The story of la Maupin's assault on Marguerite Fouré with a large key provides a lot of material for her story. Not only does the incident illustrate her temper and character, but the records give us myriad little facts: names, places, relationships and the like. As is always the case, many of these just brush the surface and raise even more questions than they answer. In this posting, i will try to run down the salient bits.
So far, I have three sources that recount the incident, all of which cite primary sources, often quoting them. These are Oscar Paul Gilbert's "Women in Men's Guise", published in English in 1932, and Gabriel Letainturier-Fradin's "La Maupin (1670-1707): sa vie, ses duels, ses aventures", published in French in 1904, and Émile Campardon's "L'Académie royale de musique au XVIIIe siècle". It is quite possible that Gilbert takes his information from Letainturier-Fradin rather than the original sources. Letainturier-Fradin cites the specific primary sources. Campardon reproduces the commissioner, Regnault's report.
Gilbert's account is relatively short. He writes,
In 1700, la Maupin was living in some rather nice quarters in the Rue Saint-Honoré. Unfortunately she could not get on at all with her landlord.
One night, it was the 6th September 1700, she got home about nine o'clock and told her landlord she wanted supper. As he did not comply with sufficient alacrity for her liking, she seized a spit which was hanging against the chimney-piece and began to belabor the poor man's face with it. Menservants and maidservants tried to intervene, but in less than no time they were all out of action.
The magistrate was called to the scene of the conflict and drew up the following report:
[Report elided — JLB]
Having drawn up his report, the man of law withdrew in order to lodge his precious rigmarole in the proper quarter. Next day the witnesses were called, servants and shopkeepers of the neighborhood, who all deposed that they had seen la Maupin, a singer at the Opera, lying on the kitchen floor struggling wildly with a maid servant. Finally a surgeon certified in writing that he had "visited, and given professional attention to Marguerite Foret, a servant in the establishment of the Sieur Langlois, and that she had a wound on the forehead as well as several contusions and abrasions on the forearm.
Things came to such a pass that, yet once again, la Maupin was compelled to have recourse to her protector-in-ordinary, owing to whose representations the action against her was withdrawn.
To this Letainturier-Fradin adds considerable detail (p. 147). He gives not only the text of the magistrate's report, but that of a number of depositions made by witnesses the next day. From these we learn that
The rue Traversière runs diagonally one block east of the Palais Royal, home of Monsieur—the Duc d'Orleans, the King's brother—and can be seen in both the 1705 and Turgot maps of Paris.The picture above shows it as it was about 30 years after her death, when Turgot commissioned his map. As can be seen in the picture, an even narrower street led into the interior of the block. It's labelled the "Rue de la Brasserie" or "street of the brewery". The surgeon says in his deposition "sieur Langlois, demeurant rue Traversière en porte cochère". Sadly, my French is very poor and I do not know if the phrase "en porte cochère", which translates as something like "in gate" tells us anything of where along the street M. Langlois and la Maupin reside.
The rue Traversière still exists today, renamed as "Rue Molière", and a few of the buildings as seen in Google street view do not seem terribly different from the way they may have appeared in 1700. Imagining la Maupin's "sister" leaning out one window and calling out to someone in a window across the way is not too difficult.
Which brings us to the question of that supposed sister. Who is she? An actual sister we haven't heard of previously or perhaps a roommate or lover? Letainturier-Fradin writes:
Etant donné les mœurs de la chanteuse, il se pourrait qu'elle ait fait passer pour sa parente une femme avec qui elle vivait.
which I take to mean something like:
Given the mores of the singer, she could have passed on her parent to a woman with whom she lived.
It is a very reasonable theory, and one that lends itself to a number of story-telling possibilities. If she is a paramour, we have very little further clue to her identity, and I'm pretty much free to write her as I choose.
Along with her "sister", la Maupin is accompanied by two "lackeys" ("laquais" in French). In either French or English, that term originally meant a liveried servant, one who wears your arms or colors. Over time it shifted to any servant and then someone who is particularly servile, and unsavory, a "henchman". Adolphe Julien devotes the last chapter of "The opera before the revolution, the reign of Louis XIV, and the regency" to the role of the lackey at the beginning of the 18th century. He writes that,
Furetiere's Dictionary thus defines a lackey: "A valet not of noble birth (roturier) who follows his master on foot, who wears his liveries." The word roturier is not so much a pleonasm as one would believe. Indeed, if you open the book published by Audiger towards the end of the seventeenth century—La Maison réglée—you will see that the three orders were represented in the home of a great gentleman; the nobility, by the gentleman or lady in waiting, the pages, and the squire; the clergy, by the almoner and often the tutor; the third order or the bourgeoisie, by the steward, the secretary, the major-domo, to whom may be added the porter or "Swiss" and valets de chambre. As for the lackey, he was part of the common people like the grooms, the postilions, the cooks, and the stable-boys ; but he stood apart from the nameless swarm by his sharp-cut character.
