Leontine Pauline Aubart

£25,000 in today's money translates into around £400 in 1912 money. Everybody would see that much in a lifetime, but for many it would take awhile. Captain Smith could earn it in 4 months. One of his deckhands in 7 years. Mme Aubart's maid in 16 years.
 
I'm not taking offence, but I should say that I am trying to look at it from a 1912 point of view. What I do know is that if she was a kept woman, I don't think that fact that she had a yet to be explained amount of money, is enough evidence. Where does the information come from that says she was Guggenheims mistress? I can't find it, but wonder if it gives any more clues. I don't know why everyone thinks 'singer' is a euphemism. In 1912 women couldn't do lots of jobs like now, but singer was one they could do, like dressmaking. Are all the women singing in Operas, Musicals, Theatre, Dining Salon bands, Night Entertainments all over the country in a time before TV and other entertainment, all to be questioned about their morals because they truthfully describe their job as singer?!!
 
But the fact remains that Leontine and Guggenheim WERE travelling together - there is no question about it. The telegrams she tried to send from the 'Carpathia' after her rescue prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. As I attempted to demonstrate in my post of yesterday afternoon, the prevailing moral climate of 1912 would have prohibited any 'respectable' woman from travelling with a married man to whom she wasn't related. So the chance that the couple were 'just good friends' is virtually nil! As Michael stated a while ago, she really COULD have had some sort of singing career. But, as Brian quite rightly pointed out yesterday, if this had been the case, then that career should be quite easy to trace. Yet we know virtually nothing about it - there is seemingly no record of her engagements, her performances, her training...

I'm not quite sure what your point is, Sashka. I'd be quite happy and perfectly willing to believe that she was an early example of a 'career girl', making enough money to pay her own way in the world. But the evidence strongly suggests the contrary. None of us are casting aspersions upon her character. We're simply looking at the most likely scenario. We KNOW that she was the lover of a wealthy man. That he was also footing her bills is firmly within the realms of possibility!
 
Because I am writing something, I want to make everything accurate before adding on my own personal view. Just because no one has found a record of her singing career doesn't mean there isn't one, and why does she need to be recorded in documents to be financially successful? I make quite a lot of money, and have flown first class once, but you won't find me recorded in the newspapers. There is very little evidence but lots of speculation. I will read the telegrams because they sound really interesting, thank you. Is there any more information about their relationship? I don't know what she was like, she may have been the biggest floozie going, using Guggenheim for his money, and sleeping with all the crew, but without any real evidence she could just as likely be the love of Guggenheim's life, victim of social standards of the day, she could have had an inheritance, and money from a low key but successful singing career, travelling to New York to sort out her future. For all I know she may have got a big break on the Broadway stage, and her ticket was paid for by the theatre. She could then have timed her travel with Guggenheim, who she was entangled with. She is a real woman, not a cartoon character.

I was told by an academic friend that to do proper research you should do it in a certain way otherwise you make really bad mistakes, and also don't find the real information, because you aren't looking for it. Nothing is black and white is it?!!
 
I can't confirm this from any primary source, but Mme Aubart is said to have been a chanteuse at the famous Cabaret du Lapin Agile (the Nimble Rabbit) in Monmartre. This was (and still is) a small, informal venue much favoured by avant garde writers and artists (including "something Picasso"), and perhaps just the sort of place which appealed to Ben Guggenheim. It would certainly have been a favourite haunt later for his daughter Peggy. The cabaret performers were mostly not well known, and certainly not well paid. Here are a couple of pics - the exterior as painted by Utrillo, and a photo of the interior, which looks rather like the main set from Steptoe & Son!

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We can be reasonably sure that Ninette wasn't traveling to New York to sing for her supper. There is no indication of an occupation on the Carpathia manifest, and on a trip to New York just 6 months earlier (on the Mauretania) her 'occupation' was listed as 'tourist'. Curiously, on that occasion her marital status was given as 'single', whereas on the Carpathia manifest in 1912 it is 'married'. The 1911 manifest also shows that she had last been in New York in 1910, but there is no record of an arrival in that year under the name 'Aubart', so perhaps on that occasion she really had been single.
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Sashka, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about the possibility of Aubart having been prosperous from a singing career that no one's discovered any record of.

I agree with everything you said about the importance of staving off foregone conclusions in academic research, but academic research is something very different from kicking ideas around on a message board. If I were preparing a book and presenting a version of Madame Aubart's life and character for the world, I wouldn't allow myself as much latitude for speculation as I do here.

