Jeanne de la Motte-Valois

Presumably, Jeanne told her story in French. Unless her English was very good, someone translated this work. Whoever did it was not a great prose stylist. The wording is clunky at best. Most of the sentences stretch on for a week or two without any reason for doing so. Combined with the fact that the English of 220 years ago was slightly different from the English of today, the language of the memoir itself can be a bit tedious. But once you get used to it, it’s worth the trouble. The story is extraordinary.

Google Books offers a text version of the book. You can highlight, copy, and paste the words. But because the software isn’t perfect, and because the page images have some flaws, the text version is messy. As I go, I am copying the text and cleaning it up. I’m doing it roughly; there’s simply too much work for me to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. However, I will bring to the readers of this blog some of the results of this clean-up.

The first of these posts will be about Marie Jossel, Jeanne’s mother. Jeanne was not, to say the least, her mother’s biggest fan. According to Jeanne, her father–the son of a minor nobleman, descended from the illegitimate child of Henri II, unprepared to support his family in any way–had been intended to marry a young noblewoman practically since his birth. As a young man, he fell for a maid in his household, the lovely but barbed Marie. Jeanne’s father, named Jacques like Jeanne’s brother, wanted to marry Marie, but his father disapproved. In spite of his father’s disapproval, Jacques married Marie (the English translation refers to her as Maria for no discernible reason).

As Jeanne herself puts it:

Maria [or Marie] Jossel, a girl who had the charge of the house at Fontette [meaning she was a maid], was the person who had attracted his [Jeanne's father Jacques's] eye. She was solicitous to please him and in a short time became pregnant. My father, wishing at once to make her an honorable reparation and to legitimate his child, was induced to ask my grandfather’s consent to marry her; [Jacques's father], thinking such a union degrading to an illustrious line of ancestry, gave a pointed and formal refusal. This opposition did but increase my father’s ardor; who, after many unsuccessful efforts to win my grandfather to compliance, and remaining unmarried till he was thirty-six years of age (four years longer than the law required) [until the age of thirty, men were required to seek their father's approval to marry in France], at length solemnized the marriage at Langres in Champaign, under the names of James de Luz and Maria Jossel, where my father had purchased an estate upon which he resided some time previous to the nuptials. About a year after, my grandfather, upon his deathbed, forgave the indiscretion of his son; after whose decease my father and mother left Langres to take possession of the estate at Fontette [the family estate, where Jeanne herself was born].

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From this era I date the commencement of my troubles. No sooner was my grandfather in his grave and my father in possession of his paternal inheritance than, freed from all restraint, Maria began to display her real character and fully evinced the meanness of her birth by an unlimited indulgence in that folly and extravagance which is ever predominant in vulgar minds on sudden elevation. She listened eagerly to the flattering insinuations of those who addressed themselves to her vanity and persuaded her that she did herself great injustice in continuing in the country, where she was only known as Maria Jossel; that she should repair to Paris, where she would figure in the first circles as the Baroness de Valois, a title which her accomplishments would not disgrace.

There needed no more to determine a female already intoxicated with vanity and suddenly raised from obscurity to affluence. She resolved to follow their advice [and] painted in glowing colours the advantages which would certainly result from a residence in the metropolis, and exerted her influence so effectually that the unsuspecting goodness of my father fell too easily a prey to the insinuating address of this cunning female, who having previously found means at different intervals to strip him of almost all his possessions, and to feed her poor relations with the spoils of the paternal inheritance, whose art was sufficiently crafty to make that very poverty, which she herself had occasioned, an argument in favor of her design. My father listened to what appeared to him so very plausible: that a journey to Paris and regaining the title and demesnes [domains] thereto annexed was the only means of repairing his shattered fortunes and restoring an illustrious name to its original splendor; with suggestions similar to these, and apparently so plausible, did she varnish over her interested designs, and urged my father (if I may be allowed the expression) to this desperate attempt.

Here ,I hope the candid Reader will bear with me a moment, while in extenuation of my father’s indiscretion I attempt to give a slight description of those natural accomplishments in my mother which united to constitute that fatal influence so replete with misery to her wretched offspring. Her form was elegant; her fine blue eyes appearing through long silken eye-lashes and her eyebrows finely arched, rendered her face extremely interesting and markingly expressive, while her dark tresses falling in graceful profusion over her shoulders displayed to the greatest advantage the natural whiteness of her skin. With these fatal charms, she possessed a strong understanding and a ready wit. Vain from her personal charms, she was volatile in her temper, impatient and revengeful.

Such is the outline of my mother.

The family set out for Paris, where they hoped to restore their fortunes. Along the way:

We stopped at a village on the road to Paris, where we dined, and my mother, having left my father and brother at the inn, took me out with her into the fields, and after upbraiding me for some trifling fault, treated me with the utmost severity, the marks of which were very plainly to be seen. When I had undergone this inhuman discipline, she commanded me to dry my tears, and we returned together, as though we had been good friends.

Jeanne’e father Jacques objected to this treatment of his daughter, so Marie began to”play nice”. This was just an act, however:

Her pretended fondness and caresses so far filled my little bosom with affection for her that I followed her almost everywhere and totally forgot all that I had before suffered. But, alas! this happiness was but of short duration; it vanished, only to give place to still greater severities, which were inflicted upon me, without a conscious offence, by this unfeeling parent.

A spirit of revenge, I soon fatally experienced, had been lurking in my mother’s breast under the specious disguise of kindness and affection; nor can I assign one plausible reason, in extenuation of her conduct, for again giving way to the impetuosity of her temper, except my having communicated to my father what she had already done to me. Strange and unaccountable as what I am now about to relate may appear, it is strictly true that my mother, having enticed me to some little distance, gathered a quantity of stinging nettles, of which she formed a rod, and had the precaution to use it on such parts of my body where she thought the marks would not be discovered.

