Childhood is the golden paradise we are always consciously or

unconsciously trying to re-create. The Natural embodies the longed- for qualities of childhood—spontaneity,sincerity,unpretentiousness.

In the presence of Naturals, we feel at ease, caught up in their playful spirit, transported back to that golden age. Naturals also make a virtue out of weakness, eliciting our sympathy for their trials, making us want to protect them and help them. As with a child, much of this is natural, but some of it is exaggerated, a

conscious seductive maneuver. Adopt the pose of the Natural to neutralize people’s natural defensiveness and infect them with

helpless delight.

Psychological Traits of the Natural

Children are not as guileless as we like to imagine. They suffer from

feelings of helplessness, and sense early on the power of their natural charm to remedy their weakness in the adult world. They learn to play a game: if their natural innocence can persuade a parent to yield to their desires in one instance, then it is something they can use strategically in another instance, laying it on thick at the right moment to get their way. If their vulnerability and weakness is so attractive, then it is something they can use for effect.

Long-past ages have a great and often puzzling attraction for men’s imagination. Whenever they are dissatisfied with their present surroundings— and this happens often enough—they turn back to the past and hope that they will now be able to

prove the truth of the inextinguishable dream of a golden age. They are probably still under the spell

of their childhood, which is presented to them by their not impartial memory as a time of uninterrupted bliss.

—SIGMUND FREUD, THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL

WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD, VOLUME 23

When Hermes was born on Mount Cyllene his mother Maia laid him in swaddling bands on a winnowing fan, but he grew with astonishing

quickness into a little boy, and as soon as her back was turned, slipped off and went looking for

adventure. Arrived at Pieria, where Apollo was tending a fine herd of cows, he decided to steal them. But, fearing to be betrayed by their tracks, he quickly made a number of shoes from the bark of a fallen oak and tied them with plaited grass to the feet of the cows, which he then drove off by night along the road. Apollo discovered the loss, but Hermes’s trick deceived him, and though he

went as far as Pylus in his westward search, and to Onchestus in his eastern, he was forced, in the end, to offer a reward for the apprehension of the thief.

Silenus and his satyrs, greedy of reward, spread out in different directions to track him down but, for a long while, without success. At last, as a

party of them passed through Arcadia, they heard the muffled sound of music such as they had never heard before, and the nymph Cyllene, from the mouth of a cave, told them that a most gifted child had recently been born there, to whom she was acting as nurse: he had constructed as nurse: he

had constructed an ingenious musical toy from the shell of a tortoise and some cow-gut, with which

he had lulled his mother to sleep. • “And from whom did he get the cow-gut?” asked the alert satyrs, noticing two hides stretched outside the

cave. “Do you charge the poor child with theft?” asked Cyllene. Harsh words were exchanged. • At that moment Apollo came up, having discovered

the thief ’s identity by observing the suspicious behaviour of a long-winged bird. Entering the

cave, he awakened Maia and told her severely that Hermes must restore the stolen cows. Maia pointed to the child, still wrapped in his swaddling bands and feigning sleep. “What an absurd charge!” she cried. But Apollo had already recognized the

hides. He picked up Hermes, carried him to Olympus, and there formally accused him of theft, offering the hides as evidence. Zeus, loth to believe that his own new- born son was a thief,

encouraged him to plead not guilty, but Apollo would not be put off and Hermes, at last, weakened and confessed. • “Very well, come with me,” he said, “and you may have your herd. I slaughtered

only two, and those I cut up into twelve equal portions as a sacrifice to the twelvegods”• “Twelve gods?” asked Apollo. “Whois the

twelfth?” • “Your servant, sir,” replied Hermes

modestly. “I ate no more than my share, though I was very hungry, and duly burned the rest.” • The two gods [Hermes and Apollo] returned to Mount Cyllene, where Hermes greeted his mother and

retrieved something that he had hidden underneath a sheepskin. • “What have you there?” asked Apollo. • In answer, Hermes showed his newly- invented tortoise-shell lyre, and played such a ravishing tune on it with the plectrum he had also invented, at the same time singing in praise of Apollo’s nobility, intelligence, and generosity, that

he was forgiven at once. He led the surprised and delighted Apollo to Pylus, playing all the way, and there gave him the remainder of the cattle, which

he had hidden in a cave. • “A bargain!” cried Apollo. “You keep the cows, and I take the lyre. ”

• “Agreed,” said Hermes, and they shook hands on it. • … Apollo, taking the child back to Olympus, told Zeus all that had happened. Zeus warned

Hermes that henceforth he must respect the rights of property and refrain from telling downright lies; but he could not help being amused. “You seem to be a very ingenious, eloquent, and persuasive godling,” he said. • “Then make me your herald,

Father,” Hermes answered, “and I will be

responsible for the safety of all divine property,

and never tell lies, though I cannot promise always to tell the whole truth. ” – • “That would not be expected of you,” said Zeus with a smile. Zeus

gave him a herald’s staff with white ribbons, which everyone was ordered to respect; a round hat against the rain, and winged golden sandals which carried him about with the swiftness of the wind.

—ROBERT GRAVES, THE GREEK MYTHS, VOLUME I

Why are we seduced by children’s naturalness? First, because anything natural has an uncanny effect on us. Since the beginning of time, natural phenomena—such as lightning storms or eclipses—have instilled in human beings an awe tinged with fear. The more civilized we become, the greater the effect such natural events have on us; the modern world surrounds us with so much that is manufactured and artificial that something sudden and inexplicable fascinates us. Children also have this natural power, but

because they are unthreatening and human, they are not so much awe inspiring as charming. Most people try to please, but the pleasantness of the

child comes effortlessly, defying logical explanation—and what is irrational is often dangerously seductive.

More important, a child represents a world from which we have been forever exiled. Because adult life is full of boredom and compromise, we harbor an illusion of childhood as a kind of golden age, even though it can often be a period of great confusion and pain. It cannot be denied, however, that childhood had certain privileges, and as children we had a pleasurable attitude to life. Confronted with a particularly charming child, we often feel wistful: we remember our own golden past, the qualities we have lost and wish we had again. And in the presence of the child, we get a little of that

goldenness back.

Natural seducers are people who somehow avoided getting certain childish traits drummed out of them by adult experience. Such people can be as powerfully seductive as any child, because it seems uncanny and

marvelous that they have preserved such qualities. They are not literally like children, of course; that would make them obnoxious or pitiful. Rather it is

the spirit that they have retained. Do not imagine that this childishness is something beyond their control. Natural seducers learn early on the value of retaining a particular quality, and the seductive power it contains; they adapt and build upon those childlike traits that they managed to preserve, exactly as the child learns to play with its natural charm. This is the key. It

is within your power to do the same, since there is lurking within all of us a devilish child straining to be let loose. To do this successfully, you have to be able to let go to a degree, since there is nothing less natural than seeming hesitant. Remember the spirit you once had; let it return, without self- consciousness. People are much more forgiving of those who go all the way, who seem uncontrollably foolish, than the halfhearted adult with a childish streak. Remember who you were before you became so polite and self-effacing. To assume the role of the Natural, mentally position yourself in any relationship as the child, the younger one.

The following are the main types of the adult Natural. Keep in mind that the greatest natural seducers are often a blend of more than one of these qualities.

The innocent.The primary qualities of innocence are weakness and misunderstanding of the world. Innocence is weak because it is doomed to vanish in a harsh, cruel world; the child cannot protect or hold on to its innocence. The misunderstandings come from the child’s not knowing about good and evil, and seeing everything through uncorrupted eyes. The weakness of children elicits sympathy, their misunderstandings make us laugh, and nothing is more seductive than a mixture of laughter and sympathy.

The adult Natural is not truly innocent—it is impossible to grow up in

this world and retain total innocence. Yet Naturals yearn so deeply to hold on to their innocent outlook that they manage to preserve the illusion of innocence. They exaggerate their weakness to elicit the proper sympathy. They act like they still see the world through innocent eyes, which in an adult proves doubly humorous. Much of this is conscious, but to be effective, adult Naturals must make it seem subtle and effortless—if they

are seen as trying to act innocent, it will come across as pathetic. It is better for them to communicate weakness indirectly, through looks and glances, or through the situations they get themselves into, rather than anything obvious. Since this type of innocence is mostly an act, it is easily adaptable for your own purposes. Learn to play up any natural weaknesses or flaws.

The imp.Impish children have a fearlessness that we adults have lost. That is because they do not see the possible consequences of their actions—how

some people might be offended, how they might physically hurt themselves in the process. Imps are brazen, blissfully uncaring. They infect you with their lighthearted spirit. Such children have not yet had their natural energy and spirit scolded out of them by the need to be polite and civil. Secretly,

we envy them; we want to be naughty too.

Adult imps are seductive because of how different they are from the rest of us. Breaths of fresh air in a cautious world, they go full throttle, as if their impishness were uncontrollable, and thus natural. If you play the part, do not worry about offending people now and then—you are too lovable and inevitably they will forgive you. Just don’t apologize or look contrite,

for that would break the spell. Whatever you say or do, keep a glint in your eye to show that you do not take anything seriously.

The wonder. A wonder child has a special, inexplicable talent: a gift for music, for mathematics, for chess, for sport. At work in the field in which they have such prodigal skill, these children seem possessed, and their

actions effortless. If they are artists or musicians, Mozart types, their work seems to spring from some inborn impulse, requiring remarkably little thought. If it is a physical talent that they have, they are blessed with unusual energy, dexterity, and spontaneity In both cases they seem talented beyond their years. This fascinates us.

Adult wonders are often former wonder children who have managed, remarkably, to retain their youthful impulsiveness and improvisational skills. True spontaneity is a delightful rarity, for everything in life conspires to rob us of it—we have to learn to act carefully and deliberately, to think about how we look in other people’s eyes. To play the wonder you need

some skill that seems easy and natural, along with the ability to improvise. If in fact your skill takes practice, you must hide this and learn to make your work appear effortless. The more you hide the sweat behind what you do, the more natural and seductive it will appear.

The undefensive lover. As people get older, they protect themselves against painful experiences by closing themselves off. The price for this is that they grow rigid, physically and mentally. But children are by nature unprotected and open to experience, and this receptiveness is extremely attractive. In the presence of children we become less rigid, infected with their openness.

That is why we want to be around them.

Undefensive lovers have somehow circumvented the self-protective process, retaining the playful, receptive spirit of the child. They often manifest this spirit physically: they are graceful, and seem to age less rapidly than other people. Of all the Natural’s character qualities, this one is the most useful. Defensiveness is deadly in seduction; act defensive and you’ll bring out defensiveness in other people. The undefensive lover, on

the other hand, lowers the inhibitions of his or her target, a critical part of seduction. It is important to learn to not react defensively: bend instead of resist, be open to influence from others, and they will more easily fall under your spell.

A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her ugliness. Soon, if she is natural and unaffected, her expression makes him overlook the fault of her

features. He begins to find her charming, it enters his head that she might be loved, and a week later he is living in hope. The following week he has been snubbed into despair, and the week

afterwards he has gone mad.

—STENDHAL, LOVE, TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND SUZANNE SALE

Examples of Natural Seducers

1. As a child growing up in England, Charlie Chaplin spent years in dire poverty, particularly after his mother was committed to an asylum. In his early teens, forced to work to live, he landed a job in vaudeville, eventually gaining some success as a comedian. But Chaplin was wildly ambitious, and so, in 1910, when he was only nineteen, he emigrated to the United States, hoping to break into the film business. Making his way to Hollywood, he found occasional bit parts, but success seemed elusive: the competition was fierce, and although Chaplin had a repertoire of gags that he had learned in vaudeville, he did not particularly excel at physical humor, a critical part of silent comedy. He was not a gymnast like Buster Keaton.

   In 1914, Chaplin managed to get the lead in a film short called Making a Living. His role was that of a con artist. In playing around with the costume for the part, he put on a pair of pants several sizes too large, then added a derby hat, enormous boots that he wore on the wrong feet, a walking cane, and a pasted-on mustache. With the clothes, a whole new character seemed to come to life—first the silly walk, then the twirling of the cane, then all

   sorts of gags. Mack Sennett, the head of the studio, did not find Making a Living very funny, and doubted whether Chaplin had a future in the movies, but a few critics felt otherwise. A review in a trade magazine read, “The clever player who takes the role of a nervy and very nifty sharper in this

   picture is a comedian of the first water, who acts like one of Nature’s own naturals.” And audiences also responded—the film made money.

