Portal:Prostitution/Selected biography/6

Esther Lachmann, in the 1850s

Esther Lachmann (French pronunciation: [ɛstɛʁ laʃman]; 7 May 1819 – 21 January 1884), generally known as La Païva (French: [la paiva]), was the most famous of 19th-century French courtesans. 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". Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".

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. (read more...)