Once they reached Paris, Marie used the threat of more violence to bully her children into begging on the street:

But a short period had elapsed when my mother (with indignation I remember the humiliating circumstance) instructed and commanded me to run after the people who passed by, repeating these words, which she had put into my mouth : “Gentlemen or Ladies, take compassion on a poor orphan, descended in a direct line from Henry the Second of Valois, King of France.”

Of course, this was true, but it could have been put to better use. Many people simply didn’t believe the story–it seemed too incredible that the descendant of a king would be begging on the street. Jeanne usually took her younger sister with her, while her brother went out to beg or make a bit of money clearing paths for the wealthy through the filthy streets. Jeanne’s father wasn’t fully aware of what was happening; he was apparently not fully aware of much. He was a weak man, led by his wife and unable to make a useful living. He was beloved by Jeanne, however. When, downtrodden and on his deathbed, he said to her:

“I tremble at the thought of leaving you in the care of such a mother!”

When he died, the family left for Versailles, where the court was based and where they might be able to get more from their begging:

About three months after, my mother again departed for Versailles, taking us along with her, and hired a ready-furnished lodging at La Porte du Bucque, where she again resumed the trade of sending me about to ask charity.

It didn’t take long for Jeanne’s mother Marie to find another lover:

She very soon deprived herself of the countenance of this benevolent family [who offered shelter and support] by forming an unaccountable connection with one Jean Baptiste Raymond, a native of Sardinia and a soldier whom she seemed to consider as her second husband.

And Jeanne describes her own  duties at this period:

Here it was that my mother assigned it as my task to bring home every day ten sous, and on Sundays and holidays twice that sum; but this was what I could very seldom accomplish. I now began to feel the noble blood of the Valois flowing within my veins, and opposing, like an indignant torrent, such a degradation of a descendant of that illustrious family, I pondered much the last words of my dying father [to never forget that she was a Valois]; yet the fear I was under, increased by the severest treatment, probably for the very purpose of making the most vivid impressions of terror, constrained me to obey and again to solicit charity for a poor little orphan descended from Henry II.

If she failed, Jeanne was subjected to beatings from her mother and her mother’s lover Raymond. The abuse Jeanne reports is serious, but there’s no telling whether what she says is true, partially true, or fabricated. This is what she reports of her mother and Raymond:

…for sometimes Raymond would come out to seek me, and having found me sleeping under a window or on the steps of some door, would lead me home, trembling, like a lamb to the slaughter, where we were no sooner arrived than my mother, shutting the door, ordered me to strip off the poor rags which did but ill conceal the nakedness of my body. Having pulled off these, even my very shift, she would beat me severely with a rod steeped in vinegar, till the splinters stuck in my flesh; after which, with the assistance of the man, she tied me with cords to the bedpost: and if during this cruel operation I happened to cry or make the least noise, she would again apply the rod with such reiterated fury, that it was frequently broken about my back.

Raymond was arrested several times for pretending to be Jeanne’s father, a baron down on his luck. He used the story to elicit sympathy and a bit of money.  Because he looked the part, he was believed, though not by the police, who knew better. After his treatment of her, Jeanne asks, “Was it unnatural, that I should rejoice at his confinement?”

It must here be remarked that Raymond, though twice before imprisoned, had still the audacity to beg as usual with my brother near the Tuilleries . . . .

His insinuating address led many to pity him as a nobleman in distress. These accomplishments had rendered him so popular, [and he had] added to his boldness [so that even] after two imprisonments [he had the audacity] to beg even in the very face of the palace; [it’s no surprise] that he was again apprehended. This imprisonment was much more serious than the former two; he was confined fifteen days, at the expiration of which he was sentenced by the Court to be exposed twenty-four hours at the Place de Louis Quinze, the scene of his imposture, with inscriptions and copies of the titles he assumed hung round his body; after which he was banned for five years from Paris.

My mother, for what reason I know not, led me and my brother to behold this spectacle. She appeared greatly affected. “‘Tis all your fault!” said she to me, weeping. “’Tis all your fault!”

Raymond was suffered to remain eight days to settle his affairs and to re-establish his health. The seventh after he had been thus exposed, he set forward on his journey, and my mother determining to go with him, told us with much seeming regret that she was going to conduct M. Raymond, assuring us that she did not mean to stay longer than five but would return within eight days at furthest. They then went out to communicate this to their landlord Dufresne and Theresa his niece, and afterwards departed together, leaving us three little children without the least morsel of victuals except a small bag of nuts. Three weeks passed away without any news.

Jeanne doesn’t speak of her mother again. Marie never came back for her children, never sent them word of herself apparently. Where Marie and Raymond went is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear she abandoned her children. Jeanne and her siblings were taken in not long after this by the Marquis de Boulainvilliers, a noblewoman whom Jeanne came to consider a mother. What happened to Marie? How much of Jeanne’s version of events is true? It’s very difficult to say. This is a period of Jeanne’s life that she didn’t need to fabricate for the sake of exonerating herself: her childhood didn’t have any bearing on her guilt or innocence in the theft of the Diamond Necklace. It was, however, supremely important to her presentation of herself as a tragic victim. She told (and embellished?) the story of her childhood, which was certainly troubled, in order to win the sympathies of her readers.

Make of her words what you will.

Here are the original versions of two memoirs by Jeanne de La Motte:

Mémoires justificatifs de la Comtesse de Valois de La Motte–In French, dense, and probably not accessible for people who don’t know French very well.

The life of Jane de St. Remy de Valois, heretofore Countess de La Motte–An English translation published while Jeanne was in London. Much more accessible to English-speakers if you don’t mind extraneous commas.

My take on the Memoirs:

Jeanne de La Motte’s story is fascinating from beginning to end, and no one would agree more than Jeanne herself. From a very young age, Jeanne learned to tell her own story to the best of her abilities, with the aim of capturing the attention and sympathy of those around her. She told her story while begging on the streets and she told her story while trying to get noticed at the court of Versailles. When the Affair of the Diamond Necklace broke, her audience became much wider and the list of antagonists in her story increased by (at least) one: now Queen Marie-Antoinette was on the list of people out to victimize her.

