LETTER FROM PARIS: Let Us Now Praise Marthe Richard
Harriss, Joseph A.
LETTER FROM PARIS , l o s e p h A, I t a l " 'iss ~ ..... II1 ikla, " ":l t/3e: t-{lch a i'd N EVER HEARD OF HER? Join the club. But in France, home of oh la-la!, she is a household word....
...It led to an ambitious, largely fictitious 1937 film, Marthe Richard au Service de la France, with one of France's great actresses of the day, Edwige Feuill~re, playing Marthe and German superstar Erich von Stroheim as the stiff-necked German officer she seduced in an act ofpatriotisme horizontal...
...In a classic case of coals to Newcastle, many now are imported to France from Eastern Europe and Asia...
...Indeed, the former streetwalker became something of a prude, coming out against things like the pill and feminism...
...They figured in travel brochures of the day and openly advertised their services...
...With French troops bogged down in the trenches, Zozo talked France's spymaster, Georges Ladoux, into recruiting Marthe...
...T HE WAR OVER, MARTHE RETURNED t o Paris and flying...
...For France, she was credited with getting information on German sub activities and providing the name of an enemy operative in France...
...Crampton, alas, soon died in what one police report called "bizarre, if not suspect, circumstances?' However that may be--the case was closed-that made Marthe a very merry widow indeed, for the 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2006 JOSEPH A. HARRISS foundation owed her a generous lifetime pension...
...After Mata Hari it was Marthe's turn...
...Before being killed two years later in the battle of Verdun, this doting Pygmalion started her metamorphosis by teaching her proper French and horseback riding...
...Came World War II, and more opportunities for Marthe...
...Joining their social circles led to her seducing Thomas Crampton, a British financial director of the Rockefeller Foundation...
...When not operating in collaborationist Vichy, she was in Paris frequenting Gestapo types and procuring girls for parties with German officers...
...But the truth about Marthe is much more interesting than the myth...
...All this would have gratified Marthe, who died in 1982 at the age of 93...
...At airfields she met a well-connected Russian ~migr~, Joseph Davrichewy, nicknamed Zozo, whom, naturellement, she seduced...
...The controversial law that bears her name periodically roils French public opinion over whether the brothels should be reopened...
...As she later told it with a straight face, she took a stiff drink, lay back, and courageously muttered Vive la France as she sacrificed her purity for her country...
...Yes, it was Marthe Richard who, as a former hooker turned respectable elected official in 1946, sponsored the law that put an end to that time-honored, world-famous institution, the French brothel...
...Their marriage in 1926 made her a British subject and, more important, enhanced her much-sought respectability...
...After French women got the vote following the Liberation, Marthe was picked to run for the Paris Municipal Council on the Resistance ticket...
...Like the trains of the time, there were three classes: third class meat markets where girls were expected to handle dozens of clients a day...
...Asked by one Paris newspaper how she managed to age so well, she replied, poker-faced, "Abstinence...
...Their platform called for closing the country's legal brothels, of which there were some 1,000 nationwide, including 180 in Paris alone...
...New French biographies timed to this year's 60th anniversary observance of that considerable event make clear that Marthe (rhymes with smart) bluffed and beguiled her way to prominence as a heroic World War I spy for her country and protector of bourgeois morality...
...The lawvoted on April 13, 1946, outlawing them bore the name Loi Marthe Richard...
...Born dirt-poor as Marthe Betenfeld in Alsace in 1889--the year the Eiffel Tower opened-she was streetwalking at 16 in the garrison town of Nancy...
...second class establishments frequented by businessmen and clerics...
...Especially this year, with Marthe being commemorated for an egregiously ironic act that shook sex-tolerant French tradition and mores and still stirs public debate...
...She gave Von Krohn data on things like French troop movements, claiming at war's end that it was outdated information...
...Her antennas picked up the turning tide of battle in time to join the Resistance and be considered a heroine of both wars...
...Mort Dieu...