   What seemed to touch a nerve in Making a Living, setting Chaplin apart from the horde of other comedians working in silent film, was the almost

   pathetic naïveté of the character he played. Sensing he was onto something, Chaplin shaped the role further in subsequent movies, rendering him more and more naive. The key was to make the character seem to see the world through the eyes of a child. In The Bank, he is the bank janitor who

   daydreams of great deeds while robbers are at work in the building; in The Pawnbroker, he is an unprepared shop assistant who wreaks havoc on a grandfather clock; in Shoulder Arms, he is a soldier in the bloody trenches of World War I, reacting to the horrors of war like an innocent child.

   Chaplin made sure to cast actors in his films who were physically larger than he was, subliminally positioning them as adult bullies and himself as the helpless infant. And as he went deeper into his character, something

   strange happened: the character and the real-life man began to merge. Although he had had a troubled childhood, he was obsessed with it. (For his film Easy Street he built a set in Hollywood that duplicated the London

   streets he had known as a boy.) He mistrusted the adult world, preferring the company of the young, or the young at heart: three of his four wives were teenagers when he married them.

   More than any other comedian, Chaplin aroused a mix of laughter and sentiment. He made you empathize with him as the victim, feel sorry for him the way you would for a lost dog. You both laughed and cried. And

   audiences sensed that the role Chaplin played came from somewhere deep inside—that he was sincere, that he was actually playing himself. Within a few years after Making a Living, Chaplin was the most famous actor in the world. There were Chaplin dolls, comic books, toys; popular songs and short stories were written about him; he became a universal icon. In 1921, when he returned to London for the first time since he had left it, he was greeted by enormous crowds, as if at the triumphant return of a great general.

   “Geographical” escapism has been rendered ineffective by the spread of air routes. What

   remains is “evolutionary” escapism—a downward course in one’s development, back to the ideas and emotions of “golden childhood,” which may well

   be defined as “regress towards infantilism,”

   escape to a personal world of childish ideas. • In a strictly-regulated society, where life follows

   strictly-defined canons, the urge to escape from the chain of things “established once and for all”

   must be felt particularly strongly • And the most

   perfect of them [comedians] does this with utmost perfection, for he [Chaplin] serves this principle … through the subtlety of his method which, offering

   the spectactor an infantile pattern to be imitated, pscyhologically infects him with infantilism and draws him into the “golden age” of the infantile paradise of childhood.

   —SERGEI EISENSTEIN, “CHARLIE THE KID.” FROM NOTES OF A FILM DIRECTOR

   The greatest seducers, those who seduce mass audiences, nations, the world, have a way of playing on people’s unconscious, making them react in a way they can neither understand nor control. Chaplin inadvertently hit on this power when he discovered the effect he could have on audiences by playing up his weakness, by suggesting that he had a child’s mind in an adult body. In the early twentieth century, the world was radically and rapidly changing. People were working longer and longer hours at increasingly mechanical jobs; life was becoming steadily more inhuman and heartless, as the ravages of World War I made clear. Caught in the midst of revolutionary change, people yearned for a lost childhood that they imagined as a golden paradise.

   An adult child like Chaplin has immense seductive power, for he offers the illusion that life was once simpler and easier, and that for a moment, or

   for as long as the movie lasts, you can win that life back. In a cruel, amoral

   world, naïveté has enormous appeal. The key is to bring it off with an air of total seriousness, as the straight man does in stand-up comedy. More important, however, is the creation of sympathy. Overt strength and power is rarely seductive—it makes us afraid, or envious. The royal road to seduction is to play up your vulnerability and helplessness. You cannot

   make this obvious ; to seem to be begging for sympathy is to seem needy, which is entirely anti-seductive. Do not proclaim yourself a victim or underdog, but reveal it in your manner, in your confusion. A display of

   “natural” weakness will make you instantly lovable, both lowering people’s defenses and making them feel delightfully superior to you. Put yourself in situations that make you seem weak, in which someone else has the advantage; they are the bully, you are the innocent lamb. Without any effort on your part, people will feel sympathy for you. Once people’s eyes cloud over with sentimental mist, they will not see how you are manipulating them.

2. Emma Crouch, born in 1842 in Plymouth, England, came from a

   respectable middle-class family. Her father was a composer and music professor who dreamed of success in the world of light opera. Among his many children, Emma was his favorite: she was a delightful child, lively and flirtatious, with red hair and a freckled face. Her father doted on her, and promised her a brilliant future in the theater. Unfortunately Mr. Crouch had a dark side: he was an adventurer, a gambler, and a rake, and in 1849 he abandoned his family and left for America. The Crouches were now in dire straits. Emma was told that her father had died in an accident and she was sent off to a convent. The loss of her father affected her deeply, and as the

   years went by she seemed lost in the past, acting as if he still doted on her.

   Prince Gortschakoff used to say that she [Cora Pearl] was the last word in luxury, and that he would have tried to steal the sun to satisfy one of her whims.

   —GUSTAVE CLAUDlN, CORA PEARL CONTEMPORARY

   Apparently the possession of humor implies the possession of a number of typical habit-systems. The first is an emotional one: the habit of playfulness. Why should one be proud of being playful? For a double reason. First, playfulness connotes childhood and youth. If one can be

   playful, one still possesses something of the vigor and the joy of young life … • But there is a deeper implication. To be playful is, in a sense, to be free.

   When a person is playful, he momentarily

   disregards the binding necessities which compel him, in business and morals, in domestic and

   community life. • What galls us is that the

   binding necessities do not permit us to shape our world as we please. What we most deeply desire,

   however, is to create our world for ourselves.

   Whenever we can do that, even in the slightest

   degree, we are happy. Now in play we create our own world….

   —PROFESSOR H.A. OVERSTREET, INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR

   One day in 1856, when Emma was walking home from church, a well- dressed gentleman invited her home for some cakes. She followed him to his house, where he proceeded to take advantage of her. The next morning this man, a diamond merchant, promised to set her up in a house of her own, treat her well, and give her plenty of money She took the money but left him, determined to do what she had always wanted: never see her family again, never depend on anyone, and lead the grand life that her father had promised her.

   With the money the diamond merchant had given her, Emma bought nice clothes and rented a cheap flat. Adopting the flamboyant name of Cora Pearl, she began to frequent London’s Argyll Rooms, a fancy gin palace

   where harlots and gentlemen rubbed elbows. The proprietor of the Argyll, a Mr. Bignell, took note of this newcomer to his establishment—she was so brazen for a young girl. At forty-five, he was much older than she was, but he decided to be her lover and protector, lavishing her with money and attention. The following year he took her to Paris, which was at the height of its Second Empire prosperity. Cora was enthralled by Paris, and of all its sights, but what impressed her the most was the parade of rich coaches in

   the Bois de Boulogne. Here the fashionable came to take the air—the empress, the princesses, and, not least the grand courtesans, who had the most opulent carriages of all. This was the way to lead the kind of life Cora’s father had wanted for her. She promptly told Bignell that when he went back to London, she would stay on alone.

   Frequenting all the right places, Cora soon came to the attention of wealthy French gentlemen. They would see her walking the streets in a bright pink dress, to complement her flaming red hair, pale face, and freckles. They would glimpse her riding wildly through the Bois de Boulogne, cracking her whip left and right. They would see her in cafés surrounded by men, her witty insults making them laugh. They also heard of her exploits—of her delight in showing her body to one and all. The elite of Paris society began to court her, particularly the older men who had grown tired of the cold and calculating courtesans, and who admired her girlish spirit. As money began to pour in from her various conquests (the

   Duc de Mornay, heir to the Dutch throne; Prince Napoleon, cousin to the Emperor), Cora spent it on the most outrageous things—a multicolored

   carriage pulled by a team of cream-colored horses, a rose-marble bathtub with her initials inlaid in gold. Gentlemen vied to be the one who would spoil her the most. An Irish lover wasted his entire fortune on her, in only eight weeks. But money could not buy Cora’s loyalty; she would leave a man on the slightest whim.

   Cora Pearl’s wild behavior and disdain for etiquette had all of Paris on edge. In 1864, she was to appear as Cupid in the Offenbach operetta

   Orpheus in the Underworld. Society was dying to see what she would do to cause a sensation, and soon found out: she came on stage practically naked, except for expensive diamonds here and there, barely covering her. As she pranced on stage, the diamonds fell off, each one worth a fortune; she did not stoop to pick them up, but let them roll off into the footlights. The

   gentlemen in the audience, some of whom had given her those diamonds, applauded her wildly. Antics like this made Cora the toast of Paris, and she reigned as the city’s supreme courtesan for over a decade, until the Franco- Prussian War of 1870 put an end to the Second Empire.

   All was quiet again. Genji slipped the latch open and tried the doors. They had not been bolted. A curtain had been set up just inside, and in the dim light he could make out Chinese chests and other

   furniture scattered in some disorder. He made his

   way through to her side. She lay by herself, a slight little figure. Though vaguely annoyed at being disturbed, she evidently took him for the woman Chujo until he pulled back the covers. •… His

   manner was so gently persuasive that devils and demons could not have gainsaid him. •… She was so small that he lifted her easily. As he passed

   through the doors to his own room, he came upon Chujo who had been summoned earlier. He called out in surprise. Surprised in turn, Chujo peered into the darkness. The perfume that came from his robes like a cloud of smoke told her who he was…. [Chujo] followed after, but Genji was quite unmoved by her pleas. • “Come for her in the morning,” he said, sliding the doors closed. •The

   lady was bathed in perspiration and quite beside herself at the thought of what Chujo, and the

   others too, would be thinking. Genji had to feel

   sorry for her. Yet the sweet words poured forth, the whole gamut of pretty devices for making a woman surrender • One may imagine that he found

   many kind promises with which to comfort her. …

   —MURASAKI SHIKIBU, THE TALE OF GENJI, TRANSLATED BY EDWARD G.

   SEIDENSTICKER

   People often mistakenly believe that what makes a person desirable and seductive is physical beauty, elegance, or overt sexuality. Yet Cora Pearl was not dramatically beautiful; her body was boyish, and her style was

   garish and tasteless. Even so, the most dashing men of Europe vied for her favors, often ruining themselves in the process. It was Cora’s spirit and

   attitude that enthralled them. Spoiled by her father, she imagined that spoiling her was natural—that all men should do the same. The

   consequence was that, like a child, she never felt she had to try to please. It was Cora’s powerful air of independence that made men want to possess her, tame her. She never pretended to be anything more than a courtesan, so the brazenness that in a lady would have been uncivil in her seemed natural and fun. And as with a spoiled child, a man’s relationship with her was on her terms. The moment he tried to change that, she lost interest. This was

   the secret of her astounding success.

   Spoiled children have an undeservedly bad reputation: while those who

   are spoiled with material things are indeed often insufferable, those who are spoiled with affection know themselves to be deeply seductive. This

   becomes a distinct advantage when they grow up. According to Freud (who was speaking from experience, since he was his mother’s darling), spoiled children have a confidence that stays with them all their lives. This quality radiates outward, drawing others to them, and, in a circular process, making people spoil them still more. Since their spirit and natural energy were never tamed by a disciplining parent, as adults they are adventurous and bold, and often impish or brazen.

   The lesson is simple: it may be too late to be spoiled by a parent, but it is never too late to make other people spoil you. It is all in your attitude.

   People are drawn to those who expect a lot out of life, whereas they tend to disrespect those who are fearful and undemanding. Wild independence has a provocative effect on us: it appeals to us, while also presenting us with a challenge—we want to be the one to tame it, to make the spirited person dependent on us. Half of seduction is stirring such competitive desires.