You can’t take Jeanne at her word. The outline of her life is almost certainly true, as well as those details that she had no reason to lie about (for instance, the date of her arrival in Paris) or that were easily verifiable fact (for instance, the date of her birth or marriage). But, otherwise, in her memoirs Jeanne makes herself into the tragic heroine, constantly wronged by fate and, more to the point, by those around her. The first villain of Jeanne’s story is her own mother. Jeanne’s mother is presented as a gold-digger who ruined her husband (Jeanne’s good-hearted father) and never loved him in return. Jeanne’s mother constantly beat her, forced them all to go to Paris where the children had to beg on the streets, barely mourned her husband’s death, and asked her children to claim that her new lover was their father. How much of this is true, it’s hard to tell. No doubt, Jeanne’s mother would tell a very different version of the story.

After her mother abandons Jeanne, other villains continue to plague her life: the nemesis is her foster father, or the officials at court, or Madame Elisabeth, or Marie-Antoinette herself, or the police, or the monarchy at large. Throughout her memoirs, Jeanne casts herself as the victim of wicked people. And yet, all the evidence points to her as the culprit in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, no matter how poorly she was treated by how many people. It’s incredibly telling that the thief is the victim here, over and over again.

Even if Jeanne only partially believed her own tales, this was the way she chose to defend her actions: she placed herself as the victim. In her own mind, she was merely responding to a cruel world as best she could–and maybe her response wasn’t perfect, but it was no worse than could be expected in the circumstances. Underlying this is Jeanne’s assumption that she deserved much, much better. Jeanne denies ever having stolen the Diamond Necklace, but if you take it for granted that she did steal it, then you can see her memoirs as a lengthy justification for why she deserved that necklace that didn’t belong to her. Her entire unfair life led up to a point where she saw for herself the chance to get some justice. Everyone from her mother to the queen had denied her what was her right. The necklace became a chance to reclaim what she felt she deserved. When that fell through, the memoirs became her form of revenge–because her story was much more damaging to the Queen than the loss of the necklace.

The morality is suspect; just because a person was constantly abused (and there’s little doubt Jeanne was abused) doesn’t justify theft, cheating, and adultery (all of which Jeanne was almost certainly guilty of). When you take into account her motives and point of view, Jeanne’s memoirs make a fascinating study of morals and how flexible they can be.

If you are patient with language, whether its French or mind-numbingly archaic English, then I suggest you take a look at these memoirs and judge for yourself.

What I found was not a surprise. I remembered for the most part what they were. They were all French (or probably French) brocaded silk from the 1750′s to 1770′s–approximately the same time period as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, though a little earlier. Here are a few details on each of the four textiles I got decent photos of.

Brocaded silk, probably French, 1760's. Tissue with a tabby ground and a flush pattern. Brocaded with colored silks.

Brocaded silk, French, 1770's. Tabby weave, brocaded in colored silk. The lacey pattern distracts from the lines of flowers., a common design in the 3rd quarter of the 18th century.

Brocaded silk in the French style of 1765-1775 but not necessarily French. Silk tabby striped in the warp, brocaded with metal thread, colored silk, and cordonnet.

Richly brocaded silk, French 1750-55. Woven in tabby, brocaded in silk and metal thread. The flush pattern in the field is created by a blue pattern weft.

The theme was sharing knowledge across borders and generations. He spent a lot of time outlining the need to get students interested in learning and exploring. I get the greatest joy out of life by discovering something that I didn’t know. I love nothing more than to put together the puzzle pieces and make a story. I wish more people realized just how fun and interesting history really is–it’s one long string of great stories.

Mr McCullough suggested that students be shown real documents and be taken to historical sites, and I agree whole-heartedly. Nothing will interest young people in history more than showing them items held by other people just as alive two hundred years ago as they, the student, are now. Walking through the same places they walked through, standing in the same rooms as them–I know for me that kind of experience has had a powerful effect. Asking students to discover something for themselves–to use real documents, archaeology, or architecture–gives that all-important sense of achievement.

I take a lot of interest in this sort of thing, because I’m aware that for people my age (and younger) it’s unusual to be interested in history. More people my age and younger need to get excited about diving into the stories of history. Fact really is stranger than fiction. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace is one example. But there are millions of stories involving normal people with extraordinary tales to tell.

Mr. McCullough’s discussion of learning was not just about teaching new generations to appreciate history; it was also about learning from other cultures. In the case of his newest book, the exchange is between France (especially Paris) and America in the nineteenth century. As he put it, people often don’t realize how much we owe the French (the French army and navy were key in winning our independence, and after all the French gave us the Statue of Liberty). The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, Mr McCullough’s newest book, is about the cultural gifts that France gave us: art, medicine, architecture.

The idea of Americans going to Paris to soak up its culture is apropos to the time period of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Eighteenth-century France was the acknowledged leader in all fine things–art, ballet, fashion, food. This was true when Marie-Antoinette was setting the fashion for three-foot-tall hair, and it is still true today. If it comes from Paris, it’s automatically the best (and, let’s face it, much more expensive). In the other direction, there was quite the vogue for all things American during and after the American Revolution. Suddenly ideas of rebellion, freedom, and quaint rusticism were all the rage.

Americans were very much in Paris at the time of the Affair. Just before the time of the Affair, Benjamin Franklin made an enormous splash by being both very American and very French. He wore a fur hat but made himself well-liked by playing politics their way. French politics was still wrapped up in a hierarchy of nobility and royalty. John Adams was commendably moral (too moral?), but not quite as successful at making friends in France as Franklin was. Thomas Jefferson was very much at home in a place with so much beauty and knowledge to soak in. It was the efforts of men like Franklin that convinced Louis XVI to aid the Americans in their fight against the English in spite of the cost and the danger inherent in helping rebels overturn a monarchy. The Americans in Paris at the time of the Affair of the Necklace spread the idea of government by the people. Ten years after America won its war against Britain, France executed its monarchs. That, more than anything, speaks to the important links between the United States and France at the time of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

The Bastille was famous in its day. In the public imagination, the Bastille was a dark hulk of a prison full of terror. Unlike other prisons, the inmates of the Bastille were largely important, or well-to-do, or liable to rouse the rabble. The fortress, built in the 14th century,

The Bastille

was deep, dark, mysterious, and secretive. Jeanne de La Motte referred to it as “that dread prison, the very name of which brings a shudder.” “There, countless victims of arbitrary power languished amidst groans, tears, and curses for the day that gave them birth,” according again to Jeanne (who had a tendency for melodrama when it came to her own suffering and who liked to play victim to the monarchy, justifiably or not).

