Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 09-30-08
Francoise Bertaut de Motteville
(c.1621-1689)
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"THERE IS NOTHING MORE NATURAL TO MAN THAN MORAL FRAILTY
AND INCONSISTENCY."
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Francoise Bertaut's parents were courtiers at the court of Louis XIII. Her mother had been raised in Spain and was close to Louis' queen, Anne of Austria (the Spanish daughter of the king of Spain and of Margaret of Austria). When Francoise was about 7 years old, she entered court as an attendant to Anne. However, Louis's chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, fearing any kind of Spanish influence in Anne's apartments, arranged the child's dismissal three years later.
Francoise was sent to live with relatives in Normandy, where at 18 she was married to a Norman nobleman, Nicolas Langlois de Motteville, who was in his 80s. Two years later she was a widow. By the summer of 1643, Richelieu and Louis XIII were dead, and Anne, regent for her son, Louis XIV, brought Motteville back to court. Motteville also had her own residence in Paris, which she shared with a sister and a younger brother; this allowed her an occasional escape from court intrigue and a private place to record the memoirs she would write over the years.
Motteville began her memoirs by writing "from time to time, and sometimes daily, what seemed to me the most remarkable," but her work soon became a defense of Anne of Austria. And Anne needed defending: during her husband's life, she had been criticized for her Spanish connections; as regent for her son, she was criticized for her dependence on the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. Yet, although the Memoires are a defense, Motteville is objective in her judgments: she comes to distrust Mazarin, but sees his value to Anne; she takes the court's view of the mid-century conflict known as the Fronde, but honestly reports the arguments of the court's opponents.
In 1658 Motteville wrote a pen-portrait of Anne, which circulated at court and in Paris. Then in 1660, while the court waited for the wedding of Louis XIV, Motteville and the Duchesse de Montpensier, Louis' first cousin, exchanged a series of letters on the subject of living an idyllic life without romance or marriage; four of these would be collected in 1667 as Recueil des Pieces Nouveles et Galantes.
With the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis assumed his full powers, and the regency ended. Motteville remained with Anne throughout these later years; after Anne died in 1666, Motteville retired to finish and revise Memoires pour sevir a l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche, epouse de Louis XIII. We know few details of her post-court life, except that she remained a close friend to Montpensier and to the Marquise de Sevigne and the Comtesse de La Fayette. Her reputation as a writer was such that, in 1670, she was ordered to prepare a memoir of the English Queen Henrietta Marie, to be used as a funeral oration by France's most popular preacher, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet. In her later years, she wrote several religious treatises.
As a biographer, Motteville is recognized as accurate and thorough. Historians have always used Memoires as one of their chief sources of information on the mid-century conflict known as the Fronde; the work includes documents found nowhere else. The letter collection Recueil shows a different, more personal side of Motteville. The two works together reveal an observant and independent woman.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Recueil des Pieces Nouveles et Galantes (and later letters)
Memoires pour sevir a l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche
Portrait of Anne
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Links to the texts of the three volumes of Katharine P.
Wormeley's abridged 1901 translation, Memoirs of Madame de
Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court: Volume
1, which goes to the autumn of 1648 and includes an introduction
by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve; Volume
2, which goes to the temporary departure of Mazarin
in 1651; and Volume
3, which concludes with Anne's1666 death and includes (about
one-third of the way down the page, at the first entry for 1658)
Motteville's pen-portrait of Anne, written and circulated in
that year. You can also download a PDF file of each volume. (For
excerpts from Wormeley, see below, under "In print.")
2. Excerpts of Memoires from other translators:
(a) For a number of excerpts in Amelia Gere Mason's 1891 The Women of the French Salons, link to Chapter 4, "La Grande Mademoiselle" (it also contains a bit of Recueil des Pieces Nouveles et Galantes); and to Chapter 5, "A Literary Salon at Port Royal." In each chapter, use your browser's search function to go to go to the uses of "Motteville."