3. In October of 1925, Paris society was all excited about the opening of the Revue Nègre. Jazz, or in fact anything that came from black America, was

   the latest fashion, and the Broadway dancers and performers who made up the Revue Nègre were African-American. On opening night, artists and high society packed the hall. The show was spectacular, as they expected, but nothing prepared them for the last number, performed by a somewhat gawky long-legged woman with the prettiest face: Josephine Baker, a twenty-year-old chorus girl from East St. Louis. She came onstage bare-

   breasted, wearing a skirt of feathers over a satin bikini bottom, with feathers around her neck and ankles. Although she performed her number, called

   “Danse Sauvage,”with another dancer, also clad in feathers, all eyes were riveted on her: her whole body seemed to come alive in a way the audience had never seen before, her legs moving with the litheness of a cat, her rear end gyrating in patterns that one critic likened to a hummingbird’s. As the dance went on, she seemed possessed, feeding off the crowd’s ecstatic reaction. And then there was the look on her face: she was having such fun. She radiated a joy that made her erotic dance oddly innocent, even slightly comic.

   By the following day, word had spread: a star was born. Josephine

   became the heart of the Revue Nègre, and Paris was at her feet. Within a year, her face was on posters everywhere; there were Josephine Baker perfumes, dolls, clothes; fashionable Frenchwomen were slicking their hair back à la Baker, using a product called Bakerfix. They were even trying to darken their skin.

   Such sudden fame represented quite a change, for just a few years earlier, Josephine had been a young girl growing up in East St. Louis, one of America’s worst slums. She had gone to work at the age of eight, cleaning houses for a white woman who beat her. She had sometimes slept in a rat- infested basement; there had never been heat in the winter. (She had taught herself to dance in her wild fashion to help keep herself warm.) In 1919,

   Josephine had run away and become a part-time vaudeville performer, landing in New York two years later without money or connections. She had had some success as a clowning chorus girl, providing comic relief with her crossed eyes and screwed-up face, but she hadn’t stood out. Then she

   was invited to Paris. Some other black performers had declined, fearing

   things might be still worse for them in France than in America, but Josephine jumped at the chance.

   Despite her success with the Revue Nègre, Josephine did not delude herself: Parisians were notoriously fickle. She decided to turn the relationship around. First, she refused to be aligned with any club, and developed a reputation for breaking contracts at will, making it clear that

   she was ready to leave in an instant. Since childhood she had been afraid of dependence on anyone; now no one could take her for granted. This only

   made impresarios chase her and the public appreciate her the more. Second, she was aware that although black culture had become the vogue, what the French had fallen in love with was a kind of caricature. If that was what it took to be successful, so be it, but Josephine made it clear that she did not

   take the caricature seriously; instead she reversed it, becoming the ultimate Frenchwoman of fashion, a caricature not of blackness but of whiteness.

   Everything was a role to play—the comedienne, the primitive dancer, the ultrastylish Parisian. And everything Josephine did, she did with such a light spirit, such a lack of pretension, that she continued to seduce the jaded French for years. Her funeral, in 1975, was nationally televised, a huge cultural event. She was buried with the kind of pomp normally reserved only for heads of state.

   From very early on, Josephine Baker could not stand the feeling of having no control over the world. Yet what could she do in the face of her unpromising circumstances? Some young girls put all their hopes on a husband, but Josephine’s father had left her mother soon after she was born, and she saw marriage as something that would only make her more miserable. Her solution was something children often do: confronted with a hopeless environment, she closed herself off in a world of her own making, oblivious to the ugliness around her. This world was filled with dancing, clowning, dreams of great things. Let other people wail and moan;

   Josephine would smile, remain confident and self-reliant. Almost everyone who met her, from her earliest years to her last, commented on how

   seductive this quality was. Her refusal to compromise, or to be what she was expected to be, made everything she did seem authentic and natural.

   A child loves to play, and to create a little self-contained world. When children are absorbed in make believe, they are hopelessly charming. They

   infuse their imaginings with such seriousness and feeling. Adult Naturals do something similar, particularly if they are artists: they create their own fantasy world, and live in it as if it were the real one. Fantasy is so much

   more pleasant than reality, and since most people do not have the power or courage to create such a world, they enjoy being around those who do.

   Remember : the role you were given in life is not the role you have to accept. You can always live out a role of your own creation, a role that fits your fantasy. Learn to play with your image, never taking it too seriously. The key is to infuse your play with the conviction and feeling of a child,

   making it seem natural. The more absorbed you seem in your own joy-filled world, the more seductive you become. Do not go halfway: make the fantasy you inhabit as radical and exotic as possible, and you will attract attention like a magnet.

4. It was the Festival of the Cherry Blossom at the Heian court, in late- tenth-century Japan. In the emperor’s palace, many of the courtiers were drunk, and others were fast asleep, but the young princess Oborozukiyo, the emperor’s sister-in-law, was awake and reciting a poem: “What can

compare with a misty moon of spring?” Her voice was smooth and delicate. She moved to the door of her apartment to look at the moon. Then, suddenly, she smelled something sweet, and a hand clutched the sleeve of her robe. “Who are you?” she said, frightened. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” came a man’s voice, and continued with a poem of his own:

“Late in the night we enjoy a misty moon. There is nothing misty about the bond between us.” Without another word, the man pulled the princess to him and picked her up, carrying her into a gallery outside her room, sliding the door closed behind him. She was terrified, and tried to call for help. In

the darkness she heard him say, a little louder now, “It will do you no good. I am always allowed my way. Just be quiet, if you will, please.”

Now the princess recognized the voice, and the scent: it was Genji, the young son of the late emperor’s concubine, whose robes bore a distinctive perfume. This calmed her somewhat, since the man was someone she knew,

but on the other hand she also knew of his reputation: Genji was the court’s most incorrigible seducer, a man who stopped at nothing. He was drunk, it was near dawn, and the watchmen would soon be on their rounds; she did not want to be discovered with him. But then she began to make out the

outlines of his face—so pretty, his look so sincere, without a trace of malice. Then came more poems, recited in that charming voice, the words so insinuating. The images he conjured filled her mind, and distracted her from his hands. She could not resist him.

As the light began to rise, Genji got to his feet. He said a few tender words, they exchanged fans, and then he quickly left. The serving women were coming through the emperor’s rooms by now, and when they saw Genji scurrying away, the perfume of his robes lingering after him, they smiled, knowing he was up to his usual tricks; but they never imagined he would dare approach the sister of the emperor’s wife.

In the days that followed, Oborozukiyo could only think of Genji. She knew he had other mistresses, but when she tried to put him out of her

mind, a letter from him would arrive, and she would be back to square one. In truth, she had started the correspondence, haunted by his midnight visit. She had to see him again. Despite the risk of discovery, and the fact that her sister Kokiden, the emperor’s wife, hated Genji, she arranged for further

trysts in her apartment. But one night an envious courtier found them together. Word reached Kokiden, who naturally was furious. She demanded that Genji be banished from court and the emperor had no choice but to agree.

Genji went far away, and things settled down. Then the emperor died and his son took over. A kind of emptiness had come to the court: the dozens of women whom Genji had seduced could not endure his absence, and flooded him with letters. Even women who had never known him intimately would weep over any relic he had left behind—a robe, for instance, in which his scent still lingered. And the young emperor missed his jocular presence.

And the princesses missed the music he had played on the koto. And Oborozukiyo pined for his midnight visits. Finally even Kokiden broke down, realizing that she could not resist him. So Genji was summoned back to the court. And not only was he forgiven, he was given a hero’s welcome; the young emperor himself greeted the scoundrel with tears in his eyes.

 

 

The story of Genji’s life is told in the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman of the Heian court. The character was most likely based on a real-life man, Fujiwara no Korechika. Indeed another book of the period, ThePillow Book of Sei Shonagon,

describes an encounter between the female author and Korechika, and reveals his incredible charm and his almost hypnotic effect on women.

Genji is a Natural, an undefensive lover, a man who has a lifelong obsession with women but whose appreciation of and affection for them makes him irresistible. As he says to Oborozukiyo in the novel, “I am always allowed my way.” This self-belief is half of Genji’s charm. Resistance does not

make him defensive; he retreats gracefully, reciting a little poetry, and as he leaves, the perfume of his robes trailing behind him, his victim wonders why she has been so afraid, and what she is missing by spurning him, and

she finds a way to let him know that the next time things will be different. Genji takes nothing seriously or personally, and at the age of forty, an age at which most men of the eleventh century were already looking old and worn, he still seems like a boy. His seductive powers never leave him.

Human beings are immensely suggestible; their moods will easily spread to the people around them. In fact seduction depends on mimesis, on the

conscious creation of a mood or feeling that is then reproduced by the other person. But hesitation and awkwardness are also contagious, and are deadly to seduction. If in a key moment you seem indecisive or self-conscious, the other person will sense that you are thinking of yourself, instead of being overwhelmed by his or her charms. The spell will be broken. As an

undefensive lover, though, you produce the opposite effect: your victim might be hesitant or worried, but confronted with someone so sure and natural, he or she will be caught up in the mood. Like dancing with

someone you lead effortlessly across the dance floor, it is a skill you can learn. It is a matter of rooting out the fear and awkwardness that have built up in you over the years, of becoming more graceful with your approach,

less defensive when others seem to resist. Often people’s resistance is a way of testing you, and if you show any awkwardness or hesitation, you not only will fail the test, but you will risk infecting them with your doubts.

Symbol: The Lamb. So soft and endearing. At two days old the lamb can gambol gracefully; within a week it is playing “Follow the

Leader. ” Its weakness is part of its charm. The Lamb is pure innocence, so innocent we want to possess it, even devour it.

Dangers

A childish quality can be charming but it can also be irritating; the innocent have no experience of the world, and their sweetness can prove cloying. In Milan Kundera’s novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the hero

dreams that he is trapped on an island with a group of children. Soon their wonderful qualities become intensely annoying to him; after a few days of exposure to them he cannot relate to them at all. The dream turns into a nightmare, and he longs to be back among adults, with real things to do and talk about. Because total childishness can quickly grate, the most seductive

Naturals are those who, like Josephine Baker, combine adult experience and wisdom with a childlike manner. It is this mixture of qualities that is most alluring.

Society cannot tolerate too many Naturals. Given a crowd of Cora Pearls or Charlie Chaplins, their charm would quickly wear off. In any case it is usually only artists, or people with abundant leisure time, who can afford to go all the way. The best way to use the Natural character type is in specific situations when a touch of innocence or impishness will help lower your target’s defenses. A con man plays dumb to make the other person trust him and feel superior. This kind of feigned naturalness has countless

applications in daily life, where nothing is more dangerous than looking smarter than the next person; the Natural pose is the perfect way to disguise your cleverness. But if you are uncontrollably childish and cannot turn it off, you run the risk of seeming pathetic, earning not sympathy but pity and disgust.

Similarly, the seductive traits of the Natural work best in one who is still young enough for them to seem natural. They are much harder for an older person to pull off. Cora Pearl did not seem so charming when she was still wearing her pink flouncy dresses in her fifties. The Duke of Buckingham,

who seduced everyone in the English court in the 1620s (including the homosexual King James I himself), was wondrously childish in looks and manner; but this became obnoxious and off-putting as he grew older, and he eventually made enough enemies that he ended up being murdered. As you age, then, your natural qualities should suggest more the child’s open spirit, less an innocence that will no longer convince anyone.

‌the Coquette‌

The ability to delay satisfaction is the ultimate art of seduction— while waiting, the victim is held in thrall. Coquettes are the grand masters of this game, orchestrating a back-and-forth movement between hope and frustration. They bait with the promise of reward

—the hope of physical pleasure, happiness, fame by association, power—all of which, however, proves elusive; yet this only makes their targets pursue them the more. Coquettes seem totally self-

sufficient: they do not need you, they seem to say, and their

narcissism proves devilishly attractive. You want to conquer them but they hold the cards. The strategy of the Coquette is never to offer

total satisfaction. Imitate the alternating heat and coolness of the Coquette and you will keep the seduced at your heels.

The Hot and Cold Coquette

In the autumn of 1795, Paris was caught up in a strange giddiness. The Reign of Terror that had followed the French Revolution had ended; the sound of the guillotine was gone. The city breathed a collective sigh of relief, and gave way to wild parties and endless festivals.

