La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 6,  the shortest of all the chapters, Henri d’Estouteville becomes a regular visitor to Mme d’Aubemer’s salon.

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER 6

Regrets and Hopes

“When are we leaving, Lionel?” said Mme de Saveuse before finishing her letter to her mother.

“I can’t really say.  My affairs are well in hand…but they require my presence.”

He smiled indulgently to himself at the fatuity of his words.  Mme de Saveuse sighed and finished her letter without naming the date¹ that she wished for with all her might.

In the account she had given the Maréchale of the previous night’s ball, she had not omitted to speak of the goodness with which M d’Estouteville had come to her aid in the moment of her greatest isolation and shared out the expressions of her gratitude between him and Mme de Rieux.  Though less struck by Henri’s generosity in looking after such a lovely person, Mme d’Aubemer was grateful to him for his conduct towards her favourite at a moment when he had evidently been useful, and when he appeared at her evening party, she welcomed him benevolently and reproached him for having neglected her.  He hadn’t known, he said, that her door was open to the vulgar herd.  Mme d’Aubemer joked about that expression being applied to the marvellous Henri d’Estouteville; he defended himself wittily, and the conversation was gay and animated when Mme de Saveuse entered.  She thanked M d’Estouteville simply and openly for the assistance he had given her.  He seemed a little embarrassed by this frankness and withdrew almost immediately.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 5,  we meet the amoral Marquis d’Estouteville and his son Henri. 

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER FIVE

A Courtier

The Marquis d’Estouteville, a grand but fiscally embarrassed lord, and a very skillful courtier, concealed a profound immorality behind exquisite good breeding, and dissimulated his egoism behind the appearance of obligingness and flightiness.  He seemed to have ruined himself carelessly and to provide pleasure to others, but he kept a better reckoning than one would have imagined and made no sacrifices except for his vices.  He had sometimes been able to exploit those of princes and people in power in a way that was quite useful to himself, but with such a skillful, light hand and from such a lofty distance that one would have had to be privy to the details of his life to attribute to him the contempt that his conduct merited.  Otherwise, his manners were charming, and of the sort of breeziness, due to his indifference to everything, that made him eminently sociable.  He showed great regard for his wife, whose angelic virtues he vaunted to the world, but which he himself did not appreciate.

As long as she lived, she remained exclusively in charge of the education of their only son, and though Henri was only seventeen at the time of the Marquise d’Estouteville’s death, she had already succeeded in planting and germinating the seeds of all the best and most noble sentiments in his heart.  For his part, M d’Estouteville had never tried to counteract her in this pious duty.  He had grasped that he would encounter an invincible resistance and had no intention of hazarding his peace of mind.  She was useful to him and it cost him very little to keep her.  Never a word nor even a smile from his father could ever have led Henri to suppose that his father did not share the maxims of high morality professed by his mother, and if his love for her was more tender, more exclusive, his regard for the Marquis was equally great.  Mme d’Estouteville refrained from disturbing this regard, and limited herself to fighting those influences that could have operated to seduce him at the time of his entry into society.  Fate, however, decided otherwise, and a violent fever carried the Marquise off so rapidly that Henri, then with his regiment, was not able to arrive in time to receive her last words.  Perhaps at this supreme moment she would have warned him against the fallacious doctrines of the Marquis.  They were only too well known to her, for, before posing as an admirer of her virtues, he had tried to make her an accomplice to his intrigues.  However, death did not accord her an instant, and his cruel work was completed several hours before the devastated Henri arrived.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 3, the Maréchale d’Aubemer sees an apparition from her sickbed…

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER THREE

An Apparition

Almost two weeks after the day of the ball, Madame d’Aubemer, who had been nearly at death’s door and in a state of constant delirium, opened her eyes after a heavy sleep procured by opium and gave a little sigh.  Mlle Julie, who had been watching over her day and night, leaned towards her.  The Maréchale recognized her, smiled wanly, and tried to turn her head.  She thought she saw an angelic figure standing behind her faithful maid and heard a silvery voice say, “Let’s take advantage of this moment.  It’s time for her medicine.”  She felt herself being gently lifted.  Mlle Julie fed her a spoonful of some bitter drug, and she was carefully settled back onto her freshly plumped pillows.  It was not long before she fell back into a fairly calm sleep.  Without realizing quite what had happened, she had a confused notion of having seen her guardian angel, who was calling her back to health.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 2, we go back in time to learn how the Maréchale d’Aubemer and her sister became estranged.  

