Decline and fall

Gillian Freeman

Courtesans of the 'Italian Renaissance Georgina Masson (Seeker and Warburg £4.50) A Place for Pleasure G. L. Simons (Harwood-Smart Publishing £3.95) Mankoff's Lusty Europe Allan H. Mankoff (Mayflower £1.75)

Question: What separates these two notorious Roman ladies, Tullia d'Aragona and Anna, wife of the Marchese Camillo Casata Stampa di Sconcina? Answer: Approximately four centuries and a yawning chasm between their intellectual abilities. What links them? Both were whores. Tullia died in 1556 and the Marchesa (who had come to Rome in the hope of breaking into the movie scene) was shot by her husband a few years ago because she had the temerity to fall in love, Both happen to have their exploits categorised in the literature under review, but, oh what a falling off was there between the reign of Tullia, Queen of the literary salon, and Anna who made it from peasant cottage to penthouse de luxe. One might almost say Hyperion to a satyr or rather Hypatia to a hex in this, the oldest and most romanticised profession of all. Tullia d'Aragona wrote poetry that is still in the anthologies while befriending half of Italy's famous men. Anna pulled in the tourists fcom Munich and Minneapolis, wearing only

Wet white pants cut just so high — or is it low? — that one can glimpse the tiny fringe glistening above the small gold padlock and key hanging by a chain round her hips.

Alas! the association that transcended the physical has deteriorated into a pricey and perfunctory service, the decline and fall of the Roman harlot, pearls to plastic in just on four hundred years. Georgina Masson, as might be anticipated, has written a learned and fascinating account of the leading Renaissance courtesans, intelligent, occasionally intellectual and generally beautiful women Tullia was, by contemporary standards an exception, being taller and longer-nosed than the fashionable concept demanded who provided far more than bodily gratification. By detailing their lives and their lovers, both_ collectively and individually the facts provide riot only anecdotal illumination of the social mores of the period, but reveal the extraordinary, indomitable and independent spirit of women who were, to the common eye, dependent. Their combination of looks, wit, pride and artistic achievement, together with the necessary practicality in financial matters, gave them a position in society that is curiously contemporary, making them mistresses not only of men but of their own fates.

From Fiametta, -a damzel of singular beauty" to Veronica of Venice, Miss Masson has, with punctilious research that surmounts mere bookishness, given insight into the heights and depths, the perks and the prosecutions of the profession. Veronica Franco (like Tullia, a part-time poet) wrote in the toughest

terms to a mother who intended to turn her daughter into a courtesan. After upbraiding her for bleaching the girl's hair and baring her bosom, Veronica metaphorically bared her own. She assured the ambitious parent that she would

kill in one blow not only a soul but also your own honour and that of your daughter. Besides (she added) from the material point of view she is so plain.

Veronica had become disencDanted and disillusioned since her first happy, carefree days as a courtesan when she had picknicked in gondolas on warm summer nights, joined fishingand hunting-parties on the lagoons and entertained her friends with music (she was a talented harpsichordist). In middle-age she said:

you can do nothing worse in this life ... than to force the body into such servitude, which it is terrifying even to contemplate. To give oneself in prey to so many, to risk being despoiled, robbed or killed.

The fate, however, continued and continues to lure young women (and some of them, according to Mr Mankoff are very young indeed) onto the streets and into the bedrooms of anyone willing to pay, Mankoff's "only all-purpose guide to sex, love and romance does not, as is implied, confine itself to heterosexual practices; he has "researchedthe gay-bars, the orgies, the sadomasochistic establishments and the clubs of Europe in order to make the traveller content. Love, in spite of the title description, plays but a small part in the desperate pursuit of impersonal orgasm, making the reader's heart ache for the lonely tourist who, guide-book in hand, sets off to sample sexual gratification in Stockholm (or any of Mr Mankoff's selected cities). Perhaps it is only historical haze which makes the Edwardian brothels, described by G. L. Simons in his history of the pleasure palaces, seem more alluring than those five air-conditioned trailers in the Nevada Desert run by a Miss Beverley Harrell, who intends to become the first Madam to sit in the Nevada State Legislature.

Mr Simons fills in the chronological and geographical gaps between Miss Masson's treatise and Mr Mankoff's survey. He covers the libidinous quest from the temple-brothels of Ancient Greece to Mr and Mrs Glokke's bordello for women in Hamburg overlooked by Mr Mankoff surely it deserved an appendix? although he does suggest that women in need of a host-,escort should telephone 34 59 59. Howeyer, call-services and brothels for women open, as the saying goes, another jar of pills, and the historical precedent for sexual chauvinism disappears in the mists of time. Even lesbian activities are mainly for the men:

The bathing chamber is sumptuously arranged and May be used in company of a chosen nymph, for the charge of 100 fr . a negress is kept on the

establishment... and many ladies, both in society and Out of it, come here alone, or with their lovers, for Lesbian diversions.

The advertisement, in the nineteenth-century publication, The Pretty Women of Paris, was not intended to attract the female sex. Lesbian display was a specialist service, along with the flagellation brothels, child-brothels and homosexualbrothels. Virgins have always been in demand. In eighteenth century London a Miss Fawkland established her house or rather three houses in which she kept her girls.

The Temple of Aurora contained twelve young girls aged from 11 to 16; when they reached 16 they were transferred to the Temple of Flora, new .girls being brought into Aurora to keep up the quota. The small girls were taught to read, write, dance, sew and embroider. In particular they were encouraged to read such books as Fanny Hill -to inflame their senses at an early age."

Innocence is a word often associated with prostitution, both in literature and art. There is a quality of innocence in the paintings and heroines of the nineteenth century, and perhaps it was occasionally found in the Paris brothels just as there may have existed aging whores with hearts of gold. The girls of a famous establishment in the Rue des Moulins (boasting associations with Toulouse Lautrec and a bed in the shape of a shell) might have retained a charming naivety that captivated, their clients and even caused them to fall in love, albeit hopelessly, but there is absolutely nothing lovable about prostitution in Paris today.

Allan Mankoff's descriptions of old prostitutes offering "suckee-fuckee",

their complexions a livid boiled-chicken yellow, their skins the texture of antique egg-rolls

must be the biggest turn-off of the 'seventies.

One of the illustrations in Courtesans of the itaiian Renaissance shows two wax models; they are of the same courtesan in youth and old age. In youth she is smooth-skinned and rounded, her bones concealed by firm flesh and her breasts full and high. In age she resembles a Da Vinci drawing, a toothless harridan with withered dugs, the skeleton apparent beneath the skin. To this favour must she come not only the unknown courtesan but, as the guide to Lusty Europe demonstrates so depressingly, the whole profession.

Gillian Freeman's latest novel, The Marriage Machine, is to be published shortly