There are indeed men who are attached more by resistance than by yielding and who unwittingly

prefer a variable sky, now splendid, now black and vexed by lightnings, to love’s unclouded blue. Let

us not forget that Josephine had to deal with a

conqueror and that love resembles war. She did not surrender, she let herself be conquered. Had she been more tender, more attentive, more loving,

perhaps Bonaparte would have loved her less.

—IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND, QUOTED IN THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE : NAPOLEON’S

ENCHANTRESS, PHILIP W. SERGEANT

Coquettes know how to please; not how to love, which is why men love them so much.

—PIERRE MARIVAUX

The young Napoleon Bonaparte, twenty-six at the time, had no interest in such revelries. He had made a name for himself as a bright, audacious general who had helped quell rebellion in the provinces, but his ambition

was boundless and he burned with desire for new conquests. So when, in October of that year, the infamous thirty-three-year-old widow Josephine de Beauharnais visited his offices, he couldn’t help but be confused. Josephine was so exotic, and everything about her was languorous and sensual. (She capitalized on her foreignness—she came from the island of Martinique.) On the other hand she had a reputation as a loose woman, and the shy Napoleon believed in marriage. Even so, when Josephine invited him to one of her weekly soirees, he found himself accepting.

At the soiree he felt totally out of his element. All of the city’s great writers and wits were there, as well as the few of the nobility who had

survived—Josephine herself was a vicomtesse, and had narrowly escaped

the guillotine. The women were dazzling, some of them more beautiful than the hostess, but all the men congregated around Josephine, drawn by her graceful presence and queenly manner. Several times she left the men behind and went to Napoleon’s side; nothing could have flattered his

insecure ego more than such attention.

He began to pay her visits. Sometimes she would ignore him, and he would leave in a fit of anger. Yet the next day a passionate letter would

arrive from Josephine, and he would rush to see her. Soon he was spending most of his time with her. Her occasional shows of sadness, her bouts of anger or of tears, only deepened his attachment. In March of 1796, Napoleon married Josephine.

Two days after his wedding, Napoleon left to lead a campaign in northern Italy against the Austrians. “You are the constant object of my thoughts,” he wrote to his wife from abroad. “My imagination exhausts itself in guessing what you are doing.” His generals saw him distracted: he would leave

meetings early, spend hours writing letters, or stare at the miniature of

Josephine he wore around his neck. He had been driven to this state by the unbearable distance between them and by a slight coldness he now detected in her—she wrote infrequently, and her letters lacked passion; nor did she join him in Italy. He had to finish his war fast, so that he could return to her side. Engaging the enemy with unusual zeal, he began to make mistakes. “To live for Josephine!” he wrote to her. “I work to get near you; I kill myself to reach you.” His letters became more passionate and erotic; a friend of Josephine’s who saw them wrote, “The handwriting [was] almost indecipherable, the spelling shaky, the style bizarre and confused What a

position for a woman to find herself in—being the motivating force behind the triumphal march of an entire army.”

An absence, the declining of an invitation to

dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness

are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.

—MARCEL PROUST

There’s also nightly, to the unintiated, \ A peril— not indeed like love or marriage, \ But not the less for this to be depreciated: \ It is—I meant and mean not to disparage \ The show of virtue even in the vitiated—\ It adds an outward grace unto their carriage—\ But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, \ Couleur de rose, who’s neither white

nor scarlet. \ Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say say “no,”\ And won’t say “yes,” and keeps you

on- and off-ing \ On a lee shore, till it begins to blow—\ Then sees your heart wreck’d with an

inward scoffing. \ This works a world of sentimental woe, \ And sends new Werters yearly to the coffin; \ But yet is merely innocent flirtation, \ Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

—LORD BYRON, THE COLD COQUETTE

There is a way to represent one’s cause and in doing so to treat the audience in such a cool and condescending manner that they are bound to

notice one is not doing it to please them. The principle should always be not to make

concessions to those who don’t have anything to give but who have everything to gain from us. We

can wait until they are begging on their knees even if it takes a very long time.

—SIGMUND FREUD, IN A LETTER TO A PUPIL, QUOTED IN PAUL ROAZEN, FREUD

AND HIS FOLLOWERS

Months went by in which Napoleon begged Josephine to come to Italy and she made endless excuses. But finally she agreed to come, and left Paris for Brescia, where he was headquartered. A near encounter with the enemy along the way, however, forced her to detour to Milan. Napoleon was away from Brescia, in battle; when he returned to find her still absent, he blamed his foe General Würmser and swore revenge. For the next few months he seemed to pursue two targets with equal energy: Würmser and Josephine.

His wife was never where she was supposed to be: “I reach Milan, rush to your house, having thrown aside everything in order to clasp you in my arms. You are not there!” Napoleon would turn angry and jealous, but when he finally caught up with Josephine, the slightest of her favors melted his heart. He took long rides with her in a darkened carriage, while his generals

fumed—meetings were missed, orders and strategies improvised. “Never,” he later wrote to her, “has a woman been in such complete mastery of another’s heart.” And yet their time together was so short. During a campaign that lasted almost a year, Napoleon spent a mere fifteen nights with his new bride.

Napoleon later heard rumors that Josephine had taken a lover while he

was in Italy. His feelings toward her cooled, and he himself took an endless series of mistresses. Yet Josephine was never really concerned about this threat to her power over her husband; a few tears, some theatrics, a little

coldness on her part, and he remained her slave. In 1804, he had her crowned empress, and had she born him a son, she would have remained empress to the end. When Napoleon lay on his deathbed, the last word he uttered was “Josephine.”

During the French Revolution, Josephine had come within minutes of losing her head on the guillotine. The experience left her without illusions, and with two goals in mind: to live a life of pleasure, and to find the man who could best supply it. She set her sights on Napoleon early on. He was young, and had a brilliant future. Beneath his calm exterior, Josephine sensed, he was highly emotional and aggressive, but this did not intimidate her—it only revealed his insecurity and weakness. He would be easy to enslave. First, Josephine adapted to his moods, charmed him with her

feminine grace, warmed him with her looks and manner. He wanted to possess her. And once she had aroused this desire, her power lay in

postponing its satisfaction, withdrawing from him, frustrating him. In fact the torture of the chase gave Napoleon a masochistic pleasure. He yearned to subdue her independent spirit, as if she were an enemy in battle.

People are inherently perverse. An easy conquest has a lower value than a difficult one; we are only really excited by what is denied us, by what we cannot possess in full. Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction. Most people miscalculate and surrender too soon, worried that the other person will lose interest, or that giving the other what he or she wants will grant the giver a kind of power. The truth is the opposite: once you satisfy someone, you no longer have the initiative, and you open yourself to the possibility

that he or she will lose interest at the slightest whim. Remember: vanity is critical in love. Make your targets afraid that you may be with-drawing, that you may not really be interested, and you arouse their innate insecurity, their fear that as you have gotten to know them they have become less exciting to you. These insecurities are devastating. Then, once you have

made them uncertain of you and of themselves, reignite their hope, making them feel desired again. Hot and cold, hot and cold—such coquetry is perversely pleasurable, heightening interest and keeping the initiative on your side. Never be put off by your target’s anger; it is a sure sign of enslavement.

She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill.

—OVID

When her time was come, that nymph most fair brought forth a child with whom one could have fallen in love even in his cradle, and she called

him Narcissus. Cephisus’s child had reached his

sixteenth year, and could be counted as at once boy and man. Many lads and many girls fell in

love with him, but his soft young body housed a

pride so unyielding that none of those boys or girls dared to touch him. One day, as he was driving timid deer into his nets, he was seen by that

talkative nymph who cannot stay silent when

another speaks, but yet has not learned to speak first herself. Her name is Echo, and she always answers back • So when she saw Narcissus

wandering through the lonely countryside, Echo felt in love with him and followed secretly in his steps. The more closely she followed, the nearer was the fire which scorched her: just as sulphur, smeared round the tops of torches, is quickly

kindled when a flame is brought near it. How often she wished to make flattering overtures to him, to

approach him with tender pleas! • The boy, by chance, had wandered away from his faithful band of comrades, and he called out: “Is there anybody here?” Echo answered: “Here!” Narcissus stood still in astonishment, looking round in every

direction. He looked behind him, and when no

one appeared, cried again: “Why are you avoiding me?” But all he heard were his own words echoed back. Still he persisted, deceived by what he took

to be another’s voice, and said, “Come here, and let us meet!” Echo answered: “Let us meet!”

Never again would she reply more willingly to any sound. To make good her words she came out of

the wood and made to throw her arms round the neck she loved: but he fled from her, crying as he did so, “Away with these embraces! I would die

before I would have you touch me!” Thus

scorned, she concealed herself in the woods, hiding her shamed face in the shelter of the leaves, and ever since that day she dwells in lonely caves. Yet still her love remained firmly rooted in her heart, and was increased by the pain of having been rejected. • Narcissm had played with her

affections, treating her as he had previously

treated other spirits of the waters and the woods, and his male admirers too. Then one of those he had scorned raised up his hands to heaven and prayed: “May he himself fall in love with another, as we have done with him! May he too be unable

to gain his loved one!” Nemesis heard and granted his righteous prayer • Narcissus, wearied with

hunting in the heat of the day, lay down here [by a clear pool] : for he was attracted by the beauty of the place, and by the spring. While he sought to

quench his thirst, another thirst grew in him, and as he drank, he was enchanted by the beautiful reflection that he saw. He fell in love with an

insubstantial hope, mistaking a mere shadow for a real body. Spellbound by his own self, he remained there motionless, with fixed gaze, like a statue carved from Parian marble. Unwittingly, he

desired himself, and was himself the object of his own approval, at once seeking and sought, himself kindling the flame with which he burned. How often did he vainly kiss the treacherous pool, how often plunge his arms deep in the waters, as he tried to clasp the neck he saw! But he could not lay hold upon himself He did not know what he was looking at, but was fired by the sight, and excited

by the very illusion that deceived his eyes. Poor foolish boy, why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that eludes you? The thing you are seeking does not exist: only turn aside and you will lose what you love. What you see is but the shadow cast by

your reflection; in itself it is nothing. It comes with you, and lasts while you are there; it will go when you go, if go you can. • He laid down his weary

head on the green grass, and death closed the eyes which so admired their owner’s beauty. Even then, when he was received into the abode of the dead,

he kept looking at himself in the waters of the Styx. His sisters, the nymphs of the spring, mourned for him, and cut off their hair in tribute to their

brother. The wood nymphs mourned him too, and Echo sang her refrain to their lament. • The pyre, the tossing torches, and the bier, were now being prepared, but his body was nowhere to be found.

Instead of his corpse, they discovered a flower with a circle of white petals round a yellow centre.

—OVID, METAMORPHOSES, TRANSLATED BY MARY M. INNES

The Cold Coquette

In 1952, the writer Truman Capote, a recent success in literary and social circles, began to receive an almost daily barrage of fan mail from a young man named Andy Warhol. An illustrator for shoe designers, fashion magazines, and the like, Warhol made pretty, stylized drawings, some of which he sent to Capote, hoping the author would include them in one of his books. Capote did not respond. One day he came home to find Warhol talking to his mother, with whom Capote lived. And Warhol began to

telephone almost daily. Finally Capote put an end to all this: “He seemed one of those hopeless people that you just know nothing’s ever going to happen to. Just a hopeless, born loser,” the writer later said.

Ten years later, Andy Warhol, aspiring artist, had his first one-man show at the Stable Gallery in Manhattan. On the walls were a series of silkscreened paintings based on the Campbell’s soup can and the Coca-Cola bottle. At the opening and at the party afterward, Warhol stood to the side, staring blankly, talking little. What a contrast he was to the older generation of artists, the abstract expressionists—mostly hard-drinking womanizers full of bluster and aggression, big talkers who had dominated the art scene for the previous fifteen years. And what a change from the Warhol who had badgered Capote, and art dealers and patrons as well. The critics were both baffled and intrigued by the coldness of Warhol’s work; they could not

figure out how the artist felt about his subjects. What was his position? What was he trying to say? When they asked, he would simply reply, “I just do it because I like it,” or, “I love soup.” The critics went wild with their interpretations: “An art like Warhol’s is necessarily parasitic upon the myths of its time,” one wrote; another, “The decision not to decide is a paradox that is equal to an idea which expresses nothing but then gives it

dimension.” The show was a huge success, establishing Warhol as a leading figure in a new movement, pop art.

