of
the stage were available to all, on the faces of picture postcards, a new
medium whose "golden age" coincided with la Belle Époque. The
tantalizing photographic images of popular entertainers like La Belle Otero,
along with hundreds of others, offered for mere pennies, were visible in shop
windows in towns and cities all across Europe and available in kiosks
everywhere, in train stations, on street corners. By maintaining some control
over the rights to their images, some performers managed considerable profits
from the sales of these postcard images, as well.
SOLD La Belle Otero wearing a body stocking and a cape.
With the advent of moving pictures, Caroline
Otero also enjoyed the distinction of being perhaps the world's first movie
star. In 1898, the famous Lumière Company produced a one minute film of Otero dancing in the Czar's St. Petersburg. The
film was afterwards viewed by wide audiences all across Europe, adding to her
fame. It is a wonderful glimpse of her, and of that wonderful era and, at least
at the time of this posting, is actually available for viewing online!
By 1914, the magic of La Belle Epoque was fading
away, its spell broken by the roar of cannon and the horrors of the "Great
War." The picture postcard's vast popularity also faded amidst that chaos,
never quite regaining its place of prominence in the hearts of the people.
WWI French propaganda image
In 1918, at the war's end, La Belle Otero, still
beautiful, still greatly admired, was fifty years old and made the decision to
retire gracefully from the stage. At one point in her life she was quoted as
saying, "Women have one mission in life: to be beautiful. When one gets
old, one must learn how to break mirrors. I am very gently expecting to
die." (Time Magazine, quoted in wikipedia) She purchased a huge mansion,
lived like the countess she claimed to be, was frequently seen wagering vast
amounts of money in the casinos of Monte Carlo, and apparently spent her
fortune as if it would last forever, which of course, it did not. The photographer Edward Quinn took a photograph of her in the 1950s, standing on a balcony where, then in her eighties, she enjoyed feeding the pigeons. In 1965, at the age of 97, while living in a
small one room apartment, in the Novelty Hotel in Nice, Caroline Otero died as
a result of a heart attack. She was remembered by neighbors and acquaintances
as often speaking of her past glories, and of that golden age, La Belle Époque,
which in many ways had been typified by the lovely and celebrated La Belle
Otero.
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We are fortunate to have additional postcards of La Belle Otero on their way, featuring photographs taken by the great Reutlinger of Paris. These beautiful images will be available in Red Poulaine in the near future.
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