Coco Before Chanel is, because, well, that’s the material point.. (pun).
And where’s my Miss Potter. I love that movie. But someone stole my copy. Must get another.
I wrote about a letter in the Nicholson stash, (but not a Nicholson letter) from someone writing down the names of all the Lewis relations in the US.
It is mentioned in the letter that an Aunt Flora (which one I can’t tell) is living in the poor house is Sarnia with her invalid husband, where they pay 1.50 a week to stay.
It also mentions that another relative, a niece is working as a high school teacher in Chicago and earning 180 a month, three times what Marion is making.
This I MUST put in Flo in the City. I’m sure visions of the poor house danced in Margaret’s head when she read this. It must have terrified her, or comforted her, as her daughter Marion was a teacher.
(I saw in one of my era magazines a profile of the Superintendant of Education in Chicago who was a woman and whose salary was 10,000 a year, a huge salary.)
Watching Coca after Chanel, up to this scene and seeing how Coco had to ‘ingratiate herself’ with her first rich boyfriend, indeed foisting herself on him because she needed a place to stay,well, it’s something.
I have a bio of Coco, but years ago. I’m not certain if this was EXACTLY the case. But she was a ‘courtesan’ of sorts.. No choice, she had no connections.
But as many great works of literature have shown, courtesans had it better than most women. And this courtesan was the right woman in the right place at the right time.