In 1963, Warhol rented a large Manhattan loft space that he called the Factory, and that soon became the hub of a large entourage—hangers-on, actors, aspiring artists. Here, particularly at night, Warhol would simply wander about, or stand in a corner. People would gather around him, fight for his attention, throw questions at him, and he would answer, in his

noncommittal way. But no one could get close to him, physically or mentally; he would not allow it. At the same time, if he walked by you without giving you his usual “Oh, hi,” you were devastated. He hadn’t noticed you; perhaps you were on the way out.

Increasingly interested in filmmaking, Warhol cast his friends in his movies. In effect he was offering them a kind of instant celebrity (their “fifteen minutes of fame”—the phrase is Warhol’s). Soon people were competing for roles. He groomed women in particular for stardom: Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Nico. Just being around him offered a kind of celebrity by association. The Factory became the place to be seen, and stars like Judy Garland and Tennessee Williams would go to parties there, rubbing elbows with Sedgwick, Viva, and the bohemian lower echelons whom Warhol had befriended. People began sending limos to bring him to parties of their own; his presence alone was enough to turn a social evening into a scene—even though he would pass through in near silence, keeping to himself and leaving early.

In 1967, Warhol was asked to lecture at various colleges. He hated to talk, particularly about his own art; “The less something has to say,” he felt, “the more perfect it is.” But the money was good and Warhol always found it hard to say no. His solution was simple: he asked an actor, Allen Midgette, to impersonate him. Midgette was dark-haired, tan, part Cherokee Indian. He did not resemble Warhol in the least. But Warhol and friends covered his face with powder, sprayed his brown hair silver, gave him dark glasses, and dressed him in Warhol’s clothes. Since Midgette knew nothing about art, his answers to students’ questions tended to be as short and

enigmatic as Warhol’s own. The impersonation worked. Warhol may have been an icon, but no one really knew him, and since he often wore dark glasses, even his face was unfamiliar in any detail. The lecture audiences were far enough away to be teased by the thought of his presence, and no one got close enough to catch the deception. He remained elusive.

 

 

Early on in life, Andy Warhol was plagued by conflicting emotions: he desperately wanted fame, but he was naturally passive and shy. “I’ve

always had a conflict,” he later said, “because I’m shy and yet I like to take up a lot of personal space. Mom always said, ‘Don’t be pushy, but let

everyone know you’re around.’ ” At first Warhol tried to make himself more aggressive, straining to please and court. It didn’t work. After ten futile

years he stopped trying and gave in to his own passivity—only to discover the power that withdrawal commands.

Warhol began this process in his artwork, which changed dramatically in the early 1960s. His new paintings of soup cans, green stamps, and other widely known images did not assault you with meaning; in fact their meaning was totally elusive, which only heightened their fascination. They drew you in by their immediacy, their visual power, their coldness. Having transformed his art, Warhol also transformed himself: like his paintings, he became pure surface. He trained himself to hold himself back, to stop talking.

The world is full of people who try, people who impose themselves aggressively. They may gain temporary victories, but the longer they are around, the more people want to confound them. They leave no space around themselves, and without space there can be no seduction. Cold Coquettes create space by remaining elusive and making others pursue

them. Their coolness suggests a comfortable confidence that is exciting to be around, even though it may not actually exist; their silence makes you want to talk. Their self-containment, their appearance of having no need for other people, only makes us want to do things for them, hungry for the slightest sign of recognition and favor. Cold Coquettes may be maddening to deal with—never committing but never saying no, never allowing

closeness—but more often than not we find ourselves coming back to them, addicted to the coldness they project. Remember: seduction is a process of drawing people in, making them want to pursue and possess you. Seem distant and people will go mad to win your favor. Humans, like nature, hate a vacuum, and emotional distance and silence make them strain to fill up

the empty space with words and heat of their own. Like Warhol, stand back and let them fight over you.

[Narcissistic] women have the greatest fascination for men. The charm of a child lies to a great

extent in his narcissism, his self-sufficiency and inaccessibility, just as does the charm of certain animals which seem not to concern themselves

about us, such as cats. It is as if we envied them

their power of retaining a blissful state of mind— an unassailable libido-position which we ourselves have since abandoned.

—SIGMUND FREUD

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Socrates whom you see has a tendency to fall in love with good-looking young men, and is

always in their society and in an ecstasy about them…but once you see beneath the surface you will discover a degree of self-control of which you can hardly form a notion, gentlemen. He spends

his whole life pretending and playing with people, and I doubt whether anyone has ever seen the

treasures which are revealed when he grows

serious and exposes what he keeps inside. • … Believing that he was serious in his admiration of my charms, I supposed that a wonderful piece of good luck had befallen me; I should now be able, in return for my favours, to find out all that

Socrates knew; for you must know that there was no limit to the pride that I felt in my good looks.

With this end in view I sent away my attendant, whom hitherto I had always kept with me in my encounters with Socrates, and left myself alone with him. I must tell you the whole truth; attend carefully, and do you, Socrates, pull me up if

anything I say is false. I allowed myself to be alone with him, I say, gentlemen, and I naturally supposed that he would embark on conversation of the type that a lover usually addresses to his darling when they are tête-à-tête, and I was glad.

Nothing of the kind; he spent the day with me in the sort of talk which is habitual with him, and

then left me and went away. Next I invited him to train with me in the gymnasium, and I accompanied him there, believing that I should succeed with him now. He took exercise and

wrestled with me frequently, with no one else

present, but I need hardly say that I was no nearer my goal. Finding that this was no good either, I resolved to make a direct assault on him, and not to give up what I had once undertaken; I felt that I must get to the bottom of the matter. So I invited

him to dine with me, behaving just like a lover who has designs upon his favourite, He was in no hurry to accept this invitation, but at last he agreed to come. The first time he came he rose to go away

immediately after dinner, and on that occasion I

was ashamed and let him go. But I returned to the attack, and this time I kept him in conversation

after dinner far into the night, and then, when he wanted to be going, I compelled him to stay, on the plea that it was too late for him to go. • So he

betook himself to rest, using as a bed the couch on which he had reclined at dinner, next to mine, and there was nobody sleeping in the room but ourselves. • … I swear by all the gods in heaven

that for anything that had happened between us when I got up after sleeping with Socrates, I might have been sleeping with my father or elder brother.

What do you suppose to have been my state of mind after that? On the one hand I realized that I had been slighted, but on the other I felt a

reverence for Socrates’ character, his self-control and courage… The result was that I could neither bring myself to be angry with him and tear myself away from his society, nor find a way of subduing him to my will. I was utterly disconcerted, and

wandered about in a state of enslavement to the man the like of which has never been known.

—ALCIBIADES, QUOTED IN PLATO, THE SIMPOSIUM

Keys to the Character

According to the popular concept, Coquettes are consummate teases,

experts at arousing desire through a provocative appearance or an alluring attitude. But the real essence of Coquettes is in fact their ability to trap

people emotionally, and to keep their victims in their clutches long after that first titillation of desire. This is the skill that puts them in the ranks of the most effective seducers. Their success may seem somewhat odd, since they are essentially cold and distant creatures; should you ever get to know one well, you will sense his or her inner core of detachment and self-love. It may seem logical that once you become aware of this quality you will see through the Coquette’s manipulations and lose interest, but more often we

see the opposite. After years of Josephine’s coquettish games, Napoleon was well aware of how manipulative she was. Yet this conqueror of kingdoms, this skeptic and cynic, could not leave her.

To understand the peculiar power of the Coquette, you must first understand a critical property of love and desire: the more obviously you pursue a person, the more likely you are to chase them away. Too much attention can be interesting for a while, but it soon grows cloying and

finally becomes claustrophobic and frightening. It signals weakness and neediness, an unseductive combination. How often we make this mistake, thinking our persistent presence will reassure. But Coquettes have an inherent understanding of this particular dynamic. Masters of selective withdrawal, they hint at coldness, absenting themselves at times to keep their victim off balance, surprised, intrigued. Their withdrawals make them mysterious, and we build them up in our imaginations. (Familiarity, on the other hand, undermines what we have built.) A bout of distance engages the emotions further; instead of making us angry, it makes us insecure. Perhaps they don’t really like us, perhaps we have lost their interest. Once our vanity is at stake, we succumb to the Coquette just to prove we are still desirable. Remember: the essence of the Coquette lies not in the tease and temptation but in the subsequent step back, the emotional withdrawal. That is the key to enslaving desire.

To adopt the power of the Coquette, you must understand one other quality: narcissism. Sigmund Freud characterized the “narcissistic woman” (most often obsessed with her appearance) as the type with the greatest effect on men. As children, he explains, we pass through a narcissistic phase that is immensely pleasurable. Happily self-contained and self-involved, we have little psychic need of other people. Then, slowly, we are socialized and taught to pay attention to others—but we secretly yearn for those blissful early days. The narcissistic woman reminds a man of that period, and makes him envious. Perhaps contact with her will restore that feeling of self- involvement.

A man is also challenged by the female Coquette’s independence—he wants to be the one to make her dependent, to burst her bubble. It is far more likely, though, that he will end up becoming her slave, giving her

incessant attention to gain her love, and failing. For the narcissistic woman is not emotionally needy; she is self-sufficient. And this is surprisingly seductive. Self-esteem is critical in seduction. (Your attitude toward yourself is read by the other person in subtle and unconscious ways.) Low self-esteem repels, confidence and self-sufficiency attract. The less you seem to need other people, the more likely others will be drawn to you.

Understand the importance of this in all relationships and you will find your neediness easier to suppress. But do not confuse self-absorption with

seductive narcissism. Talking endlessly about yourself is eminently anti- seductive, revealing not self-sufficiency but insecurity.

The Coquette is traditionally thought of as female, and certainly the strategy was for centuries one of the few weapons women had to engage and enslave a man’s desire. One ploy of the Coquette is the withdrawal of sexual favors, and we see women using this trick throughout history: the great seventeenth-century French courtesan Ninon de l’Enclos was desired by all the preeminent men of France, but only attained real power when she made it clear that she would no longer sleep with a man as part of her duty. This drove her admirers to despair, which she knew how to make worse by favoring a man temporarily, granting him access to her body for a few months, then returning him to the pack of the unsatisfied. Queen Elizabeth I of England took coquettishness to the extreme, deliberately arousing the

desires of her courtiers but sleeping with none of them.

Long a tool of social power for women, coquettishness was slowly adapted by men, particularly the great seducers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who envied the power of such women. One seventeenth-century seducer, the Duc de Lauzun, was a master at exciting a woman, then suddenly acting aloof. Women went wild over him. Today, coquetry is gender-less. In a world that discourages direct confrontation, teasing, coldness, and selective aloofness are a form of indirect power that brilliantly disguises its own aggression.

The Coquette must first and foremost be able to excite the target of his or her attention. The attraction can be sexual, the lure of celebrity, whatever it takes. At the same time, the Coquette sends contrary signals that stimulate contrary responses, plunging the victim into confusion. The eponymous

heroine of Marivaux’s eighteenth-century French novel Marianne is the consummate Coquette. Going to church, she dresses tastefully, but leaves

her hair slightly uncombed. In the middle of the service she seems to notice this error and starts to fix it, revealing her bare arm as she does so; such

things were not to be seen in an eighteenth-century church, and all male

eyes fix on her for that moment. The tension is much more powerful than if she were outside, or were tartily dressed. Remember: obvious flirting will reveal your intentions too clearly. Better to be ambiguous and even contradictory, frustrating at the same time that you stimulate.

The great spiritual leader Jiddu Krishnamurti was an unconscious coquette. Revered by theosophists as their “World Teacher,” Krishnamurti was also a dandy He loved elegant clothing and was devilishly handsome. At the same time, he practiced celibacy, and had a horror of being touched. In 1929 he shocked theosophists around the world by proclaiming that he was not a god or even a guru, and did not want any followers. This only heightened his appeal: women fell in love with him in great numbers, and his advisers grew even more devoted. Physically and psychologically, Krishnamurti was sending contrary signals. While preaching a generalized love and acceptance, in his personal life he pushed people away. His

attractiveness and his obsession with his appearance might have gained him attention but by themselves would not have made women fall in love with him; his lessons of celibacy and spiritual virtue would have created

disciples but not physical love. The combination of these traits, however, both drew people in and frustrated them, a coquettish dynamic that created an emotional and physical attachment to a man who shunned such things. His withdrawal from the world had the effect of only heightening the devotion of his followers.