(b) In this chapter of Victor Cousin's Secret History of the French Court Under Richelieu and Mazarin, go to "Motteville" for a substantial excerpt describing a 1637 incident in which Anne was accused by Richelieu of corresponding with the Spanish; the translation is by Mary L. Booth. (Motteville was not at court in 1637; she had been given this account by a servant of the queen, "a worthy and honest man.")
(c) A sentence describing the courtiers' reaction to the 1638 birth of Anne's first son, Louis, after more than 20 unhappy years of marriage; the translation is by Antonia Fraser.
(d) At the end of the first paragraph of this essay, Motteville's description of the condition of the palace at St. Germain when Anne and her two young sons had to flee Paris in January 1649, during the Fronde.
(e) Go to "Motteville" for her description of the 1649 warning to Anne "not to irritate her peoples," given by Queen Henrietta Marie, whose husband King Charles I of England was imprisoned and soon to be executed; the translation is by Orest Ranum.
(f) In this translation of the Maximes of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, go to "Motteville" for her description of Anne's reaction to the end of the Fronde in 1652, translated by J.W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell.
(g) A description by Motteville of the "completely extraordinary" Queen Christina of Sweden at the French court in 1656 after her abdication two years earlier (for an ambassador's 1646 report on Christina, see below, under "In print"). At another site, go to the first two uses of "Motteville" for changing reactions to Christina on her two visits: first, Louis' view in 1656; then Anne's (and the court's) view in 1657 (later uses of "Motteville" will give you other brief quotations).
(h) In an essay by Alexandre Dumas, "The Man in the Iron Mask," go to "Motteville" for three brief passages which Dumas used to suggest that Anne had a child by Mazarin. (Motteville, of course, makes no such suggestion.)
(i) A single sentence, but one that illustrates the philosophy that Motteville tried (not always successfully) to live by.
2. In French:
(a) Motteville's account of the 1648 escape by the Duc de Beaufort from the prison at Vincennes, where he had been held for five years.
(b) Go to "Motteville" for her account of Anne's treatment of a young nobleman, one of Mazarin's critics, who, Anne believed, had insulted her.
(c) Go to the second use of "Motteville" for her description of Anne's frequent retreats at a monastery of nuns.
(d) At this site you can download PDF files of each of the five sections of the Memoires, from an 1824 edition (the page also shows what may be a contemporary portrait of Motteville).
3. In this volume of a translation of the Memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon, go to "Motteville" for the reaction of the reading public at her book's publication in 1723.
4. A review by Carolyn Lougee Chappell of Joan DeJean's 2002 Against Marriage: The Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle, a translation of the eight letters exchanged between Motteville and Montpensier in 1660 and 1661 (for excerpts, see "In print").
5. For historical background:
(a) A brief biography of Anne of Austria
(b) A description of the two stages of the Fronde.
(c) In Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture (1993), by Jonathan Dewald, see Chapter 6, "The Meanings of Writing," in which Dewald (although most of his examples are of male writers) discusses the reasons for and the effects of the writing --- both published and merely circulated --- done by members of the nobility like Motteville.
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Recueil des Pieces Nouveles et Galantes (and later letters)
[Joan DeJean has translated the four letters between Motteville and the Duchess of Montpensier that were written in 1660 and published in 1667, as well as four later letters. For all, the French original is given on facing pages. DeJean's introduction focuses on Montpensier, referring only briefly to what the letters reveal of Motteville. The book's bibliography is helpful, but the index covers only the introduction and notes. Another page of this site will give you excerpts from Montpensier's contributions to the correspondence. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orleans, duchesse de.
Against marriage: the correspondence of la Grande Mademoiselle
/ edited and translated by Joan DeJean (The other voice in early
modern Europe). Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002. (xxix, 86 p.)
LC#: DC130.M8 A4 2002; ISBN: 0226534901, 0226534928
Related Names: Motteville, Françoise de, d. 1689. Includes
bibliographical references and index.