Like the Tower of London, it was a place of legend, where people had a tendency to simply disappear. Like the Tower, its reputation probably wasn’t entirely earned: Less than a dozen people were executed inside the Tower, and a grand total of seven prisoners were being held in the Bastille when it fell.

But three years before the Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789, it was the holding pen for Cardinal Rohan, Jeanne de La Motte, Count Cagliostro, and Nicole d’Olva.

Jeanne’s experience gives us an idea of the terror of arriving at a prison with a reputation for being dismal. Jeanne was arrested in her hometown of Bar-sur-Aube and taken to Paris without, apparently, being aware that she had been arrested. When she saw the Bastille, she panicked and had to be calmed. They arrived at 4:00 in the morning to the first inner gate, where the postillion knocked and the guards admitted the carriage. The Comte de Launay, governor of the prison and soon to be a victim of its downfall, came to greet her himself. He treated her kindly and led her to the great hall where she signed the register to mark her entry into the Bastille. She was led up to the Comtée Tower. Jeanne makes a lot of the fact that she wasn’t scared by the moat or the drawbridge or the high tower or the guards, because she was confident in her own innocence.Being rather more skeptical than credulous, I think she is lying through her teeth here and was scared sh–less.

Jeanne encountered the poor conditions and secrecy of the Bastille right away. She was horrified by the “miserable pallet” that she was expected to sleep upon (she got a nice feather bed from her “turnkey”; one can only speculate how she repaid her obliging jailer). When she asked whether Cardinal Rohan was imprisoned nearby, the guard said he had no idea what she meant. Prisoners were told nothing about fellow prisoners, including who those prisoners might be. A prisoner might never know who was in the cell beside them, even if it was their wife or husband or brother or sister. Likewise, prisoners usually knew little about why they were in prison and what their sentence would be. Jeanne, for instance, didn’t know that she would be beaten, branded, and imprisoned for life until they dragged her out of her cell at dawn to carry out the punishment.

Once Jeanne was in her cell, her clothes were searched and a large number of her valuables were stolen (and, in her memoir, Jeanne lists every item in detail in tones of righteous indignation). There was a good deal of bribery and thievery by the guards and officials of the Bastille. Sometimes outsiders were even in bribing their way in to see prisoners.

In fact, pretty much anything and everything was available if you had the money. Wealthy prisoners could simply buy what they wanted to live comfortably within the confines of the Bastille. Cardinal Rohan’s treatment, for instance, was considerably different from Jeanne’s. He was allowed valets and had as many as thirty visitors a day. It paid to be the scion of one of France’s most powerful families.

After these initial arrests of Jeanne and Cardinal Rohan, there followed a veritable revolving door of prisoners coming and going. Nicole d’Oliva was arrested with her male companion, Toussaint de Beausire; Toussaint was set free because he clearly had nothing to do with the plot. Baron da Planta and Ramon de Carbonnieres, associates of Cardinal Rohan, were arrested, but ultimately allowed to leave. Anyone associated with Rohan or the La Mottes were at least brought in for questioning.

During this time of intense activity, there was a small miracle inside the Bastille. On May 12, 1785, Nicole d’Oliva gave birth to a son while still a prisoner. The fate of the boy, Jean Baptiste, isn’t really known, but he did rouse sympathy for his mother in the courtroom. Her predicament brought tears to the eyes of spectators and judges alike; she was acquitted.

The prisoners who were held in the Bastille were later transferred to the Conciergerie and stood trial at the attached Palais de Justice (both of which played a prominent role in the French Revolution as prison and courtroom for those accused in the Terror). Mostly, this ends the direct connection of the Bastille to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, except for one last link: one of the vainqueurs (that is, one of those who stormed the Bastille) was a certain Toussaint de Beausire, former lover of Nicole d’Oliva. He had taken an interest in politics and become a firebrand (at the same time abandoning poor Nicole and their child). One of his fellow firebrands was Camille Desmoulins, who stood on a table at the Palais Royal and pressed his listeners into action–which in this case meant storming the Bastille.

Indirectly, the fall of the Bastille and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace are inextricably linked. The Bastille was symbolic of the power of the monarchy which was corrupt, arbitrary, and at times cruel. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace was symbolic of the people’s mistrust in the monarchy: many people continued to believe the Queen had been at the heart of the disappearance of the diamond necklace. More worryingly, perhaps, the people also believed that the Queen met with Cardinal Rohan in a dark garden at midnight–which clearly suggested a sexual relationship. The Affair showed that people believed her capable of this sort of behavior, in fact were willing to attribute this behavior to her even when the evidence didn’t back it up. The Affair damaged Marie-Antoinette’s reputation and reminded the people of the monarchy’s extravagance (the necklace was worth the same price as a war ship) and loss of touch with reality. When Jeanne protested that she had been wronged by the Queen and the corrupt French government, many people sympathized. The Bastille fell three years later because that sentiment grew and festered. The Affair was most certainly a step along the path that led to revolution–a very important step.

It may be apocryphal, but it’s eloquent: it’s said that when a guard brought the news of the storming of the Bastille to the King, he asked, “Well, then is it a revolt?” and was answered, “No, sire, it is a revolution.”

I will try to write more about the Bastille in connection to our beloved hucksters, prostitutes, and monarchs this weekend. Until then, enjoy what’s left of Bastille Day!