Coquetry depends on developing a pattern to keep the other person off balance. The strategy is extremely effective. Experiencing a pleasure once, we yearn to repeat it; so the Coquette gives us pleasure, then withdraws it. The alternation of heat and cold is the most common pattern, and has several variations. The eighth-century Chinese Coquette Yang Kuei-Fei totally enslaved the Emperor Ming Huang through a pattern of kindness and bitterness: having charmed him with kindness, she would suddenly get angry, blaming him harshly for the slightest mistake. Unable to live without the pleasure she gave him, the emperor would turn the court upside down to please her when she was angry or upset. Her tears had a similar effect: what had he done, why was she so sad? He eventually ruined himself and his kingdom trying to keep her happy. Tears, anger, and the production of guilt are all the tools of the Coquette. A similar dynamic appears in a lover’s quarrel: when a couple fights, then reconciles, the joys of reconciliation only make the attachment stronger. Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you.

Coquettes are never jealous—that would undermine their image of fundamental self-sufliciency But they are masters at inciting jealousy: by paying attention to a third party, creating a triangle of desire, they signal to their victims that they may not be that interested. This triangulation is extremely seductive, in social contexts as well as erotic ones. Interested in narcissistic women, Freud was a narcissist himself, and his aloofness drove his disciples crazy. (They even had a name for it—his “god complex.”)

Behaving like a kind of messiah, too lofty for petty emotions, Freud always maintained a distance between himself and his students, hardly ever inviting them over for dinner, say, and keeping his private life shrouded in mystery. Yet he would occasionally choose an acolyte to confide in—Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Lou Andreas-Salomé. The result was that his disciples went berserk trying to win his favor, to be the one he chose. Their jealousy when he suddenly favored one of them only increased his power over them. People’s natural insecurities are heightened in group settings; by maintaining aloofness, Coquettes start a competition to win their favor. If the ability to

use third parties to make targets jealous is a critical seductive skill, Sigmund Freud was a grand Coquette.

All of the tactics of the Coquette have been adapted by political leaders to make the public fall in love. While exciting the masses, these leaders remain inwardly detached, which keeps them in control. The political scientist Roberto Michels has even referred to such politicians as Cold Coquettes. Napoleon played the Coquette with the French: after the grand successes of the Italian campaign had made him a beloved hero, he left

France to conquer Egypt, knowing that in his absence the government would fall apart, the people would hunger for his return, and their love would serve as the base for an expansion of his power. After exciting the masses with a rousing speech, Mao Zedong would disappear from sight for days on end, making himself an object of cultish worship. And no one was

more of a Coquette than Yugoslav leader Josef Tito, who alternated between distance from and emotional identification with his people. All of these political leaders were confirmed narcissists. In times of trouble, when

people feel insecure, the effect of such political coquetry is even more powerful. It is important to realize that coquetry is extremely effective on a group, stimulating jealousy, love, and intense devotion. If you play such a role with a group, remember to keep an emotional and physical distance.

This will allow you to cry and laugh on command, project self-sufficiency, and with such detachment you will be able play people’s emotions like a piano.

Symbol: The Shadow. It cannot be grasped. Chase your shadow and it will, flee; turn your back on it and it will follow you. It is also a person’s dark side, the thing that makes them mysterious. After they have given us pleasure, the shadow of their withdrawal makes us yearn for their return, much as clouds make us yearn for the sun.

Dangers

Coquettes face an obvious danger: they play with volatile emotions. Every time the pendulum swings, love shifts to hate. So they must orchestrate

everything carefully. Their absences cannot be too long, their bouts of anger must be quickly followed by smiles. Coquettes can keep their victims emotionally entrapped for a long time, but over months or years the

dynamic can begin to prove tiresome. Jiang Qing, later known as Madame Mao, used coquettish skills to capture the heart of Mao Tse-tung, but after ten years the quarreling, the tears and the coolness became intensely irritating, and once irritation proved stronger than love, Mao was able to detach. Josephine, a more brilliant Coquette, was able to adapt, by spending a whole year without playing coy or withdrawing from Napoleon. Timing is everything. On the other hand, though, the Coquette stirs up powerful emotions, and breakups often prove temporary. The Coquette is addictive: after the failure of the social plan Mao called the Great Leap Forward,

Madame Mao was able to reestablish her power over her devastated husband.

The Cold Coquette can stimulate a particularly deep hatred. Valerie

Solanas was a young woman who fell under Andy Warhol’s spell. She had written a play that amused him, and she was given the impression he might turn it into a film. She imagined becoming a celebrity. She also got involved in the feminist movement, and when, in June 1968, it dawned on her that Warhol was toying with her, she directed her growing rage at men on him and shot him three times, nearly killing him. Cold Coquettes may stimulate

feelings that are not so much erotic as intellectual, less passion and more fascination. The hatred they can stir up is all the more insidious and dangerous, for it may not be counterbalanced by a deep love. They must realize the limits of the game, and the disturbing effects they can have on less stable people.

‌the Charmer‌

Charm is seduction without sex. Charmers are consummate manipulators, masking their cleverness by creating a mood of

pleasure and comfort. Their method is simple: they deflect attention from themselves and focus it on their target. They understand your spirit, feel your pain, adapt to your moods. In the presence of a

Charmer you feel better about yourself. Charmers do not argue or fight, complain, or pester—what could be more seductive? By drawing you in with their indulgence they make you dependent on them, and their power grows. Learn to cast the Charmer’s spell by aiming at people’s primary weaknesses: vanity and self-esteem.

The Art of Charm

Sexuality is extremely disruptive. The insecurities and emotions it stirs up can often cut short a relationship that would otherwise be deeper and longer lasting. The Charmer’s solution is to fulfill the aspects of sexuality that are so alluring and addictive—the focused attention, the boosted self-esteem,

the pleasurable wooing, the understanding (real or illusory)—but subtract the sex itself. It’s not that the Charmer represses or discourages sexuality; lurking beneath the surface of any attempt at charm is a sexual tease, a

possibility. Charm cannot exist without a hint of sexual tension. It cannot be maintained, however, unless sex is kept at bay or in the background.

Birds are taken with pipes that imitate their own voices, and men with those sayings that are most agreeable to their own opinions.

—SAMUEL BUTLER

Go with the bough, you’ll bend it; \ Use brute

force, it’ll snap. \ Go with the current: that’s how to swim across rivers—\ Fighting upstream’s no good. \ Go easy with lions or tigers if you aim to

tame them; \ The bull gets inured to the plough by slow degrees …\ So, yield if she shows resistance: \

That way you’ll win in the end. Just be sure to play

\ The part she allots you. Censure the things she censures, \ Endorse her endorsements, echo her

every word, \ Pro or con, and laugh whenever she laughs; remember, \ If she weeps, to weep too: take your cue \ From her every expression. Suppose she’s playing a board game, \ Then throw the dice

carelessly, move \ Your pieces all wrong. \ Don’t

jib at a slavish task like holding \ Her mirror: slavish or not, such attentions please. …

—OVID, THE ART OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN

The word “charm” comes from the Latin carmen,a song, but also an incantation tied to the casting of a magical spell. The Charmer implicitly grasps this history, casting a spell by giving people something that holds their attention, that fascinates them. And the secret to capturing people’s attention, while lowering their powers of reason, is to strike at the things

they have the least control over: their ego, their vanity and their self-esteem. As Benjamin Disraeli said, “Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.” The strategy can never be obvious; subtlety is the Charmer’s great skill. If the target is to be kept from seeing through the Charmer’s efforts, and from growing suspicious, maybe even tiring of the attention, a light touch is essential. The Charmer is like a beam of light that doesn’t play directly on a target but throws a pleasantly diffused glow over it.

Charm can be applied to a group as well as to an individual: a leader can charm the public. The dynamic is similar. The following are the laws of

charm, culled from the stories of the most successful charmers in history.

Make your target the center of attention. Charmers fade into the background; their targets become the subject of their interest. To be a Charmer you have to learn to listen and observe. Let your targets talk, revealing themselves in the process. As you find out more about them— their strengths, and more important their weaknesses—you can

individualize your attention, appealing to their specific desires and needs, tailoring your flatteries to their insecurities. By adapting to their spirit and empathizing with their woes, you can make them feel bigger and better, validating their sense of self-worth. Make them the star of the show and they will become addicted to you and grow dependent on you. On a mass level, make gestures of self-sacrifice (no matter how fake) to show the

public that you share their pain and are working in their interest, self- interest being the public form of egotism.

Disraeli was asked to dinner, and came in green velvet trousers, with a canary waistcoat, buckle shoes, and lace cuffs. His appearance at first

proved disquieting, but on leaving the table the guests remarked to each other that the wittiest

talker at the luncheon-party was the man in the yellow waistcoat. Benjamin had made great

advances in social conversation since the days of Murray’s dinners. Faithful to his method, he noted the stages: “Do not talk too much at present; do not try to talk. But whenever you speak, speak with self-possession. Speak in a subdued tone, and

always look at the person whom you are

addressing. Before one can engage in general conversation with any effect, there is a certain

acquaintance with trifling but amusing subjects which must be first attained. You will soon pick up sufficient by listening and observing. Never argue.

In society nothing must be discussed; give only results. If any person differ from you, bow and turn the conversation. In society never think; always be on the watch, or you will miss many opportunities and say many disagreeable things. Talk to women,

talk to women as much as you can. This is the best school. This is the way to gain fluency,because you need not care what you say, and had better not be sensible. They, too, will rally you on many points, and as they are women you will not be offended.

Nothing is of so much importance and of so much use to a young man entering life as to be well criticised by women. ”

—ANDRÉ MAUROIS, DISRAELI, TRANSLATED BY HAMISH MILES

Be a source of pleasure. No one wants to hear about your problems and troubles. Listen to your targets’ complaints, but more important, distract them from their problems by giving them pleasure. (Do this often enough and they will fall under your spell.) Being lighthearted and fun is always more charming than being serious and critical. An energetic presence is

likewise more charming than lethargy, which hints at boredom, an

enormous social taboo; and elegance and style will usually win out over vulgarity, since most people like to associate themselves with whatever they think elevated and cultured. In politics, provide illusion and myth rather than reality. Instead of asking people to sacrifice for the greater good, talk of grand moral issues. An appeal that makes people feel good will translate into votes and power.

Bring antagonism into harmony. The court is a cauldron of resentment and envy, where the sourness of a single brooding Cassius can quickly turn into a conspiracy. The Charmer knows how to smooth out conflict. Never stir up antagonisms that will prove immune to your charm; in the face of those who are aggressive, retreat, let them have their little victories. Yielding and

indulgence will charm the fight out of any potential enemies. Never

criticize people overtly—that will make them insecure, and resistant to change. Plant ideas, insinuate suggestions. Charmed by your diplomatic skills, people will not notice your growing power.

Lull your victims into ease and comfort. Charm is like the hypnotist’s trick with the swinging watch: the more relaxed the target, the easier it is to bend him or her to your will. The key to making your victims feel comfortable is to mirror them, adapt to their moods. People are narcissists—they are drawn to those most similar to themselves. Seem to share their values and tastes, to understand their spirit, and they will fall under your spell. This works particularly well if you are an outsider: showing that you share the values of your adopted group or country (you have learned their language, you prefer their customs, etc.) is immensely charming, since for you this preference is a choice, not a question of birth. Never pester or be overly persistent—these uncharming qualities will disrupt the relaxation you need to cast your spell.

