Issue 11: the audacity and legacy of an Italo-French libertine in 17th Century London
How a convention-defying duchess created an egalitarian cultural space ahead of its time.
Plenty has been written about the first three decades of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin’s life. After all, she was one of the richest heiresses in Europe by her teens and famously – scandalously – ‘ran away’ from her husband in her early-20s.
But what intrigued Annalisa Nicholson most, was that "all of these stories ended with something like: ‘and then she hosted a salon in London’".
As a French language student at University College London who knew she “wanted to work on women, was quite interested in the 17th Century, and [knew] a bit about the French salons”, this point where others had stopped seemed like a good place for her to start.
Nicholson is keen to point out: “Historians don't only have to come from a history background; languages work too. There's a modern language crisis in the UK, so it feels like a good moment to put that out there.”
It was her mix of language skills (French was the lingua franca in 17th Century London; and she knowns Russian and Latin, too) that enabled Nicholson to pursue this area of study, which she soon realised “was actually quite important”.
So, let’s set the scene:
Nicholson describes the second half of 17th Century London as typified by its ruler’s moniker: Charles II was known as ‘the merry monarch’. After the civil wars and interregnum, and Charles’ restoration to the throne in 1660, the mood was jubilant. (“At the royal court, at least,” she qualifies.)
But despite this new exuberance, women were still restricted to the domestic sphere. They had limited educational opportunities and their futures revolved around marriage and childbearing. While aristocratic women may have had the privilege of tutors, they were not necessarily encouraged to put that knowledge to practical use. There was a strong disapproval of women who wrote, who were artists or musicians – lest they damage their reputation and marriage potential.
"Women are hindered from intellectual and cultural opportunities because of a world where they've can't attend universities; they could have no public office or political position. They are deprived of an official voice in 17th Century culture,” Nicholson says.
Which is why Hortense Mancini’s salon was so revolutionary. It provided a place for women from across the social spectrum to immerse themselves in culture and stimulating conversation.
“The salon allowed women to talk about intellectual things, not just amongst themselves, but in a mixed gender group. It's mixed gender, mixed rank, and it's also mixed nationality, mixed religion. It's very cosmopolitan.”
Mancini’s husband disparagingly described it as ‘a new Babylon’.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Mancini should create such a scene. She was an “epicurean pleasure seeker” who’d spent her adult life defying expectations and breaking rules.
She was born into a minor noble family in Rome in 1646, and grew up at the French court of the young Louis XIV. She inherited a fortune from her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, France’s Chief Minister, and married an equally rich man, Armand-Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye, in 1661. But it was a disastrous match. She’d grown up surrounded by parties and glamour, while her husband was pious, and expected his wife to stay home, attend to the children, and pray. He was controlling and abusive.
In 1668, she left him – and her four children – and fled the country dressed as a man! [1]
Deprived of access to her wealth, and pursued by her husband’s private army, she spent the rest of her life in exile, supported and provided sanctuary by a series of benefactors. [2]
In 1675, Mancini wrote a memoir justifying leaving her husband. Nicholson says: “It's a really important work because it was one of the earliest pieces of life writing published under a woman's name in her own lifetime.” It became incredibly popular, cementing her scandalous reputation, and was translated into three languages.
As such, her arrival in London in December 1675 (dressed as a man, again) was hotly anticipated. But there was also resentment that this audacious woman would be supported by the English.
She came at the invitation of England’s ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, and soon became a mistress of Charles II. She was provided a pension, rooms at Whitehall, and property adjoining St James’s Palace.
And she didn’t fail to live up to her reputation. From having an affair with Charles II’s illegitimate daughter, Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex, and being caught fencing topless with her in St James’s Park; to ‘allowing’ her infatuated nephew to fatally wound another lover, the Swedish Count Banér, in a duel (against which there were draconian penalties at the time).
But it’s her salon – started in the spring of 1676 – that is her greatest legacy. It was “the most successful, most influential salon in 17th Century London, lasting for almost 25 years”. [3]
Hosted in her property adjoining St James’s Palace, it had a cosy, pan-European, feminine aesthetic. The rooms had a fireplace and armchairs, a small library, and gambling table, and were decorated with imported lace and ribbon, and fans from France. Italian and French perfume hung in the air. Exotic objects and animals inspired conversations, which took place alongside maths and science lectures, essay readings, poem and play recitals, mini opera shows, and gambling.