La Maupin herself was the daughter of a bourgeois servant. Her father, Gaston d'Aubigny, was the comte d'Armagnac's secretary. However, by 1700 she was quite wealthy, at least for a commoner. Gilbert gives her salary as 3,000 livres per year. Julien gives the wages of a lackey as on the order of 90-120 livres a year. It should not be beyond her means to hire a pair of actual lackeys. Then, too, they may be hangers on, 18th century groupies or roadies. We know that along with fencing she enjoyed riding. She might have a groom or other common servant, whom Regnault might describe as "lackeys".
I have been unable to find anything on the marquise de Vance, la Maupin's neighbor.
Comments (8)
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porte-cochere
A porte-cochere (French porte-cochère, literally "coach gate", also called a carriage porch) is the architectural term for a porch or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building, through which it is possible for a horse and carriage or motor vehicle to pass, in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.
The porte-cochere was a feature of many late 18th and 19th-century mansions and public buildings. Well-known examples are at Buckingham Palace in London and the White House in Washington D.C. Today a porte-cochère is often constructed at the entrance to public buildings such as churches, hotels, health facilities, homes, and schools where people are delivered by other drivers. Porte-cochères should not be confused with carports in which vehicles are parked; at a porte-cochère the vehicle merely passes through, stopping only for a passenger to get out.
At the foot of the porte-cochere, there are often a couple of guard stones to prevent the wheels of the vehicle from damaging the wall.
Thank you. That lasy part, about the guard stones reminds me of the section that introduces the episode of the key in Letainturier-Fradin's book. He writes,
Cette rue et les rues adjacentes, à côté des hôtels princiers, avaient, en bordure, des maisons de belle apparence protégées contre le heurt des voitures et des lourds carrosses par des bornes en saillie.
La Maupin occupait, dans une de ces dernières maisons, un magnifique appartement qu'elle louait au sieur Langlois, rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré.
which (relying heavily on Google) translates as something like,
This street (rue Saint-Honore) and adjacent streets, next to the mansions, had a border (a curb?), the beautiful houses were protected against the shock of cars and heavy carriages by projecting terminals.
The Maupin kept in one of these houses, a magnificent apartment she rented from Mr. Langlois, on the rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré.
but I'm still left uncertain what it means when the surgeon says "sieur Langlois, demeurant rue Traversière en porte cochère", meaning "Mr. Langlois, residing in Traversière St, en porte cochère." I just don't know what the idiom of residing in or at the coach gate means. Does it mean that he lives at a choke point beyond which coaches cannot go, say? and if so, where would that be?
Looking at the incident itself, I feel that it's not the whole story to say la Maupin was angry just because the landlord was slow getting supper. At least, I wouldn't have it be so for a novel. If la Maupin is to be a remotely sympathetic protagonist, she can't be the sort of person to assault the help just because they're slow.
Gilbert says she "could not get along with her landlord." Is this a humorous understatement summarizing the upcoming brawl, or was there past history? The latter suggests painting the landlord as the sort of person la Maupin cannot get along with at ALL. However much stage time the landlord gets in the book, he spends all of it annoying la Maupin. Then, at the end of a really bad day -- maybe bad because of endless friction with him -- he responds to the order for supper with something like "Keep your pants on, missie. Or get it yourself."
Or maybe the order for supper comes in the middle of a tremendous row about something else entirely -- another plot strand -- and she is trying to change the subject (and anyway she is hungry) -- but won't drop the fight and she snaps.
She wasn't punished. Of course, that could simply be the measure of the power of her protector, whoever that was. (Sorry, I lose track.) But if the landlord was obnoxious in the eyes of the police or other authorities -- if they sympathize with la Maupin, even if they agree that, in law, she went too far -- that explains why she wasn't punished, could help make her more sympathetic, and could tie in with some other thread of the plot.
What were the political issues circulating at the time? We need one that la Maupin and some constellation of authorities could be on one side of, and the landlord could be on the other side of. Huguenot landlord? Early-blooming republican? A moralist who doesn't approve of transvestites OR the loose living of the upper crust? Might the landlord have swung first, so that la Maupin can be viewed as over-reacting in self-defense?
In point of fact, the incident of the key does come in the middle of another plot strand--what I've been calling "The downfall of d'Albert". d'Albert, you see, was no more monogamous than la Maupin, and one of his affairs got him into a lot of hot water. I don't have all of the events posted, but the one entitled "Downfall of d'Albert" gives the basic dates, and several of the other steps along the way are posted. The--you should excuse the expression--key one in this instance is "d'Albert stripped of command", which occurs on August 29, 1700, about a week before the "Key"—Sep 6, 1700.