If Ninette Aubart was a woman with choices (which, unfortunately, means money more than anything), than her association with Guggenheim is all the more interesting to me. Some of the passengers who intrigue me the most are the women who managed to do something different - either personally or professionally - than following the course mapped out for them. I'm referring to Alice Leader with her medical career, Elsie Bowerman with her legal career, Edith Pears with her ambulance driving, Daisy Minahan and Marie Young with their teaching, Harriet Crosby raising a child born out of wedlock, or Mabel Fortune leaving her marriage to make a life with a woman.

I don't feel I'm doing Ninette Aubart an injustice to say - whatever their personal feelings for each other - it looks like Ben Guggenheim did provide some financial support. There's the fact that stories survived within the Guggenheim family that Aubart accepted money from them after Ben died.

There's the fact that Aubart and Guggenheim were heading to the city in which his wife and children lived, thus the place where it would have been the most impossible for them to have a real life together. True, there are many possible reasons for this - he wanted the woman he loved to see his home, he wanted to be near his children and she was consenting to degrade herself by leaving her social life and home and spending her life sneaking around and doing it out of her love for him, she had a job opportunity and so he was going with her, they were just going for a short visit because she wanted to see New York and he had things to attend to and.

The biggest reason is that this is 1912. Did most women who severed ties with respectability (and remember everything that that entailed) do so because they wanted to? What are the odds that Aubart was financially independent? Sure, she might have been an heiress or a pioneering entrepreneur, and a serious researcher should examine those possibilities. But how likely is it? A small minority of women in 1912 lived unconventional lives, and only a small minority of those did so because they chose to.

There were other women on board who had non-traditional romantic lives and who I don't assume were "kept", either because there is no evidence to suggest they were or there is very definite evidence to the contrary. But in Ninette's case, there are indicators - not proof positive - that she was.
 
Thanks Bob, that's so interesting! I had no idea that she had visited the States previously. She seems to have come and gone with some regularity around this time.

It's also nice to see her singing career placed in some kind of context, however vague or unreliable the source from which your information is derived. The Nimble Rabbit certainly doesn't LOOK like the sort of swanky establishment in which Leontine could earn enough to keep herself in maids and Vuitton...but perhaps it appealed to uber-cool tourists who tipped well?
 
Yes, Martin, it looks like the sort of place where the artistes were paid in drinks! But the patrons were a mix of penniless artists and men (and women) of means, at a time when it wasn't uncommon for even a chorus girl to receive ludicrously expensive gifts from men who were nothing more than 'admirers'. Next time you're in Paris, pay a visit and check out the patrons with the longest memories. You may get no information, but at least you can get plastered in the good cause of research.
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I find what you are saying very interesting, and like you am kicking around ideas. I like to keep my mind open to any possibility. I will see what I can find out about her based on the interesting speculations people have written, and the few facts and let you know if I get anything new. Of course there are indicators, but that is all the are, and they might be wrong. Please don't take this the wrong way but I wouldn,t want you all on the jury if I had been wrongly accused of a crime!!! (joke)
 
Hmmmm...Bob, you've got me wondering...was your source somebody at the Agile Bunny? It's interesting to speculate how long the memory of somebody like Leontine Aubart might linger. Presumably nobody who saw her perform - unless they had pickled themselves in absinthe and so were unusually well preserved?!
 
I forgot to say that she may not have made a penny from her singing, it may have been a totally spurious job description, but I would rather not guess. That doesn't mean you can't have an opinion. That's fine!
 
I just looked at the "lapin agile" website which is interesting. It looks like it was a very trendy hang out for avant garde artists and the rich. It says that the show developed many singers poets and musicians who were able to make their first appearances there. Many among them became stars in France. There was obviously an artistic standard that is worth remembering when thinking about people who had performed there!!!
 
>>Are all the women singing in Operas, Musicals, Theatre, Dining Salon bands, Night Entertainments all over the country in a time before TV and other entertainment, all to be questioned about their morals because they truthfully describe their job as singer?!!<<

At that time, they might have been. Some rightly, and some wrongly.

>>Just because no one has found a record of her singing career doesn't mean there isn't one,<<

Doesn't mean there was either. There could be a lot of reasons for this, ranging from the possibility that she really didn't have any such career, or if she did, that she was in fact a very minor figure on the stage.

>>Is there any more information about their relationship?<<

Probably not a lot beyond the sort of gossip that circulates quietly in so-called polite company. There was quite the stigma associated with extramarital affairs by anyone, even if both parties happened to be single. For that reason, such people weren't inclined to advertise their activities for all to see and hear.
 

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