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"Without giving it a second thought...."
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[In early May of 1660, the French court arrived at the Spanish border for the wedding of Louis XIV to the daughter of the Spanish king. A month's delay in the arrangements gave Motteville and Montpensier time to talk and write about "the joys of the secluded life." First, Montpensier sent Motteville a letter describing the kind of ideal society of men and women she envisioned (and describing what she would and would not permit). Motteville responds that she too has often thought of such a life, but she also makes gentle fun of Montpensier:]
I see clearly how it is: you were born to rule and rule and wear a crown, and it is so logical for things to be this way that I am not surprised that, without giving it a second thought, you have established yourself as our sovereign. [p.37]
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"Each of us will choose...."
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[Montpensier had written of aristocrats' occasionally watching over sheep (as in the popular pastoral novels of the day) and had described the magnificent house she would have built and the servants who would care for it. Motteville has her own ideas:]
But as it is right that subjects live differently from their sovereign, we choose always to be shepherdesses, and for our main occupation to be watching over our flocks....
We want only small huts where magnificence will be forbidden, and where we will allow only what is necessary. Each of us will choose the site of their residence according to their own inclination.... for a liberty governed by reason and justice would be one of our greatest pleasures.
I would also like your laws to allow us to have only two people to serve us, for it has always been said that a large number of valets disrupts a family's peacefulness. [pp.37-39]
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"In the end you will be forced to allow... marriage."
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[Montpensier had also written in her first letter that "amorous pursuit" and marriage would be banned. Motteville's response to this would become the main topic of the following two letters:]
You were right, illustrious Princess, to have banished gallantry from our commerce in order to favor solely the pleasure of conversation, which is surely the only respectable one for people of quality; but I fear that this very wise and necessary law will be but poorly observed, and since in that case you must supply a remedy, I think that in the end you will be forced to allow the time-honored and legitimate custom called marriage. [p.39]
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"Ways that even if they are devoid of glory...."
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[Motteville defends her argument: marriage is at least better than licentiousness:]
....[Y]oung men will like poetry and will even write it: this being the case, it would be rather difficult to keep the shepherdesses from listening to them, and I am afraid that their fictions will appear only too truthful to them.
One must know how to recognize danger if it to be avoided, but perhaps not everyone will have enough prudence to take the right path to save themselves. This is why it is opportune to indicate to them the ways that even if they are devoid of glory, at least will not be devoid of innocence.... [p.41]
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"Liberty always seemed preferable... to all the other possessions."
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[When Montpensier replies with a strong attack against the "slavery" of marriage, Motteville make the only reference in her extant writing to her own brief marriage and to her decision not to re-marry when she was widowed at 20:]
I was subjected to this bond that so displeases you for only two years of my life; when my freedom was restored to me, I was at an age that seemed to invite me to imitate honorable human weaknesses. However, liberty always seemed preferable to me to all the other possessions valued by those of our station.... [p.49]
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"I know all these truths."
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[From her own experience, Motteville agrees with Montpensier's view of men:]
I know all these truths.... I know that the laws that subject us to their power are hard and unbearable; I know that men have made them unfair for us and too advantageous for themselves. They take away from us dominion over the the sea and the earth, the sciences, merit, power---that of judging and being the master of human lives---and dignity in all situations, and, with the exception of the distaff, I know of nothing under the sun that they have not appropriated, even though their tyranny has no just basis. [p.51]
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"You... want men in your state."
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[Yet, if Montpensier wants their utopia to contain men, she must deal with the consequences; Motteville reminds her of the line from Paul's 1st Corinthians, "It is better to marry than to burn":]
You... want men in your state and you do not want to remember that their corruption could be communicated to those of our sex who are not as strong as you. This is why I thought... you would take precautions to avoid any difficulties that could arise among your subjects: all of them cannot be equally virtuous, for there is nothing more natural to man than moral frailty and inconsistency....