The Chateau de Versailles

This program focuses largely on Louis XIV, the Sun King, who of course built Versailles. Louis was extraordinarily important to ancien regime France. He essentially created the court culture, which was the culture of the ruling elite of the country. He chose to bring his nobility to him, to have them wait on him, and to have them squabble with one another over who got to hand him his shirt. In the meantime, they weren’t causing Louis any trouble. When he was very young, those pesky nobles had been causing all kinds of trouble. They called it the Fronde.

A hundred years later or so, at the time of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Louis’s rules were still being strictly enforced. The king and queen were put on very public display and their every bodily function was accompanied by a list of rules and precedents. Marie-Antoinette hated the stuffy rules. She wanted to do things her way, meaning less formally. That got her in trouble all around, but that is another story altogether. The point is that even in the time of Jeanne de La Motte, Marie-Antoinette, and all our favorite characters, Louis’s presence was still very much felt.

This documentary is a very nice overview of Louis and his palace, which were intertwined  both during his life and after his death.

Note: This is part one. You’ll have to click on part two when this video ends.

Take for instance Jeanne’s fainting spell at the beginning of the movie. Jeanne is trying to get the attention of the queen, Marie-Antoinette. The normal ways have failed, so Jeanne decides to “faint” in the middle of one of the queen’s chambers (probably one of the ones furthest from the queen because that’s all she could get access to). Jeanne de La Motte-Valois, self-styled Comtesse de La Motte, did indeed faint in front of an important personage in an attempt to get attention. The person was Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, not Marie-Antoinette, the king’s wife. And Madame Elisabeth and her friend the Comtesse d’Artois (sister-in-law to the king) actually helped Jeanne for a short period, until Jeane started sleeping with the prolific Comte d’Artois. Or, that’s how rumor would have it.

In fact, speaking first in general terms, Jeanne’s character is ever so slightly off. First of all, she doesn’t have the smart, witty, and greedy edge of the real Jeanne, who was always brazen and unabashed. And the mentality was too modern–which is to say too sexually moral. Jeanne’s era was very loose as far as sexual matters go. Today, it’s hard to quite get a grip on the mentality. Everyone says that Hollywood is full of sex, but France in the ancien regime was a pretty lascivious place. It was assumed men had mistresses as well as wives and that women had lovers as well as husbands; in fact, it was unusual for husbands and wives to have much to do with one another at all. At least, this was the case in high society (this may be due to the way knowledge comes down to us–all the salacious stories make for interesting reading so we hear about them more than the faithful couples, whoever they were ). There was a fairly simple code: as long as marital duties were fulfilled and no one made too much of a spectacle of themselves, pretty much anything was acceptable behind closed doors.

Jeanne in particular wasn’t exactly known for chastity. She was married to Nicolas de la Motte, but was almost certainly sleeping with Retaux de Villette much of the time that she was married to Nicolas. She probably slept with Jacques Claude Beugnot (an old friend) and Cardinal Rohan, too, and there were stories about her and a cleric in her earlier days. In any case, this is pretty well glossed over in the movie, though they make hay out of the fact that Retaux was a gigolo (the historical Retaux was, too). There’s very little to suggest that Jeanne loved Retaux or vice-versa. In fact, Retaux spilled his guts when he was arrested. Jeanne did refuse to name him and a handsome young servant in Cardinal Rohan’s household when she was questioned, but she probably spared them for the simple fact that they were handsome. But since this is a product of Hollywood, the heroin had to have her love interest.

Quite correctly, that love interest is not her husband Nicolas. Jeanne and Nicolas had something of a working relationship, though at one point they were probably in love to some extent (it’s impossible to measure that sort of thing). They certainly were both willing and able to collaborate on an elaborate hoax to steal an extraordinarily expensive diamond necklace. Nicolas, at least, had no qualms about fleeing France when his wife was arrested, leaving her to her fate. Jeanne didn’t implicate Nicolas, but of course she was sticking to the story that only the queen was at fault.

The most glaring historical inaccuracy is the portrayal of Jeanne’s childhood. In the movie, Jeanne’s father supposedly spoke out against the corruption of the monarchy and was punished for it by having his house burned. It seems both he and Jeanne’s mother were murdered. The reality is very, very different. Jeanne was the scion of a bastard line of the royal Valois family. They had a grand heritage, but her ancestors had squandered all the money. Jeanne’s father was pretty useless on top of it all. Jeanne, her sisters, and her brother grew up in abject poverty, in spite of being the last surviving descendants of the Valois kings (albeit from an illegitimate line). Jeanne’s mother had been a household servant the who had caught the eye of the young baron. When the money ran out, the family picked up and went to Paris from their leaky old chateau  in the countryside. There, things went from bad to worse. Jeanne’s father died of natural causes, and her mother found another man. Jeanne’s mother abandoned her children, who were left to beg on the streets. Jeanne eventually met a noblewoman who was shocked to hear of Jeanne’s lineage and took the orphans in.

This is where the movie is perfectly correct. Jeane was obsessed with the rights she should have had as a (distant) relative of the king. However, the real Jeanne led a tough childhood and, not too surprisingly, was mostly interested in money, not honor or retribution for wrongs (unless those retributions took the form of cash). She wasn’t very good at holding onto money, either. She was granted a certain amount of money by the crown, but wanted more. How much revenge motivated her plot to steal the Diamond Necklace isn’t clear. Maybe in the back of her mind she realized that somehow the queen would be blamed and she could get some payback for the way she had been–in her own mind– swept under the rug. In any case, when Jeanne says in the movie that her property was usurped, that’s entirely untrue; there was no property to usurp. She just wasn’t given as much as she wanted by the crown, who had very little obligation to an obscure, very distant relative.

Another partially true tidbit is Jeanne’s meeting with a minister. Jeanne did meet with a few ministers here and there. She went to Calonne, the finance minister, who apparently entertained her pleas for money and got her a little extra. In protest at not getting more, she sat down in his office for three hours and refused to move until she got 2400 francs more. In the instance of Calonne at least, there is the implication that she returned the kindness (or paid for it) with sexual favors.

