Historical vice vignettes from Perrottet, (first) Paris version

If you recall, there was an article in Slate a few months ago about Edward VII's "sex chair." The corpulent Prince had a chair designed so that he could do the wild thing with two women at the same time (still haven't figured out how this worked, but I clearly haven't given it enough thought).

"Bertie" apparently frequented Le Chabanais, a brothel on the Rue Chabanais, of course, made to look like a grotto. The Prince of Wales also had a huge bathtub at the brothel, which he is said to have filled with Mumm on summer evenings.

That chair is currently sitting silently (I hope) in an auctioneer's upper floor in Paris.

Did you know that, at the restaurant Laperouse, there are mirrors in the chambres particuliers, the private rooms, on which courtesans used to scratch their diamonds to see if they were real or not?

I suspect that to be that kind of a courtesan, you had to have a speciality...could it have been good conversation?

A famous courtesan, Hautense Daubinesco, made it into the society pages regularly because of her "pro bono" work with journalists. Of course, nothing like that could ever happen nowadays. Ummm...

It just goes to show that while money may not buy ya love, it can buy a very large bathtub -- but I can imagine a lot better uses for the champagne.

And if you go to see Le Chabanais (now an office building) you might want to check out the "erotic archeologist" across the Rue. But that's for another time....