Show calm and self-possessionin the face of adversity. Adversity and

setbacks actually provide the perfect setting for charm. Showing a calm, unruffled exterior in the face of unpleasantness puts people at ease. You seem patient, as if waiting for destiny to deal you a better card—or as if you were confident you could charm the Fates themselves. Never show anger, ill temper, or vengefulness, all disruptive emotions that will make people defensive. In the politics of large groups, welcome adversity as a chance to show the charming qualities of magnanimity and poise. Let others get flustered and upset—the contrast will redound to your favor. Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

—ALBERT CAMUS

A speech that carries its audience along with it and is applauded is often less suggestive simply

because it is clear that it sets out to be persuasive.

People talking together influence each other in

close proximity by means of the tone of voice they adopt and the way they look at each other and not only by the kind of language they use. We are right to call a good conversationalist a charmer in the magical sense of the word.

—GUSTAVE TARDE, L’OPINION ET LA FOULE, QUOTED IN SERGE MOSCOVICI, THE

ACE OF THE CROWD

Make yourselfuseful. If done subtly, your ability to enhance the lives of

others will be devilishly seductive. Your social skills will prove important here: creating a wide network of allies will give you the power to link

people up with each other, which will make them feel that by knowing you they can make their lives easier. This is something no one can resist.

Follow-through is key: so many people will charm by promising a person great things—a better job, a new contact, a big favor—but if they do not follow through they make enemies instead of friends. Anyone can make a promise; what sets you apart, and makes you charming, is your ability to

come through in the end, following up your promise with a definite action. Conversely, if someone does you a favor, show your gratitude concretely In a world of bluff and smoke, real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.

Examples of Charmers

1. In the early 1870s, Queen Victoria of England had reached a low point in her life. Her beloved husband, Prince Albert, had died in 1861, leaving her more than grief stricken. In all of her decisions she had relied on his advice; she was too uneducated and inexperienced to do otherwise, or so everyone

   made her feel. In fact, with Albert’s death, political discussions and policy

   issues had come to bore her to tears. Now Victoria gradually withdrew from the public eye. As a result, the monarchy became less popular and therefore less powerful.

   In 1874, the Conservative Party came to power, and its leader, the seventy-year-old Benjamin Disraeli, became prime minister. The protocol of his accession to his seat demanded that he come to the palace for a

   private meeting with the queen, who was fifty-five at the time. Two more unlikely associates could not be imagined: Disraeli, who was Jewish by birth, had dark skin and exotic features by English standards; as a young man he had been a dandy, his dress bordering on the flamboyant, and he had written popular novels that were romantic or even Gothic in style. The queen, on the other hand, was dour and stubborn, formal in manner and

   simple in taste. To please her, Disraeli was advised, he should curb his natural elegance; but he disregarded what everyone had told him and appeared before her as a gallant prince, falling to one knee, taking her hand, and kissing it, saying, “I plight my troth to the kindest of mistresses.” Disraeli pledged that his work now was to realize Victoria’s dreams. He praised her qualities so fulsomely that she blushed; yet strangely enough,

   she did not find him comical or offensive, but came out of the encounter smiling. Perhaps she should give this strange man a chance, she thought, and she waited to see what he would do next.

   Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly, you can make

   people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence

   politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

   —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, TRANSLATED BY T. BAILEY

   SAUNDERS

   Never explain. Never complain.

   —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

   Victoria soon began receiving reports from Disraeli—on parliamentary debates, policy issues, and so forth—that were unlike anything other

   ministers had written. Addressing her as the “Faery Queen,” and giving the monarchy’s various enemies all kinds of villainous code names, he filled his notes with gossip. In a note about a new cabinet member, Disraeli wrote,

   “He is more than six feet four inches in stature; like St. Peter’s at Rome no one is at first aware of his dimensions. But he has the sagacity of the elephant as well as its form.” The minister’s blithe, informal spirit bordered on disrespect, but the queen was enchanted. She read his reports voraciously, and almost without her realizing it, her interest in politics was rekindled.

   At the start of their relationship, Disraeli sent the queen all of his novels as a gift. She in return presented him with the one book she had written, Journal of Our Life in the Highlands. From then on he would toss out in his letters and conversations with her the phrase, “We authors.” The queen would beam with pride. She would overhear him praising her to others— her ideas, common sense, and feminine instincts, he said, made her the equal of Elizabeth I. He rarely disagreed with her. At meetings with other ministers, he would suddenly turn and ask her for advice. In 1875, when Disraeli managed to finagle the purchase of the Suez Canal from the debt- ridden khedive of Egypt, he presented his accomplishment to the queen as if it were a realization of her own ideas about expanding the British Empire.

   She did not realize the cause, but her confidence was growing by leaps and bounds.

   Victoria once sent flowers to her prime minister. He later returned the favor, sending primroses, a flower so ordinary that some recipients might have been insulted; but his gift came with a note: “Of all the flowers, the one that retains its beauty longest, is sweet primrose.” Disraeli was enveloping Victoria in a fantasy atmosphere in which everything was a metaphor, and the simplicity of the flower of course symbolized the queen

   —and also the relationship between the two leaders. Victoria fell for the bait; primroses were soon her favorite flower. In fact everything Disraeli did now met with her approval. She allowed him to sit in her presence, an unheard-of privilege. The two began to exchange valentines every February. The queen would ask people what Disraeli had said at a party; when he paid a little too much attention to Empress Augusta of Germany, she grew jealous. The courtiers wondered what had happened to the stubborn, formal woman they had known—she was acting like an infatuated girl.

   In 1876, Disraeli steered through Parliament a bill declaring Queen

   Victoria a “Queen-Empress.” The queen was beside herself with joy. Out of gratitude and certainly love, she elevated this Jewish dandy and novelist to the peerage, making him Earl of Beaconsfield, the realization of a lifelong dream.

   Disraeli knew how deceptive appearances can be: people were always judging him by his face and by his clothes, and he had learned never to do the same to them. So he was not deceived by Queen Victoria’s dour, sober exterior. Beneath it, he sensed, was a woman who yearned for a man to appeal to her feminine side, a woman who was affectionate, warm, even sexual. The extent to which this side of Victoria had been repressed merely revealed the strength of the feelings he would stir once he melted her reserve.

   Disraeli’s approach was to appeal to two aspects of Victoria’s personality that other people had squashed: her confidence and her sexuality. He was a master at flattering a person’s ego. As one English princess remarked, “When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.” Disraeli worked his magic with a delicate touch, insinuating an atmosphere of amusement and relaxation, particularly in relation to politics. Once the queen’s guard was down, he made that mood a little warmer, a little more suggestive, subtly sexual—though of course without overt flirtation. Disraeli made Victoria feel desirable as a woman and gifted as a monarch. How could she resist?

   How could she deny him anything?

   Our personalities are often molded by how we are treated: if a parent or spouse is defensive or argumentative in dealing with us, we tend to respond

   the same way. Never mistake people’s exterior characteristics for reality, for the character they show on the surface may be merely a reflection of the

   people with whom they have been most in contact, or a front disguising its own opposite. A gruff exterior may hide a person dying for warmth; a repressed, sober-looking type may actually be struggling to conceal

   uncontrollable emotions. That is the key to charm—feeding what has been repressed or denied.

   By indulging the queen, by making himself a source of pleasure, Disraeli was able to soften a woman who had grown hard and cantankerous.

   Indulgence is a powerful tool of seduction: it is hard to be angry or

   defensive with someone who seems to agree with your opinions and tastes. Charmers may appear to be weaker than their targets but in the end they are the more powerful side because they have stolen the ability to resist.

2. In 1971, the American financier and Democratic Party power-player Averell Harriman saw his life drawing to a close. He was seventy-nine, his wife of many years, Marie, had just died, and with the Democrats out of office his political career seemed over. Feeling old and depressed, he resigned himself to spending his last years with his grandchildren in quiet retirement.

   A few months after Marie’s death, Harriman was talked into attending a Washington party. There he met an old friend, Pamela Churchill, whom he had known during World War II, in London, where he had been sent as a personal envoy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was twenty-one at the time, and was the wife of Winston Churchill’s son Randolph. There had certainly been more beautiful women in the city, but none had been more pleasant to be around: she was so attentive, listening to his problems, befriending his daughter (they were the same age), and calming him whenever he saw her. Marie had remained in the States, and Randolph was in the army, so while bombs rained on London Averell and Pamela had begun an affair. And in the many years since the war, she had kept in touch

   with him: he knew about the breakup of her marriage, and about her endless

   series of affairs with Europe’s wealthiest playboys. Yet he had not seen her since his return to America, and to his wife. What a strange coincidence to run into her at this particular moment in his life.

   At the party Pamela pulled Harriman out of his shell, laughing at his

   jokes and getting him to talk about London in the glory days of the war. He felt his old power returning—it was as if he were charming her. A few days later she dropped in on him at one of his weekend homes. Harriman was

   one of the wealthiest men in the world, but was no lavish spender; he and Marie had lived a Spartan life. Pamela made no comment, but when she invited him to her own home, he could not help but notice the brightness and vibrancy of her life—flowers everywhere, beautiful linens on the bed, wonderful meals (she seemed to know all of his favorite foods). He had heard of her reputation as a courtesan and understood the lure of his wealth, yet being around her was invigorating, and eight weeks after that party, he married her.

   Pamela did not stop there. She persuaded her husband to donate the art that Marie had collected to the National Gallery. She got him to part with

   some of his money—a trust fund for her son Winston, new houses, constant redecorations. Her approach was subtle and patient; she made him

   somehow feel good about giving her what she wanted. Within a few years, hardly any traces of Marie remained in their life. Harriman spent less time with his children and grandchildren. He seemed to be going through a second youth.

   In Washington, politicians and their wives viewed Pamela with suspicion.

   They saw through her, and were immune to her charm, or so they thought.

   Yet they always came to the frequent parties she hosted, justifying themselves with the thought that powerful people would be there.

   Everything at these parties was calibrated to create a relaxed, intimate atmosphere. No one felt ignored: the least important people would find

   themselves talking to Pamela, opening up to that attentive look of hers. She made them feel powerful and respected. Afterward she would send them a personal note or gift, often referring to something they had mentioned in conversation. The wives who had called her a courtesan and worse slowly changed their minds. The men found her not only beguiling but useful—her worldwide contacts were invaluable. She could put them in touch with exactly the right person without them even having to ask. The Harrimans’

   parties soon evolved into fundraising events for the Democratic Party. Put at their ease, feeling elevated by the aristocratic atmosphere Pamela created and the sense of importance she gave them, visitors would empty their

   wallets without realizing quite why. This, of course, was exactly what all the men in her life had done.

   In 1986, Averell Harriman died. By then Pamela was powerful and wealthy enough that she no longer needed a man. In 1993, she was named the U.S. ambassador to France, and easily transferred her personal and social charm into the world of political diplomacy. She was still working when she died, in 1997.

   We often recognize Charmers as such; we sense their cleverness. (Surely Harriman must have realized that his meeting with Pamela Churchill in 1971 was no coincidence.) Nevertheless, we fall under their spell. The reason is simple: the feeling that Charmers provide is so rare as to be worth the price we pay.

   The world is full of self-absorbed people. In their presence, we know that everything in our relationship with them is directed toward themselves— their insecurities, their neediness, their hunger for attention. That reinforces our own egocentric tendencies; we protectively close ourselves up. It is a

   syndrome that only makes us the more helpless with Charmers. First, they don’t talk much about themselves, which heightens their mystery and

   disguises their limitations. Second, they seem to be interested in us, and their interest is so delightfully focused that we relax and open up to them. Finally Charmers are pleasant to be around. They have none of most people’s ugly qualities—nagging, complaining, self-assertion. They seem to know what pleases. Theirs is a diffused warmth; union without sex. (You may think a geisha is sexual as well as charming; her power, however, lies not in the sexual favors she provides but in her rare self-effacing attentiveness.) Inevitably, we become addicted, and dependent. And

   dependence is the source of the Charmer’s power.

   People who are physically beautiful, and who play on their beauty to

   create a sexually charged presence, have little power in the end; the bloom of youth fades, there is always someone younger and more beautiful, and in any case people tire of beauty without social grace. But they never tire of

   feeling their self-worth validated. Learn the power you can wield by making the other person feel like the star. The key is to diffuse your sexual presence: create a vaguer, more beguiling sense of excitement through a generalized flirtation, a socialized sexuality that is constant, addictive, and never totally satisfied.

