Blog: Early Chronology

There are a couple of interesting problems in early chronology. The first is the question of Julie's birth. Most sources cite it as 1673. The main notable counter-example is Gabriel Letainturier-Fradin, who has her birth in 1670, a date that he says he can find no documentation for, but which works better given the richness of her pre-debut days. The second issue is that very richhness and how to come up with a chronology that allows for her time with d'Armagnac, M. Maupin, Sérannes, the young Marseillaise, Marechal, d'Albert and Thévenard, all before a 1690 debut.

So far, I have found only one author, Edouard George Jacques Gregoir, who used the 1670 date before Letainturier-Fradin, and he contradicts himself. He writes (in my poor translation):

1693. - Mademoiselle Maupin, born in 1670, settled in Paris, and began this year in the role of the Magician in the opera Dido by Desmarest.

but later writes,

She died in November or December 1707, aged 33 years.

He also used the date "1799" when he meant "1699". Thus, it is quite possible that the 1670 was also a typographical error. After 1904, when Letainturier-Fradin published "La Maupin (1670-1707): sa vie, ses duels, ses aventures", many people used his 1670 date, myself included, and as I was the first to write at all extensively about her on the Web, that date is now quite prevalent there. The fact remains, however, that he admits to making up the date (again, in my semi-mechanical translation):

d'Aubigny's only concern  was, apparently, that he had a daughter around 1673. We advance that day and bring it to 1670; no text confirms this view, but Mlle Maupin's debut at the Opéra was in 1690, and she would have been only seventeen at the time, and had already accomplished many feats—impossible for such a young girl. Moreover, the biographers say that she married at the age of seventeen and had her debut in 1693 or even 1695, while the actual date of her first appearance at the Opera is really the month of December 1690¹.

The footnote cites Parfaict on the 1690 date. And so we find that the reason that there is any question of whether she was born in 1670 or 1673 is the question of how to make a plausible timeline that has la Maupin debuting in Cadmus et Hermoine in December 1690 as shown by Parfaict. It is worth noting that in his article on la Maupin, as opposed to his article on Cadmus, Parfaict says "MAUPIN, (N d'Aubigny, femme du Sieur) Actrice de l'Académie Royale de Musique, naquit en 1673.... & débuta par le role de Pallas, dans la Tragédie de Cadmus , en 1695." ("Maupin, (born d'Aubigny, wife of Sieur) Actress of the Royal Academy of Music, was born in 1673.... & debuted in the role of Pallas in the Tragedy of Cadmus in 1695.") Yet, in his article on Cadmus et Hermoine he lists all of the performance3 from the first through 1737, giving only the following:

1. April 1673,
2. 1674,
3. 1678,
4. October, 1679,
5. December, 1690, which lists Pallas as played by "Mlle Maupin, débutante."
   
6. April, 1691,
7. September 21, 1703,
8. August 28, 1711,
9. August 22, 1737.
   

There is no Cadmus in either 1693 or 1695. And so, even our earliest and most fundamental source gives the 1673 date in conjunction with a calendrical error on the date of her debut, one that disagrees with his own chronology.

This pretty much frees me to work the date out for myself.

At present, I'm aware of only a small number of fixed dates in this period that affect our story. They are:

• siege of Philippsburg in 1688
• battle of Fleurus, July 1, 1690
• Cadmus et Hermoine, December, 1690

Clayton claims that she joined the opera two month before her debut. D'Albert fought in the battle of Fleurus, and we are told that this is what called him away from la Maupin, which must have occurred earlier in 1690, presumably after the duc de Luxembourg was put in charge of the army in the Spanish Netherlands.

Given those limits, there isn't enough time for more events to happen between meeting d'Albert and joining the Opera than her meeting Thévenard. The rest will need to come before d'Albert. There is a pretty clear sequence up to the convent in Avignon, as well. So, if we put Marechal between Avignon and d'Albert, we get the following sequence:

1. d'Armagnac, 
2. M. Maupin,
3. Sérannes,
4. the young Marseillaise,
5. Marechal,
6. d'Albert,
7. Thévenard,
8. Obtain pardon
9. Join the Opera

To work out a chronology, we next need to assign durations to the various events, and then work our way back from her debut. The following table is something of a scratchpad for working out those dates. I expect to update it in the future. This may cause me to change the conclusions that follow it.

This would seem to suggest that there is enough time to fit in all of the known early events in her life, have her affair with the duc d'Armagnac start when she is at least 14, and have her born in 1673 as the vast majority of biographers suggest. That reduces us to the question of whether Letainturier-Fradin was correct in asserting that all of this is "impossible for such a young girl". As Rappar points out (in commentary on an unpublished chapter), the notion of a "teenager" is a rather modern concept, and with the marriageable age being 13-14 years old, children in general would face becoming adults about then.

It is also worth considering that some of her adventures—her tomboyish fascination with riding and fencing, running off with a man who turns out not to have the resources he claimed, experimenting with her bisexuality, setting fire to a convent, picking a fight with the son of one of the most powerful men in the Kingdom—fit in well with teenaged behavior.

I am currently leaning towards using the 1673 birth year despite the fact that I popularized the 1670 notion on the web for the last decade and a half. Thoughts? Comments?