La Maréchale d’Aubemer

Chapter 2

A Retrospective Chapter

It’s no doubt tedious to go backwards, but the writer and the reader must have the fortitude to bear a few retrospective pages in order to explain and understand Mme d’Aubemer’s past, which is already rather a long one for the heroine of a novel.  For we do not wish to take anyone by surprise, and we admit, at the risk of the reader throwing these pages aside with disdain, that the Maréchale is indeed the object of our attentions.

Her father, the Baron d’Élancourt, a widower retired from military service, lived on his lands far away from the capital.  He believed he had committed an act of high wisdom in appointing a man of business, whose integrity he never doubted, as guardian of his two daughters.  Charging Monsieur Duparc with the administration of their fortune and the settling of their futures, he stipulated that they should remain at their convent¹ until the day of their marriage.   The Mesdemoiselles² d’Élancourt had been orphaned for five years and the elder had reached the nineteenth year of her age when M Duparc presented a Monsieur Dermonville to her as a suitor.  The boredom of life in the convent brooked no hesitation, and she accepted her guardian’s offer with satisfaction.  A few weeks later she married M Dermonville, to the great dissatisfaction of her family, who had not been consulted.  The public in general decried this marriage.  It was thought that Mlle d’Élancourt, a young woman of quality, allied to the greatest houses of France, having thirty thousand livres in income, and being quite a remarkable beauty, should not have married a 45-year-old man whose only distinction was a large fortune.  One could have added good sense and a happy disposition, but these are the sort of advantages that count for little in the world, and the rumour spread that M Duparc had sold the charming young Émilie d’Élancourt to the highest bidder.  M Dermonville enveloped his wife in great luxury, setting up her household on a very elegant footing, and she became an arbiter of fashion, the kind of importance which is absorbing at the beginning of life and leaves no time for regrets to take shape. Émilie therefore seemed quite satisfied in the bonds of a union so disproportionate in age and birth.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 1, the Maréchale d’Aubemer, a wealthy, worldly-wise widow of a certain age, weary of the social round, gives a ball and receives an unexpected letter.  

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER

CHAPTER ONE 

The Pleasures of Being a Hostess

“My God, this noise is annoying!” said the Maréchale¹ d’Aubemer rising out of the armchair in which she’d been reading, rather inattentively, the latest speech given at the Academy. She placed it on a gold-ornamented Boulle etagere, the various shelves of which were already filled with a history book, a new novel, several pamphlets, needlework, and a voluminous knitted vest.

“Who is making all this racket?” she asked one of the servants who answered her bell. “I’ve been deafened for an hour already.”

“It’s the workmen taking up the carpet of the big salon, Madame la Maréchale, and taking down the doors that open into the gallery.”

“Will they be finished soon?”

“I don’t think so, Madame la Maréchale, they’ve only just started.”

The Maréchale sank back into her armchair with an air of melancholy resignation.

For several years I’ve been looking for a French work from or about the Versailles Century (1682-1789) to translate, preferably one that has never been translated into English before.  It also needs to be in the public domain.  It’s been a slow search because every time I found an interesting property it turned out to have been done already or under copyright.  I’m pleased to say that the search is now over.

Beginning this week, I will be serializing for you, dear readers, a French novel about the 18th century that has never before been published in English: Madame de Boigne’s La Maréchale d’Aubemer (The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer).  It’s original subtitle is right up our alley, so to speak: Nouvelle du XVIIIème (A Novella of the 18th Century).

Now, who is this Mme de Boigne, you may wonder?  Though she lived most of her life in the 19th century, Éléonore-Adèle d’Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne, has unassailable Versailles Century credentials: she was born at the Château de Versailles in 1781.  Her parents, the Marquis and Marquise d’Osmond, were courtiers.  Her half-Irish mother had the more prestigious position: she was a lady-in-waiting to Mme Adélaïde, one of Louis XVI’s aunts.  Little Éléonore-Adèle was chosen to be one of the playmates of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette’s eldest son, Louis-Joseph, the first dauphin, who died a month before the fall of the Bastille.  After the Revolution broke out, the Osmond family fled to England.

