The Countess, a Parisian transgender singer in the 1850s/60s

Great thread by CN Lester over at twitter. Note how a transgender woman in 19th century France could draw support from all of LGBTQA queer culture.

//As promised, the next installment of #QueerHistoryMonday - today is all about The Countess aka Pauline aka Arthur W aka Arthur Berloget, a Parisian singer in the 1850s/60s. Here’s a picture she drew of herself at her toilette in 1874.

When talking about The Countess we immediately run into one of the main problems of queer history: which name, pronouns and gender do you use? The Countess was assigned male at birth, which has left the vast majority of historians talking about her as ‘him’ and 'a man’.

However, the reason we know about The Countess is because of the autobiography she left us: “The Secret Confessions of a Parisian: The Countess, 1850-1871”, written in 1874 and finally published in 1895. In it she describes her joy in living as a woman, how The Countess was the name bestowed upon her in a moving ceremony by her fellow 'filles’ and tribade sisters (before that she had been Pauline for a number of years), and the sadness it caused her to have to revert to being 'a man’ for a stint in the army and then later in prison.

So it seems only right to respect her own self-knowledge, let alone her life experience, and use 'she’ and 'The Countess’. The “Confessions” are an amazing document, not only because of what they contain, but the authority with which they are written, and the author’s background.

The Countess was born into a working class Parisian home, and transitioned in her teens, becoming the kept woman of a member of the nobility. She then became a café-concert singer, a courtesan, an army deserter and then a robber, which led to the prison sentence.

She was something of a dilettante artist throughout her life, and her autobiography is illustrated by her own drawings. Below is her depiction of her fellow 'fille’ 'La Charles’:

The Countess left behind the most incredible record of queer Parisian life in the mid 19th century. To cherry-pick just a few of the wonderful insights found within: The Countess came out to her mother and was supported and cherished as a daughter; the tribades [lesbians] and the 'filles’ [transfeminine] or 'mignons’ [darlings] are described as a family, and are depicted as providing mutual support (and some amazing champagne-drenched parties), and it was possible (certainly in The Countess’s case) for a woman assigned male at birth to have a successful performing career.

The theatre (whether the popular café-cons or the other forms of Parisian theatre) was a popular place for filles/mignons, tribades, sapphists, and garçons (masculine queer men) to cruise, and also to hero worship their favourites on stage.

Throughout her work, The Countess makes clear distinctions between different groups of queer people: those who experience same sex attraction and are very much in line with their assigned at birth gender, and those who 'want to be’/live as the other gender.

In her milieu, these groups came together as friends and lovers, though her closest friendships are describes as being with fellow filles, her 'sister’ tribades, and with cis women sex workers who supported her, helped her with her 'transformation’ and showed her the ropes.

Here’s The Countess’s picture of a typical tribade - she notes that many don’t pass as men due to their “lovely curves”, but one - “B” - “adopted men’s clothes and looked ravishing in them. Even men were fooled, and women went wild over her.”

While “The Confessions” reflect some of the common literary/sexological mores of the era - “why am I like this?” “Oh, my life of voluptuous sin” etc. - they have a glorious defiant tone along with that, and some very tender moments.

If you’d like to read them in their entirety, you can find them in “Queer Lives: Men’s Autobiographies from Nineteenth Century France” (2008). This book is a wealth of source material, but presented throughout in a disappointingly (to my mind erroneously) cisnormative way.

So, instead, I’ll leave the final words to the Countess herself, radiant in the success of her transition, 180 years ago: “I, who had so desired to be a girl, have triumphed over natural law.”//