Nota bene: Below is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of my forthcoming book with Salim Rashid, Das Adam Smith Problematic? Ethics, Economics and Society. (Our conjectures in this excerpt are based in large part on historian Nina Kushner’s fascinating book Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Footnotes are below the fold.)

“Could the ‘Madame Nicol’ mentioned as a love interest in Colbert de Castlehill’s 18 September 1766 letter to Adam Smith have been an actress?[*] By all accounts, Madame Riccoboni–an accomplished actress and novelist–and Adam Smith–an admirer of the stage and the arts–were avid theater and opera fans during Smith’s stay in the City of Light in 1766.[1] Indeed, it is reported that ‘it is very likely Smith took recommendations from Riccoboni as to which theatrical performances to attend,'[2] and so it is not far-fetched to imagine to them attending a play or opera or concert together. What many Smith scholars, however, have failed to mention is that these theatrical venues were also the center of an elite Parisian sexual marketplace, the famed dames entretenues or ‘kept women’ of French high society.[3]

“Famous for their talent, glamor, and beauty, the femmes galantes of the French stage were the most highly-sought after women of pleasure in all Europe, models and actresses who ‘earned their living by engaging in long-term sexual and often companionate relationships with men from the financial, political, and social elites, known as le monde (high society).'[4] Although not all theater women were kept mistresses or femmes galantes, this sultry scene overlapped directly with the world of the theater: ‘It was widely understood that any woman in the Opéra, and to a lesser degree the other theater companies, was a dame entretenue, or at least wanted to be.'[5] The world of theater was thus the center of this high-end sex market because ‘being on the stage greatly increased … “sexual capital,” the desirability of a mistress and hence the prices she could command for her services,'[6] and the theater district of the French capital was teeming with high-end brothels and places of ill-repute.[7] Although we have no other evidence to indicate whether Smith himself partook in a theatrical liaison, so to speak, who knows?”

[*] For reference, here is our translation of the relevant passage in Colbert de Castlehill’s letter:

“And you, Adam Smith, Glasgow philosopher, high-broad Ladies’ hero and idol, what are you doing my dear friend? How do you govern the Duchess of Anville and Madame de Boufflers, where your heart is always in love with Madame Nicol and with the attractions as apparent as hidden of this lady of Fife that you loved.”

[1] By way of example, John Rae (1895, ch. 14) and lan Simpson Ross (2010, ch. 13), two Smith scholars who have produced two of the most comprehensive and well-researched biographies of Smith, have both commented on the Scottish scholar’s fondness for the opera during his extended 1766 sojourn in Paris.

[2] Dawson 2018, p. 8.

[3] Cf. Kushner 2013, pp. 4-5: “About a fifth of the kept women under police surveillance at midcentury worked in the theater. Most were in the Opéra or its school, as dancers and singers.”

[4] lbid., p. 3.

[5] Ibid., p. 31.

[6] lbid., p. 5.

[7] In the words of Nina Kushner (2013, p. 110), “Many brothels were in the center of town, on the rue St. Honoré or nearby, making them convenient for men leaving the Opéra.”