Mme de Boigne in her youth. Credit: Wikipedia.

Wandering in Porto last spring, I came across this antiquarian bookshop, Livraria Moreira da Costa.  As the sign says, it was founded in 1902.

Livraria Moreira da Costa, an antiquarian bookshop in Porto.

I can’t resist any kind of bookshop, but especially not a secondhand one, and certainly not an antiquarian one.  As I discovered on closer inspection of the shop window, Moreira da Costa is in fact the last-named kind of bookshop.

Antiquarian titles in the window of Moreira da Costa.

I can’t resist a book shop, and especially not a secondhand one; over the last week, I’ve accumulated a small secondhand book shop haul.

Fortunately, I’m well-supplied here in my little lakeside town of Kincardine, ON.  There’s an excellent secondhand and antiquarian book shop here called Condor Fine Books.  You can check out their website at http://www.condorfinebooks.ca .

At last!  It’s taken decades, but my Mitford collection is now complete.  I’m referring to Nancy Mitford’s 4 historical biographies, rather than her novels.  In order of publication, the biographies are: Madame de Pompadour (1954), Voltaire in Love (1957), The Sun King (1966), and Frederick the Great (1970).

Attentive readers might remember this photo from an early post on this blog:

Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King, both by Nancy Mitford.  These are the lavish American editions published by Harper & Row.

At the time, these were the only items in my Mitford collection.  They’ve followed me from home to home through 4 countries over the last 30-odd years, which is why the dust jackets are slightly the worse for wear.  I had once owned a hard cover copy of Frederick the Great, but I donated it to a library that one of my former professors was setting up at Western University (my alma mater, formerly known as the University of Western Ontario).  It’s called the Pride Library.  You can visit its website here: http://www.uwo.ca/pridelib/.

On this day in 1796, Catherine the Great, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, died in St. Petersburg at the age of 67.

Catherine the Great a few years before her death.

She had been found sprawled on the floor of her bathroom on the morning of 16 November.  She was moved to her bedroom, where her doctor examined her and determined that she’d had a stroke.  Having slipped into a coma, she never recovered consciousness and died on the evening of the 17th.

Known to history as Catherine the Great, she’d been born in 1729 as Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, one of the most insignificant of the numerous insignificant German statelets at that time.  The Empress Elizabeth (r. 1741-1761) summoned her to Russia in 1744 to marry her nephew and heir, the future Peter III.  The marriage was unhappy and remained unconsummated for years.  Both parties were unfaithful and the paternity of their son, the future Emperor Paul, has always been in doubt.  On Elizabeth’s death at the end of 1761, Peter became emperor, but made himself unpopular in short order.  Within months of the late Empress’s funeral, Catherine organized a coup d’état, assumed the throne — to which she had no actual claim, of course — as empress regnant, not merely regent for her young son, and eliminated all her rivals, including Peter.  She ruled with great energy, enlarging Russia’s territory by a third, building enthusiastically, collecting art on a grand scale, corresponding with the great thinkers of the day, writing voluminously, and taking numerous lovers.  Her last lover, Platon Zubov, later helped to assassinate the Emperor Paul, who had done all he could to undo his mother’s work, even going so far as to decree that no woman should ever again sit on the Russian throne.

I first read Catherine’s memoirs when I was a teenager.  She had written them in French, but my local library had a copy of the English translation edited by Dominique Maroger and translated by Moura Budberg.  I later found and purchased a copy at a local secondhand bookstore (see below).  I believe it’s the original Canadian edition.  It has followed me through 4 countries and sits on a shelf in my bedroom to this day.  It’s a very lively book and Catherine’s voice comes through very clearly.  Unfortunately, she stopped writing, literally in mid-sentence, just as she was beginning to describe a conversation with the Empress Elizabeth shortly before her death which started with that monarch saying, “I insist that you tell me the truth about everything I am going to ask you.”

Cover of Catherine the Great’s memoirs, published in Canada by Hamish Hamilton, Ltd, in 1955.

Have you read this book?  If so, what did you think?  Please comment below, on the Versailles Century Facebook page, or in the Versailles Century gallery on Instagram.