I'll make my nex blog posting a run-down of the downfall of d'Albert strand, but to summarize, Mme d Luxembourg was notorious for her affairs. Everyone in Paris knew about them, except her husband, an oblivious and loving dope. D'Albert was one of her lovers and at some point, around early 1700, I believe, another of her lovers took exception, and he and a friend jumped d'Albert and the comte d'Uzes (who himself has a low reputation), in what one commentator suggest does not deserve the dignity of the term "duel". It is the last straw (where have i heard that phrase?) for the King, who has simply had it with his nobles dueling (or engaging in armed brawls) in the street. He orders the arrest of the two counts (their two assailants are foreigners and depart). Both d'Uzes and d'Albert run. after a few days, d'Uzes surrenders, but d'Albert remains a fugitive. The king responds by stripping him of his military commission. He still doesn't surrender until December.
So, on the day of the key incident, d'Albert is on the run, disgraced and recently stripped of his commission. This can easily result in a lot of tension between him and la Maupin. D'Albert, you may recall is her longest term lover, from just after she ran him through in a duel in an inn in Villeperdue back in 1688/89 until her decision to join the convent in 1705. The tension between them could easily spur her to violence. He could even be hiding from the law upstairs in her apartment when the redoubtable commissioner Regnault comes calling.
My intent for this chapter is that our sympathies for both d'Albert and la Maupin will be stretched a bit, and that in many ways, the next few chapters represent different ways in which she begins to redeem herself. Coming up are the triumph of "Tancrede", meeting Baltazar, reconciliation with M. Maupin, and her affair with Florensac, each of which changes her. Somewhere about the incident of the key she and d'Albert hit something of a nadir, their most out of control. D'Albert's low point will be the two years he spends in prison (next chapter, in the current outline). This may be hers. (If you'll forgive her for setting fire to the convent a dozen chapters back).
As an aside: All this reference to "chapters" brings up an interesting point, that the outline is not available to most readers at present. The outline, chapters, and blog postings heavily tied to them are restricted to members of the site who are tagged as reviewers. Anyone can read blogs like this, and registered members can comment, but to see the more confidential pieces or even edit them requires additional permissions. Members who are participating should feel free to request additional access.
I see. So la Maupin has good reason for being on edge. I like the idea of d'Albert hiding upstairs. It couild even be that the landlord suspects this, la Maupin suspects he suspects, and this is the immediate goad for her clobbering him. More generally, the landlord could be a loud critic of d'Albert.
So she made two attacks with blunt instruments on this night? The first on the landlord with a spit and the second on the maid with a key?
And... a key? I've always wondered about that. It must have been a heck of a big key. It just seems an unlikely ad hoc weapon. Any idea how big it was and what it was the key to?
The first attack, as i read it is with a sheep shank just removed from the spit which hits the kitchen door rather than Langlois's head. As to the key, one deposition reads «avec la grosse clef de la porte cochère de la dite maison» or "with the big key to the carriage gate of the said house", which brings us back to the exact meaning of porte cochère, and what it means that Langlois lives at the porte cochère , and what key exactly is meant.
(please excuse my poor English)
1. Regarding the Porte Cochère, I know of a private street near Hotel Matignon in Paris - a neighborhood full of Hotels Particuliers. The porch is in fact 5 meters long - a kind of tunnel - and there is a door in the inside, leading to the janitor's office or place. So the janitor has a view into the main street, an access to the porch to control all by-comers, and a view into the private street or court.
before Napoleon around 1800, buildings weren't numbered, so the magistrate would point the adress with its most prominent feature: a porte cochere long enough to harbor a room.
2. regarding the key: this private street and porch-tunnel is separated from the main street by a metallic gate (grid, railings), 4 meters high. the only time when i saw it shut was when there was a demonstration outside, but in 18th century the janitor should have closed it every night. It certainly is heavy (it has modern hinges now) and could need a large and impressive key to operate.
I'll send you a sketch if you can't figure. :)
3. the "sister" is probably a lover of La Maupin. Everybody would turn a blind eye on their relationship and hypocritically call her "sister". Except probably Mme Fouré, someone from the countryside, who would have expressed loudly her disapproval of such conduct, added to an exigence to prepare supper that late. La Maupin may have heard it, or one of her laquais reported what he heard... and Julie couldn't stand being scorned by servants...
1./2. That is much as I thought. I believe I follow your description, but a sketch would be lovely. And if you can relate it at all to the rue Traversière as shown in either of the two maps, that would be even cooler.
3. I like the by-play you suggest between the servants. Thanks.
0. Your English is, as ever, far better than my nearly non-existent French. Merci.
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