One rather unfortunate error in the movie is that Cardinal Rohan made an “inappropriate joke” about Marie-Antoinette’s mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. There was a real and long-standing rift between Rohan and Marie-Antoinette, but in reality the estrangement wasn’t due to an inappropriate joke. While Marie-Antoinette was still dauphine, she and Madame du Barry (the king’s mistress) were enemies and Cardinal Rohan was the ambassador to Austria.  At that time, Poland was being divied up between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In a letter to Madame du Barry, Rohan wrote that he had found Maria Theresa weeping over Poland’s woes: in one hand she held a handkerchief to dry her tears, but in the other she held a sword to slice up poor Poland. Unfortunately for Rohan, Madame Du Barry read his insulting opinion aloud at a dinner party. Marie-Antoinette was not amused. From that day on, the Cardinal was in deep disfavor with her.

In the movie, Rohan doubts Jeanne at several points. He asks for assurances. In reality, he was pretty trusting of her all things considered. He accepted that the letters he received were from the queen because they were on gold-bordered paper and were signed with her name. He accepted that Jeanne was a true confidante of the queen. He accepted that the queen needed some cash loans quickly. He even accepted that she would choose him as a secret emissary to purchase a fabulous diamond necklace on her behalf.  He accepted it mostly because he was desperate for it to be true. He did have some doubts, which prompted Jeanne to orchestrate the Grove of Venus scene, which he believed to be real proof that the queen wanted to favor him again. He more or less fell for it hook, line and sinker.

The portrayal of Nicole d’Oliva isn’t bad, per se, but it misses the mark. Nicole is the main character of the novel I’m writing, and I naturally have some affection for her. In the movie she is an actress who plays the queen in dirty plays put on for the masses. Granted, those kinds of plays were put on, and there was an enormous quantity of pornographic material about the queen in circulation. But Nicole was a prostitute, pure and simple. She happened to look a little like the queen, so she was chosen to pretend to be her in the Grove of Venus.

This part of the story, the Grave of Venus scene,  is  garbled in the movie, and there’s an unnecessary chase scene at the end. The historical Nicole was brought by the La Mottes to the Grove of Venus, just beside the palace of Versailles, where she was to meet a nobleman, hand him a flower, and tell him, “You know what this means.” None of this really happens in the movie. The historical scene was short and to the point. But in the movie, he kneels down and kisses the hem, etc, but there’s no rose and Nicole doesn’t utter those words. The scene is centered on the Cardinal throwing himself at the queen. In the historical Grove of Venus, the secret rendezvous came to an end abruptly when Jeanne called out that someone was coming. The noise was actually Retaux, who was there to break up the meeting so that the Cardinal wouldn’t linger too long and figure out he wasn’t really talking to the queen. Everyone scattered and went home. No chases were involved.

I’m going to skip ahead to the arrests and trial. Jeanne truly was arrested at her home in Bar-sur-Aube (she returned home after stealing from the Cardinal so she could show off). Nicolas did flee. Cagliostro and Retaux both tried to escape, too, but were captured. Nicole d’Oliva’s story, again, is completely changed. The real Nicole, after she was dropped like a hot potato by the La Mottes who had no use for her anymore, ended up going to Brussels. She was arrested there shortly after Jeanne was arrested in Bar-sur-Aube. She was brought back to France and imprisoned with the others in the Bastille. She actually gave birth while in the Bastille awaiting trial. In the movie, she pops up as a surprise witness. She was certainly no surprise witness (she was on trial, too, after all), but she was something of a sensation. The people were sympathetic to her because she was a simple, uneducated young woman with a baby who probably had no idea what she had gotten herself into when she agreed to pretend to be the queen. Nicole was acquitted with a reprimand from the court for impersonating the queen.

Speaking of the verdicts of the accused (Jeanne, Retaux, Rohan, and Cagliostro), the movie shows them in the courtroom, standing in front of the judges and waiting to be told their fates. The French system was very different from the current American or British system. Prisoners often weren’t informed of what they were accused of, and often didn’t know the sentence until it was carried out. Jeanne, for one, was in her prison cell when she heard shouting in the streets. The public had heard the verdict, but Jeanne wasn’t told until several hours later that she had been convicted. She didn’t know her sentence until she was wrenched out of bed and dragged outside to be flogged and branded. In the movie, she is even told her sentence in private, allowing for the most cringe-worthy part of the entire movie: her little speech, which unfortunately encapsulates all the things wrong with the movie. The writers tried to make her some freedom fighter who had been deeply wronged by the crown. It doesn’t work because it isn’t genuine and it isn’t truthful. Trying to make a thief into a freedom fighter is a pretty far stretch, especially in this case. “I stole the necklace because I wasn’t given my rights . . . ” If you asked the historical Jeanne, she would have said she didn’t steal the necklace at all. If you forced her to be honest (a very tall order indeed) she would have told you she stole it because she was dead broke and she deserved to have the best of everything.

Now, there were some surprisingly accurate tidbits throughout the movie. For instance, when Jeanne uses the queen’s tendency to nod at the crowd to convince the Cardinal that the queen is nodding at him. This is definitely true. Also true, the letter that the jewelers sent to Marie-Antoinette thanking her for buying the necklace. Marie-Antoinette really did receive the exact latter that is quoted in the movie, and she really did think the jewelers had gone mad. She totally discounted it because it made no sense to her–she never bought any such necklace so she thought there must be some mistake. It took a few weeks for them to put together the basic of the what had happened. Cardinal Rohan really did burn the letters he received “from the queen”. These were actually forged by Retaux and might have been wonderful evidence during the trial, but alas he’d burned them. And Retaux really did pose as the queen’s messenger when the necklace was handed over. Then he whisked away, but he certainly wasn’t going to the queen. What exactly happened to the diamonds from that point is unknown. They’ve disappeared into the ether.

I should also note that the design of the necklace was changed to make it seem less gaudy to modern eyes. That’s not really too big of a deal in my books.