If by some misfortune the less perfect fall in love,... they could at least quote Saint Paul's maxims to defend themselves against your severe precepts.... [pp.53-55]
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"I hope that men will remain alone in the cities."
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[By the time the correspondence resumed in the spring of 1661, Motteville had concluded that the only utopia would be one in which there were no men. When it appeared that Montpensier would be forced into an unwanted marriage, Motteville wrote a letter of condolence in which she regretted the loss to the "shepherdesses" of their "chaste Amazon"; later, when the danger had passed, she sent her congratulations:]
I give thanks to the heavens... that you have escaped the snares that men have laid for you.... I hope that men will remain alone in the cities and that our desert will be full of all that is best and most precious on earth....
[I]f we were truly wise, we would turn all these vain speeches into a very true story. [p.71]
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Memoires pour sevir a l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche; Portrait of Anne
[Available online, Katharine P. Wormeley's 3-volume translation
of Motteville's Memoires is "somewhat abridged"
from the original 5-volume edition. Wormeley omits "matters
that did not come under Mme. de Motteville's personal observation;...the
period before she became the daily companion of Anne of Austria,
the military details of the wars of the Fronde, etc." Volume
1 covers the years to 1648, volume 2 to the temporary departure
of Mazarin in 1651, and volume 3 to 1666. Also included is Motteville's
1658 pen-portrait of Anne. Sainte-Beuve's essay, used as an introduction,
is occasionally patronizing but useful in revealing the 1800s
French view of Motteville. The index is detailed, the notes less
so:]
Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de. Memoirs of Madame de
Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court. With an introduction
by C.-A. Sainte-Beuve. Tr. by Katharine P. Wormeley, illustrated
with portraits from the original. Boston, Hardy, Pratt &
co., 1901 [Versailles ed.]. (3 v. front., pl., port., facsim.)
LC#: DC124.3 .M94 1901
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"...my knowledge concerning the things of a Court."
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[From the preface, written after Anne's death in 1666, on Motteville's reason for writing and on her method. Contemporaries, she believed, had criticized Anne unjustly:]
...[W]hat I now undertake is not with any fixed design of correcting their ignorance or their malice.... But I do it for my own satisfaction, out of gratitude to the queen, and to review once more (if I live) as in a picture, all that has come to my knowledge concerning the things of a Court....
I do not know if I have done better than others; but at least I know well that, to my thinking, one cannot do worse than to do nothing. [Vol.1; p.24]
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"...they magnified into crime against her husband."
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[Motteville reports Anne's view of her marriage to Louis XIII:]
Some said that the king never had any inclination for her, and the queen herself believed this, because she judged by the indifference he showed to her; but I know from one of the king's favorites... that he dared not show her tenderness lest he should displease the queen his mother [Marie de Medici] and the cardinal [Richelieu] , whose counsel and services were more important to him than to live pleasantly with his wife.
The enemies of the queen, the better to succeed in making the king hate her, used against her strongly the intercourse she kept up with Spain. The slightest mark of affection that she gave her brother the King of Spain [Philip IV], they magnified into crime against her husband. [p.40]
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"...what a royal personage is when... able to do whatever
she wills."
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[Motteville had been at court only a few weeks when she first saw what a ruler could be and do. Anne had chosen Cardinal Mazarin as first minister; she then heard that a group of nobles who had always supported her while Louis XIII was alive had decided to assassinate the Italian. Within two days Anne would have the group's leader --- one of her oldest friends --- arrested and imprisoned for five years:]
On this rumour [of assassination] , a great many people came to the Louvre; and the Queen seemed to me to be very ill-pleased with the Duc de Beaufort and the whole cabal of the "the Importants." She said to me, when I went up to her and asked the cause of the tumult, "You will see before twice twenty-four hours go by how I avenge myself for the ill-turns these evil friends have done me."