...and luxury houses like the Phoenix, the Sphinx, and the One Two Two, where crowned heads and presidents on strenuous official visits to France stopped for a moment of relaxation...
...Thus ended the French institution begun by Napoleon in 1804 that had put prostitutes behind the closed doors-thus the official name maisons closes--of brothels to protect bourgeois morality...
...NOVEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37...
...Ladoux, who was then running, as they say in espionage parlance, Mata Hari, the famous Dutch-born exotic dancer turned spy, was immediately impressed by certain talents Marthe possessed...
...All this ended thanks to Marthe...
...By 1960 she was preaching in favor of supervised and hygienic "sexual clinics...
...Still, she made allowances for human foibles...
...During slow business hours, tourists were given guided tours...
...At one place, Le Chabanais, the Prince of Wales had his own specially designed room...
...Richard...
...others show her looking adventurous at the commands ofpre-World War I airplanes...
...The book resulted in her being awarded France's highest civilian accolade, the Legion d'Honneur...
...She attained such status thanks to luck, pluck, brass-bound gall, and canny creation-with several fabulist autobiographies along the way-of her own myth...
...Joseph A. Harriss is a Paris-based American journalist whose latest book is About France...
...There in 1915 she met, seduced, and married a wealthy fish merchant named Henri Richer...
...Marthe cleverly surfed on that wave of notoriety, making the lecture circuit and reveling in her new name: Ladoux had called her Richard in the book, thinking it had more class than Richer...
...Certainly the problem is the same today as when he visited in the 19th century: too many women selling sex--figures range up to 30,000 pros, plus an estimated 60,000 "occasionals" in Paris alone...
...He also encouraged her whim to take up flying...
...Marthe did her duty...
...Whether France's moral climate makes it especially propitious for prostitution is debatable, though Mark Twain may have had a point when he declared that "France has neither winter nor summer n o r morals...
...One candidate for mayor of Paris calls for it...
...Many of the chic British colony there were also taking to the air...
...Came World War II, and more opportunities for Marthe...
...A 2003 law made passive soliciting a crime punishable by six months in prison and a fine of $7,500...
...She was soon recruited for Germany by Von Krohn, thus becoming a double agent-code name Alouette for the French, agent $32 for Germany...
...She was now Marthe nde Betenfeld, Widow Richer, Widow Crampton, a.k.a...
...That didn't stop Marthe from making enough francs to move to Paris and begin her rise to respectability...
...But French bureaucrats being a stubborn lot, her ashes in Paris's famous P~re Lachaise cemetery are graced not with the name Marthe Richard, but the last official name in their registry: Marthe Crampton...
...Period photos portray her as a comely young brunette with blue -gray eyes and a haughty, determined air...
...Their official schedule soberly referred to such extracurriculars as "Visit to the president of the Senate...
...Its main result has been colorful street demonstrations by prostitutes protesting against competition from the new arrivals and demanding their rights as taxpayers satisfying a market demand...
...in 1913 Marthe boldlybecame one of the first women in the world to win her pilot's license-years before the likes of Amelia Earhart...
...When not operating in collaborationist Vichy, she was in Paris frequenting Gestapo types and procuring girls for parties with German officers...
...After Paris closed them, a nationwide ban soon followed...
...Her mission: to seduce Baron Hans Von Krohn, a German naval attach& Besides having a glass eye, Von Krohn was a specialist in submarine warfare, and German subs were playing havoc with Atlantic shipping...
...Police records show that she had to carry the card issued to prostitutes with venereal disease...
...Despite--or because of--being largely made up, the 1932 bookwas hugely successful...
...He promptly sent her to Spain, which as a neutral country in World War I was a hotbed of espionage...
...B Y THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY France's bordello business had become an important part of the estabhshed social order...
...Her next, definitive, step up occurred when spymaster Georges Ladoux wrote a series of highly imaginative books about the famous spies he ran...
Vol. 39 • November 2006 • No. 9
