Cora pearl biography
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Cora Pearl
Well known 19th century courtesan
Cora Pearl (born Eliza Emma Crouch; December – 8 July ) was an English courtesan or cocotte of the French demimonde who became most well known during the period of the Second French Empire.
Early life
[edit]Eliza Emma Crouch was born in Plymouth in månad ,[2] just a few months before the introduction of civil registration in England and Wales. She was baptised at St Andrew's Church, Plymouth tillsammans with her younger sister Hannah Lydia (born 30 November ) on 27 December Her subsequent use of her sister Louisa's birth certificate in her Mémoires, amended to appear as if it were her own, led to over a century of confusion over her date of birth. The exact date of her birth in månad is still unknown.
Her father was the cellist and composer Frederick Nicholls Crouch, who married her mother, the contralto Lydia (née Pearson), at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden in bygd April , Crouch had returned to London, leavi
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Pearl, Cora (c. –)
English-born courtesan. Name variations: Eliza Crouch. Born Eliza Emma Crouch near Plymouth, England, around ; died in Paris, France, in ; daughter of a musician father and a singer mother.
On holiday in Paris around , English prostitute Eliza Crouch fell in love with the city and decided to stay. Although not a great beauty, known as Cora Pearl, she became one of the most notorious courtesans of the Second Empire, amassing seemingly inexhaustible wealth and earning a spot in the Dictionary of National Biography. At the height of her legendary career, she was said to have received her clientele (which at one time included Prince Jérome Bonaparte, cousin of Emperor Napoleon III) in a reception salon carpeted in violet petals, upon which she danced a cancan before plunging into a bathtub filled with champagne. From time to time, she reputedly gave extravagant dinners for upwards of 20 men, sometimes offering herself naked on a silver platter as the plat du
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ONE OF BOURNE'S MOST famous sons, Charles Worth, is to feature in a new musical due to be staged in the United States in the spring. The subject of the production is one of his models, Cora Pearl, the Parisian courtesan who became the talk of the town.
The story of Charles Frederick Worth is well known, one of five children of solicitor William Worth and his wife, Mary Ann, who left home as a boy during the early 19th century to seek his fortune and after working in London for a spell, sailed for France and later established his fashion house in Paris.
His salon became an important call for wealthy American women doing the grand tour and even attracted Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador to Paris, who wore one of his gowns at a court ball in the Tuileries. When the Empress Eugénie noticed the dress, she became a customer and Worth's reputation was established and by he was dressing the nobility and the royalty of Russia, Austria, Italy and Spain.&