"And in all of this, women were given a leading role,” Nicholson says. “They are getting this opportunity to speak to the scientist who's just given this lecture on pressure, to speak to this author about their work. Women get to perform these operatic pieces, and they get to mingle with each other; but also, they get to mingle with men. The salon is not segregating women, but allowing them to talk about intellectual things in a large, mixed gender group."
That group consisted of some of the highest nobles and elite courtiers in England, as well as, occasionally, Charles II and the future James II.
"But you also have other people who aren't elite attending, especially creative figures and intellectuals,” Nicholson explains.
“So, for example, there was an intellectual called Isaac Vossius, who was a Dutch scholar. There was Huguenot refugee, writer, and translator, Anne de La Roche, who was completely destitute – she’s on lists for money given to the poor by different Huguenot chapels.
“There's also the growing possibility that [playwright] Aphra Behn was there. No one's quite sure, none of us have managed to establish it without a doubt, but it does seem to be quite likely.
“And Nell Gwynn was at the salon. She had risen from a very low born lifestyle, selling oranges in a theatre, to becoming the official mistress of Charles II. And she was never one to hide her background, she didn't adopt airs or pretend she wasn't who she was. She had a fiery sense of humour and joked about herself as a whore.
“So, the audience was very mixed, and all those figures make it easier for people outside of the elite; kind of smooth their passage into that world.”
Although Mancini herself was accustomed to an elite lifestyle, Nicholson says “she didn't have the snobbery of some of the other aristocratic women of that era, probably because she was a libertine. She'd lived a very scandalous life, she was a pleasure seeker, she enjoyed herself, I think that mattered to her more [than status]”.
"[Mancini's salon] was very unusual – to have this group of people who all speak different languages, all have different backgrounds and professions – it paved the way for the English salon of the 18th century, which was, by nature, a cosmopolitan institution." [4]
Mancini’s final months were no less scandalous than the rest of her life.
She died by suicide in 1699.
“There’s a lot of misogynist scholarship about her death,” Nicholson says. “One person diagnosed her with a post-menopausal disorder. Someone else said that she was so upset that she was ageing and no longer beautiful.”
But the truth – uncovered by Nicholson in “very odd letters” held at the British Library – is that her daughter stole her lover, Arnold van Keppel, Earl of Albemarle (one of King William III’s closest advisors), and Mancini demanded the king deport her daughter. Devastated by the events – the loss of her lover and her daughter – she killed herself about nine months later.
Despite the fascinating subject, Nicholson says that researching women like Mancini is a “frustrating business”.
“Women's manuscripts and letters and things are often not catalogued anywhere near as well as men’s. Aristocratic men: their papers are normally all collected very nicely, and they've all been kept together from the beginning. But 17th Century women's works have never had this much attention, until quite recently. So, it's very frustrating, because you have to trawl through many, many, many different archives in different countries looking for one or two sheets of paper.”
But alongside the frustration is satisfaction and excitement “when you're able to piece it together or when you come across something you didn't expect”.
Over the next three years, Nicholson plans to publish both a public history and academic book about Mancini and her salon, and transcribe and translate all her letters, so future scholars don’t have to trawl so many disparate sources.
“Scholarship has really moved on, away from condemning scandalous women. I think people now are much more excited; not just appreciative of Mancini, but they're really excited about her story. She undermines the expectations of the period, and we like the idea of a woman refusing to conform to patriarchal expectations.”
[1] “It's quite a big thing, in this period, to be taking on the clothes of a man,” Nicolson explains. Although “cross-dressing was a feature of 17th Century French novels, so there's also this side of it that she's living like a character in a novel”.
[2] A benefactor “primarily provides financial support, but the act of giving her financial support also projects a kind of approval upon her. They are also inevitably protecting her, literally protecting her, from a private army”.
[3] 'Salon culture' proper began in the early 17th Century in France. Catherine de Vivonne, known as Madame de Rambouillet, is often cited as its pioneer. Salons were spaces led by elite women, hosted in her rooms – "early salons were essentially alcoves, tiny spaces beside beds" – where she'd receive other elite women visitors.
[4] Elizabeth Montagu – an organiser and leader of the Blue Stockings Society (an informal women's social and educational movement) – was a notable salonnière in the 18th Century. Her gatherings revolved around literature and the arts, and she hosted many writers.