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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

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I'm not able to access the article, but they may indeed be selling temporary fidelity; the grandes horizontales would take a lover for a while and then move on when he or they tired of the association. Plus there's probably an element of showing off on the male side here, the extravagance of "yes I'm paying for this woman at the kind of rates you all know are nosebleed high", since extravagance showered on one's mistress was another way of demonstrating wealth, status and power: you can afford to throw away this kind of money on this kind of expenditure.

Just be glad you don't have a mistress or kept woman like this!

La Païva, as Lachmann became known after her second marriage, crossed paths in 1852 with the 22-year-old Prussian industrialist and mining magnate Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. ...The young Reichsgraf was smitten, and upon meeting her again in Berlin, he offered to make La Païva his mistress and declared that, if she agreed, she would share his fortune. La Païva, who craved riches more than anything, was reported to have said, after settling down with the count, "All my wishes have come to heel, like tame dogs!"

On 16 August 1871, La Païva obtained an annulment of her marriage to Albino Francisco de Araújo de Païva, and two months later, on 28 October, Thérèse Lachmann (the name she used on the marriage certificate) wed Henckel von Donnersmarck in the Lutheran Church in Paris. The groom's gift to the bride was a triple-strand diamond necklace formerly owned by the deposed French empress Eugénie.

...In addition to purchasing Château de Pontchartrain, near Paris, for La Païva and giving her an annuity of £80,000, Henckel von Donnersmarck financed the construction of the most ostentatious mansion in Paris: Hôtel de la Païva, located at 25 avenue des Champs-Élysées. ...Among the mansion's celebrated features is a central staircase made of Algerian yellow onyx (far more expensive than marble), which matched the Donnersmarck yellow diamonds, and a tub of the same North African stone; another tub, made of silver, had three taps, one being for either milk or Champagne.