So, although there are some major errors and some misreadings of 18th century French morality and legal proceedings, I really enjoyed the touches of historical accuracy and the attempt at telling the true story. Of course, someone decided to make Jeanne more sympathetic, but I think she’s best enjoyed as a kind of antihero.

In 2001, The Affair of the Necklace, a high-budget Hollywood production with A-list stars (okay, maybe B-list), was released to the world. The movie is about my favorite jewel heist: the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Or, more pithily, the Affair of the Necklace. Hilary Swank stars as Jeanne de La Motte-Valois, Simon Baker as Retaux de Villette, Adrian Brody as Nicolas de La Motte, and Christopher Walken as Count Cagliostro. A very young Hayden Panetierre plays Jeanne as a child. The complete list of actors, as well as other info, pictures, and comments, is available over here at IMDB.

The movie is narrated by Baron de Breteuil, a relatively tangential character. His voice is useful because this story needs some narration; dialogue simply couldn’t get across all the information that the audience needs to make sense of this complicated story. It’s effective in getting that information out, but it also gives a slightly melodramatic tinge to the movie. It’s as if someone thinks it’s Othello. His narrating harps on a comment made by Napoleon (yes, that Napoleon) concerning the affair of the necklace–that the affair was one three events that brought down the French monarchy. One of the failings of the film is that it doesn’t address that statement. While Marie Antoinette, played by Joely Richardson, plays a part, the conditions in France at the time aren’t explored at all…….

The movie begins at the end, then skips back to show us how we got there. This way we understand the stakes right away; if we jump into the story when Jeanne, Nicolas, and Retaux are plotting a heist, the gravity of what they didn’t wouldn’t be obvious until the end of the movie. What doesn’t work is the speech. Jeanne had been made by the filmmakers into some kind of freedom fighter. She has been greatly wronged by the monarchy and is only trying to (valiantly) get back what was taken. The problem from a historical point of view is that this is patently untrue and kind of unfair to Louis XVI. The film shows Jeanne’s parents being murdered and the house torched by soldiers. In reality, Jeanne’s father was a failure who squandered the last of the family’s inheritance and married a gold-digging maid who took their children to Paris, made them beg on the streets, then abandoned them. The problem with the movie’s portrayal of Jeanne’s childhood–from a storytelling point of view–is that it makes Jeanne a much less interesting character. A character who is greedy and a crook, but ultimately bases her claims in the truth, is much more interesting than a character who is whining about what was taken from her. This is the rather lame attempt on the part of the movie makers to show that the monarchy was destined to fall. They destroyed a family, therefore they were doomed to be removed by plucky plebeians like Jeanne.

As the movie progresses, we meet Cardinal Rohan and Count Cagliostro. Rohan is played well by Jonathan Pryce, but he spends too much time ravishing young women around him, making lewd suggestions, and asking questions. This Cardinal hardly seems capable of being fooled by what is–in essence–a fairly transparent scam. As for Cagliostro: he is played by Christopher Walken with his usual pinache. Cagliostro was a bit of an oddity in his own time, kind of the Kris Angel of the 1700′s. Strangely, though he’s a very odd addition, his character rung true. It’s clear he’s aware of his own games and that he’s good at what he does.

We also meet Retaux and Nicolas. Although Simon Baker’s Villette is sympathetic, the love story between him and Jeanne feels forced because it is. It’s little more than the usual Hollywood trick of inserting a formulaic love story into a far more interesting, more complicated reality. Jeanne and Retaux were what you might call friends with benefits. He offered his skills as a forger, and he added some dramatic flare on one occasion. He was also, yes, a gigolo. There’s no evidence that Jeanne was in love with him. He was, however, one of the few people she didn’t name when she started singing like a canary in the Bastille. Jeanne and her husband Nicolas didn’t necessarily have the best of marriages, but they were at least allies. This comes across well in the movie because it’s one of the more complicated relationships.   Adrian Brody was a bit of a mismatch physically for the part. The daring escape from the police through the streets of Paris was unnecessary, really, and just another one of Hollywood’s attempts to interest its audience.

After the initial moment, we jump back to in time to Jeanne’s early attempts to get attention at court. After meeting Retaux, she attempts to manipulate the Cardinal into giving her money, and then into helping her steal a very, very expensive necklace. The plotting moves along at a good pace. A lot more focus on the plotting and manipulation would have really helped, along with one less chase scene and a one or two fewer scenes of Cardinal Rohan seducing a girl or otherwise acting like a crazed man in the throes of a mid-life crisis.

The plot goes sour and Jeanne is arrested in what is meant to be a dramatic moment at her family’s old abandoned house (even though we’re given the impression earlier that the place is burnt). Nicolas flees, Retaux tries and fails to flee, and the Cardinal is arrested at Versailles. Cagliostro also tries and fails to get away. Then the romance between Jeanne and Retaux pops back into the picture. He gave up what he knew because he was tortured, and she forgives him. Of course, nothing remotely like this happened to the real characters, but I digress. Jeanne is brought back to the courtroom, the others are all acquitted (except for Retaux), and she’s told she will have to wait for her verdict. She’s told it in private and gives a speech that falls flat about “reaching too far”. It falls flat because that entire theme is too syrupy-sad, too overplayed. Jeanne’s plea doesn’t do any good, and she’s sentenced to be beaten, branded, and thrown in jail for life.

For me, the most effective scene is the final one where Jeanne has escaped to London and is taking refuge. The epilogue, telling us how our characters ended up, plays over images of Jeanne walking down a corridor and out a door into the rain. The imagery is lovely and fits with the words that tell us Jeanne died in London a few years after arriving there. She was pushed, jumped, or fell out of a window.

To speak generally, the dialogue is stiff and delivered just as stiffly. There are worse offenders, but the period dialogue wasn’t handled well. The actors deliver the lines without making me cringe, but most of it lacked flow. Hilary Swank’s delivery was leaden. What worked very well were the costumes and sets. It was a genuinely lovely movie. The gowns were appropriate, generally time-specific, and stunning. I couldn’t ask more out of a Hollywood film. I also enjoyed seeing bits of Versailles. The location used for the La Motte family home had a fantastically ancien regime feel to it.

