Author’s Note
224 Words
Author’s NoteThe history of Blanche d’Antigny and Marguerite Bellanger is authentic. Blanche inspired both the novel Nana by Zola and the picture of Nana by Edouard Manet. She was the prototype of a cocotte.
Her lovers were incalculable because she was warm-hearted and generous and could never say ‘no’ to any man who wanted her. Maharajas, Khedives and Shahs frequented her on their visits to Paris and Princes, Noblemen, bankers, actors and paupers beat their way to her Salon des Amoureux.
She not only appeared on the stage in Paris but also in London where she fell in love for the first and only time with an actor. When he died of consumption she borrowed the money for his funeral because she explained,
“I don’t want him to be buried with the money I’ve earned in bed.”
She died of smallpox when she was thirty-four.
Marguerite Bellanger attended Napoleon III’s funeral when he died in exile in England. Like many cocottes she longed for respectability and was well known for her charity work.
In 1886 walking in the grounds of her Château, given to her by one of her lovers, she caught a chill, which developed into acute peritonitis.
A jealous old servant turned away the village Curé who wanted to administer the last rites to her and slammed the door in the face of her family.
Marguerite died alone in her forty-sixth year.
- Writer
