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Esther Lachmann (7 May 181921 January 1884), generally known as La Païva, was arguably the most successful of 19th-century French courtesans. A a notable investor and architecture patron, and a collector of jewels, she had a personality so hard-bitten that she was described as the "one great courtesan who appears to have had no redeeming feature".〔Joanna Richardson, ''La Vie Parisienne: 1852-1870'' (H. Hamilton, 1971), page 69〕 Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".〔Viel-Castel, Count Horace de, ''The Memoirs of Count Horace de Viel-Castel: A Chronicle of the Principal Events, Political and Social, During the Reign of Napoleon III from 1851 to 1864'' (Remington and Company, 1888), pages 33-34〕 Rising from modest circumstances in her native Russia to becoming one of the most infamous women in mid-19th-century France to marrying one of Europe's richest men, Lachmann maintained a noted literary salon out of Hôtel de la Païva, her luxurious mansion at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Completed in 1866, it exemplified the opulent taste of the Second Empire, and since 1904 it has been the headquarters of the Travellers Club. Lachmann also inspired the promiscuous, traitorous spy Césarine ("a strange, morbid, monstrous creature")〔"Mrs. Fiske as Cesarine; Her Skill and Power Well Shown in Dumas's Gloomy Drama", ''The New York Times'', 25 March 1896〕 in Alexandre Dumas's 1873 play ''La Femme de Claude''.〔''Proceedings of the Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association'', Issue 13, Volume 5 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), page 115〕 ==Background== Born in Moscow, Russia, Esther Lachmann was the daughter of Martin Lachmann, a weaver, and his wife, the former Anna Amalie Klein, who were Jewish and of Polish descent. On 11 August 1836, aged 17, Lachmann married Antoine François Hyacinthe Villoing, a tailor (died Paris, June 1849).〔"La Paiva", ''The Fortnightly'', December 1922, page 482〕 They had one son, Antoine (1837-1862) who died while he was in medical school.〔"La Paiva", ''The Fortnightly'', December 1922, page 478〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「La Païva」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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