This was a good movie–nothing spectacular. I think the material wasn’t truly done justice, but I don’t think the medium can really do it justice. There are too many intricacies and characters to fit into two hours. A miniseries might be more appropriate if film is used at all. Naturally, as a writer I think that the only way to really tell this story is in a book, and of course that should be in novel form (my story is still going around to agents). My biggest disappointment in this movie was the limited role of Nicole d’Oliva, who is the main character in my own telling of the story. Poor Nicole is relegated to a bit part. She’s an actress who is spotted by Nicolas and shows up for a few minutes, then is brought back as a surprise witness at the trial. I know the focus of this film was Jeanne, but I can’t help but want more of Nicole!

If I were an official film reviewer, this would all probably be more coherent. Out of 10, I’d give it a 6. And next time I will return (after what I hope will be a much shorter delay) with the details of what was and wasn’t historical fact in The Affair of the Necklace.

The old Farmhouse in the snow.

It’s the history of the old house I grew up in. I have always known the old farmhouse was built before the Civil War. Many years ago, my mother did some research on the house that my father bought in 1978. She couldn’t finish the research then, so that’s where the research stood for about twenty years.

Having a historically curious mind, I decided I wanted to know how old this house is. I could guess from the size, style, and height of the windows at its approximate age. I’m no expert, but I put it in the early 1800′s. It has an almost Federalist style to it. But I wanted some facts, so I began at the beginning by going to the old Cecil County courthouse in Elkton. In the land records archives, I started with my parents’ deed from the 70′s. From there, it was easy to trace it backwards in time. Each deed states that the land being conveyed to so-and-so by so-and-so is the same land conveyed to so-and-so by so-and-so as recorded in such-and-such a book on such-and-such a page. So I moved back in time, through the 20th and 19th centuries……..

The house was owned by several different people during the 20th century. Seven different families, not including my own, lived in the house during the 1900′s. Only one of those seven families lived here for more than 11 years. There were a few interesting points. I found out which family put in the plumbing in the 30′s and decided to slice and dice joists to put in toilets and pipes. I also found that in the 40′s, a couple lived here, but when the woman died, the husband was in debt so the house was sold off at auction by the sheriff. Although the land records didn’t show it, in the 60′s, the man who owned the house had health issues and built a log cabin next door, where out neighbors currently live. This man also sold off a lot of the 110 1/2 acres that the farmhouse was attached to. A large portion of that became a housing development, another chunk became three building plots along the road, and most of it was sold along with the log cabin. Today, the old farmhouse only has 2 acres of land, a granary, and a barn.

At the very beginning of the 20th century, the Rogers family owned this house. It was the Rogers family who originally owned the land and built the house. Smith H Rogers was the last of the Rogers family to own this house, which he sold in 1912. He and Isaac Rogers, presumably his brother, received the house in 1867, and in 1875 Isaac sold his half-share of the property to Smith. Smith H Rogers owned this property for 55 years and probably lived here much longer. He received the property from Jeremiah Rogers, who was presumably the father of Smith and Isaac. Since it was his father’s house, Smith probably lived here all his life. He probably is responsible for the addition to the back of the house, built sometime in the late 1800′s.

Going back from the 1867 deed in which Smith H Rogers received the house from Jeremiah Rogers, I found that Jeremiah had received it from a shadowy fellow named John Rogers in 1845. I say he’s shadowy because this deed didn’t lead to another deed. The trail ran cold. I was forced to look at the indexes of the land records. These covered decades of and transactions and were only roughly in alphabetical order. I had to scan through every deed made out to a person with a name beginning with “R”. The Rogers family was pretty prolific in its land dealings, too. There were dozens of deeds and bonds, many of which don’t seem to be related to this property. None of them said anything about a John Rogers. Who was this John Rogers and where had he gotten this land and house?

After skimming through lots of nearly-indecipherable 19th-century handwriting, I finally found a document having to do with the death of a Thomas Rogers. I’m still not sure when old Thomas died, but this document was dated 1825. Thomas left a gaggle of children. Some of his daughters were married, so they were grown. This document basically laid out the provisions of the will, in which all the children were to receive a certain portion of money. However, John Rogers was granted land in lieu of his portion of the money. The land isn’t described. It’s difficult to be sure whether that land was the same land he gave to Jeremiah Rogers in 1845, but it’s a fair assumption to make.

Interestingly, the document does mention improvements and a mill. Now, it’s important to note that the language might just be standardized–that “improvements” is meant to include anything that might possibly be on the land, not that there necessarily is anything on the land. There was a mill, though. Our house is near a creek, the Little North East, and the property used to extend down to a road that leads off of our road. At that corner, there was once a mill, in what is now a cow pasture. There was also, apparently, a store, according to a map from 1860 that I found. I find this fascinating. Right now, that corner is trees, cows, and pasture. Nothing more. A hundred and fifty years ago, though, it was a productive little corner.

But was there a house on that land in 1825? The land deeds don’t really tell us for sure what’s on the land, just that the land was sold. I also haven’t been able to find out where Thomas Rogers got the land.

Skimming through the deeds, though, I did find something interesting. The deeds gave very little indication of who these people were. But one particular document was included in the land records regarding Catherine Rogers, one of old Thomas’s children. At mid-century, she was feeble in mind and body, according this document, and had sold her land to someone from Pennsylvania. She now wanted her land back. Someone such as a nephew was trying to get her land back for her. It sounds like someone took advantage of her and some younger relatives stepped in to help. The really interesting part, though, is that Catherine was a Quaker. The document says she was a member of Friends Meetinghouse. The house is only a few miles from the Pennsylvania borer, which is of course Quaker country. I think it’s fascinating to think that Quakers lived here. Hell, it might even be true that they really did hide runaway slaves in the old root cellar. Alright, so there really isn’t anywhere to hide down there, but an eight-year-old can come up with some great stories.