3. In December of 1936, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalists, was captured by a group of his own soldiers who were angry with his policies: instead of fighting the Japanese, who had just invaded China, he was continuing his civil war against the Communist armies of Mao Zedong. The soldiers saw no threat in Mao—Chiang had almost annhilated the Communists. In fact, they believed he should join forces with Mao against the common enemy—it was the only patriotic thing to do. The soldiers thought by capturing him they could compel Chiang to change his mind, but he was a stubborn man. Since Chiang was the main impediment to a unified war against the Japanese, the soldiers contemplated having him executed, or turned over to the Communists.

   As Chiang lay in prison, he could only imagine the worst. Several days later he received a visit from Zhou Enlai—a former friend and now a leading Communist. Politely and respectfully, Zhou argued for a united front: Communists and Nationalists against the Japanese. Chiang could not begin to hear such talk; he hated the Communists with a passion, and

   became hopelessly emotional. To sign an agreement with the Communists in these circumstances, he yelled, would be humiliating, and would lose me all honor among my own army. It’s out of the question. Kill me if you must.

   Zhou listened, smiled, said barely a word. As Chiang’s rant ended he told the Nationalist general that a concern for honor was something he understood, but that the honorable thing for them to do was actually to forget their differences and fight the invader. Chiang could lead both armies. Finally, Zhou said that under no circumstances would he allow his

   fellow Communists, or anyone for that matter, to execute such a great man as Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalist leader was stunned and moved.

   The next day, Chiang was escorted out of prison by Communist guards, transferred to one of his own army’s planes, and sent back to his own headquarters. Apparently Zhou had executed this policy on his own, for when word of it reached the other Communist leaders, they were outraged: Zhou should have forced Chiang to fight the Japanese, or else should have

   ordered his execution—to release him without concessions was the height of pusillanimity, and Zhou would pay. Zhou said nothing and waited. A few months later, Chiang signed an agreement to halt the civil war and join with the Communists against the Japanese. He seemed to have come to his decision on his own, and his army respected it—they could not doubt his motives.

   Working together, the Nationalists and the Communists expelled the

   Japanese from China. But the Communists, whom Chiang had previously almost destroyed, took advantage of this period of collaboration to regain strength. Once the Japanese had left, they turned on the Nationalists, who, in 1949, were forced to evacuate mainland China for the island of Formosa, now Taiwan.

   Now Mao paid a visit to the Soviet Union. China was in terrible shape and in desperate need of assistance, but Stalin was wary of the Chinese, and lectured Mao about the many mistakes he had made. Mao argued back.

   Stalin decided to teach the young upstart a lesson; he would give China nothing. Tempers rose. Mao sent urgently for Zhou Enlai who arrived the next day and went right to work.

   In the long negotiating sessions, Zhou made a show of enjoying his hosts’ vodka. He never argued, and in fact agreed that the Chinese had made many mistakes, had much to learn from the more experienced Soviets: “Comrade Stalin,” he said, “we are the first large Asian country to join the socialist camp under your guidance.” Zhou had come prepared with all kinds of neatly drawn diagrams and charts, knowing the Russians loved such things. Stalin warmed up to him. The negotiations proceeded, and a few days after Zhou’s arrival, the two parties signed a treaty of mutual aid—a treaty far

   more useful to the Chinese than to the Soviets.

   In 1959, China was again in deep trouble. Mao’s Great Leap Forward, an attempt to spark an overnight industrial revolution in China, had been a devastating failure. The people were angry: they were starving while Beijing bureaucrats lived well. Many Beijing officials, Zhou among them, returned to their native towns to try to bring order. Most of them managed by bribes—by promising all kinds of favors—but Zhou proceeded differently: he visited his ancestral graveyard, where generations of his family were buried, and ordered that the tombstones be removed and the coffins buried deeper. Now the land could be farmed for food. In Confucian

   terms (and Zhou was an obedient Confucian), this was sacrilege, but everyone knew what it meant: Zhou was willing to suffer personally Everyone had to sacrifice, even the leaders. His gesture had immense symbolic impact.

   When Zhou died, in 1976, an unofficial and unorganized outpouring of public grief caught the government by surprise. They could not understand how a man who had worked behind the scenes, and had shunned the adoration of the masses, could have won such affection.

   The capture of Chiang Kai-shek was a turning point in the civil war. To

   execute him might have been disastrous: it had been Chiang who had held

   the Nationalist army together, and without him it could have broken up into factions, allowing the Japanese to overrun the country. To force him to sign an agreement would have not helped either: he would have lost face before his army, would never have honored the agreement, and would have done everything he could to avenge his humiliation. Zhou knew that to execute or compel a captive will only embolden your enemy and will have

   repercussions you cannot control. Charm, on the other hand, is a

   manipulative weapon that disguises its own manipulativeness, letting you gain a victory without stirring the desire for revenge.

   Zhou worked on Chiang perfectly, paying him respect, playing the inferior, letting him pass from the fear of execution to the relief of unexpected release. The general was allowed to leave with his dignity intact. Zhou knew all this would soften him up, planting the seed of the idea that perhaps the Communists were not so bad after all, and that he could

   change his mind about them without looking weak, particularly if he did so independently rather than while he was in prison. Zhou applied the same philosophy to every situation: play the inferior, unthreatening and humble. What will this matter if in the end you get what you want: time to recover from a civil war, a treaty, the good will of the masses.

   Time is the greatest weapon you have. Patiently keep in mind a long-term goal and neither person nor army can resist you. And charm is the best way of playing for time, of widening your options in any situation. Through charm you can seduce your enemy into backing off, giving you the psychological space to plot an effective counterstrategy. The key is to make

   other people emotional while you remain detached. They may feel grateful, happy, moved, arrogant—it doesn’t matter, as long as they feel. An emotional person is a distracted person. Give them what they want, appeal to their self-interest, make them feel superior to you. When a baby has grabbed a sharp knife, do not try to grab it back; instead, stay calm, offer candy, and the baby will drop the knife to pick up the tempting morsel you offer.

4. In 1761, Empress Elizabeth of Russia died, and her nephew ascended to the throne as Czar Peter III. Peter had always been a little boy at heart—he

played with toy soldiers long past the appropriate age—and now, as czar, he could finally do whatever he pleased and the world be damned. Peter concluded a treaty with Frederick the Great that was highly favorable to the foreign ruler (Peter adored Frederick, and particularly the disciplined way

his Prussian soldiers marched). This was a practical debacle, but in matters of emotion and etiquette, Peter was even more offensive: he refused to properly mourn his aunt the empress, resuming his war games and parties a few days after the funeral. What a contrast he was to his wife, Catherine.

She was respectful during the funeral, was still wearing black months later, and could be seen at all hours beside Elizabeth’s tomb, praying and crying. She was not even Russian, but a German princess who had come east to marry Peter in 1745 without speaking a word of the language. Even the lowest peasant knew that Catherine had converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, and had learned to speak Russian with incredible speed, and beautifully. At heart, they thought, she was more Russian than all of those fops in the court.

During these difficult months, while Peter offended almost everyone in

the country, Catherine discreetly kept a lover, Gregory Orlov, a lieutenant in the guards. It was through Orlov that word spread of her piety, her patriotism, her worthiness for rule; how much better to follow such a woman than to serve Peter. Late into the night, Catherine and Orlov would talk, and he would tell her the army was behind her and would urge her to

stage a coup. She would listen attentively, but would always reply that this

was not the time for such things. Orlov wondered to himself: perhaps she was too gentle and passive for such a great step.

Peter’s regime was repressive, and the arrests and executions piled up.

He also grew more abusive toward his wife, threatening to divorce her and marry his mistress. One drunken evening, driven to distraction by Catherine’s silence and his inability to provoke her, he ordered her arrest.

The news spread fast, and Orlov hurried to warn Catherine that she would

be imprisoned or executed unless she acted fast. This time Catherine did not argue; she put on her simplest mourning gown, left her hair half undone, followed Orlov to a waiting carriage, and rushed to the army barracks. Here the soldiers fell to the ground, kissing the hem of her dress—they had heard so much about her but had never seen her in person, and she seemed to them like a statue of the Madonna come to life. They gave her an army uniform, marveling at how beautiful she looked in men’s clothes, and set off under Orlov’s command for the Winter Palace. The procession grew as it passed through the streets of St. Petersburg. Everyone applauded Catherine, everyone felt that Peter should be dethroned. Soon priests arrived to give

Catherine their blessing, making the people even more excited. And through it all, she was silent and dignified, as if all were in the hands of fate.

When news reached Peter of this peaceful rebellion, he grew hysterical, and agreed to abdicate that very night. Catherine became empress without a single battle or even a single gunshot.

As a child, Catherine was intelligent and spirited. Since her mother had wanted a daughter who was obedient rather than dazzling, and who would

therefore make a better match, the child was subjected to a constant barrage of criticism, against which she developed a defense: she learned to seem to defer to other people totally as a way to neutralize their aggression. If she was patient and did not force the issue, instead of attacking her they would fall under her spell.

When Catherine came to Russia—at the age of sixteen, without a friend or ally in the country—she applied the skills she had learned in dealing with her difficult mother. In the face of all the court monsters—the imposing

Empress Elizabeth, her own infantile husband, the endless schemers and betrayers—she curtseyed, deferred, waited, and charmed. She had long

wanted to rule as empress, and knew how hopeless her husband was. But what good would it do to seize power violently, laying a claim that some would certainly see as illegitimate, and then have to worry endlessly that

she would be dethroned in turn? No, the moment had to be ripe, and she had to make the people carry her into power. It was a feminine style of revolution: by being passive and patient, Catherine suggested that she had no interest in power. The effect was soothing—charming.

There will always be difficult people for us to face—the chronically insecure, the hopelessly stubborn, the hysterical complainers. Your ability to disarm these people will prove an invaluable skill. You do have to be careful, though: if you are passive they will run all over you; if assertive you will make their monstrous qualities worse. Seduction and charm are the most effective counterweapons. Outwardly, be gracious. Adapt to their every mood. Enter their spirit. Inwardly, calculate and wait: your surrender

is a strategy, not a way of life. When the time comes, and it inevitably will, the tables will turn. Their aggression will land them in trouble, and that will put you in a position to rescue them, regaining superiority. (You could also decide that you had had enough, and consign them to oblivion.) Your charm has prevented them from foreseeing this or growing suspicious. A whole revolution can be enacted without a single act of violence, simply by waiting for the apple to ripen and fall.

Symbol: The Mirror. Your spirit holds a mirror up to others. When they see you they see themselves: their values, their tastes, even

their flaws. Their lifelong love affair with their own image is comfortable and hypnotic; so feed it. No one ever sees what is

behind the mirror.

Dangers

There are those who are immune to a Charmer; particularly cynics, and confident types who do not need validation. These people tend to view

Charmers as slippery and deceitful, and they can make problems for you.

The solution is to do what most Charmers do by nature: befriend and charm as many people as possible. Secure your power through numbers and you

will not have to worry about the few you cannot seduce. Catherine the Great’s kindness to everyone she met created a vast amount of good will that paid off later. Also, it is sometimes charming to reveal a strategic flaw. There is one person you dislike? Confess it openly, do not try to charm such an enemy, and people will think you more human, less slippery. Disraeli had such a scapegoat with his great nemesis, William Gladstone.

The dangers of political charm are harder to handle: your conciliatory, shifting, flexible approach to politics will make enemies out of everyone who is a rigid believer in a cause. Social seducers such as Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger could often win over the most hardened opponent with their personal charm, but they could not be everywhere at once. Many

members of the English Parliament thought Disraeli a shifty conniver; in person his engaging manner could dispel such feelings, but he could not address the entire Parliament one-on-one. In difficult times, when people yearn for something substantial and firm, the political charmer may be in danger.

As Catherine the Great proved, timing is everything. Charmers must know when to hibernate and when the times are ripe for their persuasive powers. Known for their flexibility, they should sometimes be flexible enough to act inflexibly Zhou Enlai, the consummate chameleon, could

play the hard-core Communist when it suited him. Never become the slave to your own powers of charm; keep it under control, something you can turn off and on at will.