Never will the memory of those few words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment by the fire that blazed in the eyes of the queen... what a royal personage is when angry and able to do whatever she wills. [pp.91-92]
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"A gay and lively conversation continued...."
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[Motteville was one of a few men and women who would remain with the Queen when other courtiers had left in the evening. After describing a typical day during the early Regency, she continues:]
When she had bid good-night..., she [Anne] entered her oratory and remained a full hour in prayer; after which she came out to supper at eleven o'clock.
Her supper finished, we ate the rest of it, without order or ceremony, using, for all convenience, her napkin and the remains of her bread; and although this meal was ill-arranged, it was not disagreeable, through the quality of the persons present, and because of the jests and the conversation of the queen, who told us good things and laughed much because the women who served her, and who were not the most polite in the world, tried to rob us of all they could to keep it for the morrow.
After this feast we followed her into her cabinet, where a gay and lively conversation continued till midnight or one o'clock; and then, after she was undressed, and often when she was in bed and ready to go to sleep, we left her to do likewise. [pp.107-108]
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"God had not placed kings on thrones to do nothing."
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[Motteville saw Anne's greatest weakness as Regent her growing reliance on her ministers:]
As she had good sense and good judgement she satisfied all by her answers, given with kindness; and those who loved her could have wished that she had always acted by her own ideas---as she first intended, to avoid the blame she saw given to the late king for abandoning his authority to Cardinal Richelieu, often saying at that time to her servants that she would never do likewise.
But, unhappily for those who were about her, her resolutions were weakened by a desire for repose, and by the trouble she found in the multiplicity of business affairs inseparable from the government of a great kingdom. In course of time, as she became more lazy, she learned by experience that God had not placed kings on thrones to do nothing, but to endure some at least of the miseries which are attached to all sorts and conditions of life. [p.106]
[The minister who gradually came to have most control over Anne was Cardinal Mazarin:]
But, in spite of her virtuous inclinations, it was easy for the cardinal, making use of "reasons of state," to change her feelings and make her capable of doing harsh things to those she was accustomed to treat well. [pp.110-11]
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"...in short, she was queen."
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[Motteville often praises Anne, but as can be seen above, never unreservedly:]
She was liberal by her own impulse; and what she gave she gave with a good grace; but she often failed to give for want of reflection....
She did not like to read, and knew very little; but she had intelligence, and an easy, accommodating, and agreeable mind. [p.110]
[When Anne exulted in the winning of a battle that had cost many lives:]
Victories are the delight of sovereigns, all the more because they taste their pleasures without deeply sharing the pain of private persons. It was not that the queen on such occasions did not seem to have much humanity and to regret men of merit, but --- in short, she was queen. [p.125]
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"All the heroic virtues were attributed to her."
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[In 1646, an ambassador from Queen Christina of Sweden came to Paris, with letters to Anne and others. What struck Motteville about his description of Christina were exactly those qualities she saw lacking in Anne. (For Motteville's view of Christina when she actually met her ten years later, see online):]
From the manner in which he spoke of the queen his mistress, it seemed that she needed no minister, for although very young she managed all her affairs herself. Beside the hours she gave to study, she employed many, he told us, in the care of her kingdom....
She wrote... letters which I saw and which were much admired for the gallantry of the thoughts, the beauty of the style, and the facility with which she expressed herself in our language, which was familiar to her, as were many others.
At that time all the heroic virtues were attributed to her; she was placed on a par with the most illustrious women of antiquity; every pen was employed in praising her, and it was said that the highest sciences were to her what the needle and distaff are to the rest of our sex. [p.160]
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"I have applied myself to listen."
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[As Motteville prepares to describe the conflicts that led to the civil wars called the Fronde (her account will make up over half of her book), she describes her sources:]
Though I only mention great affairs in passing, as a woman who cannot know them thoroughly, and has often neglected to to notice them at all, it has happened, nevertheless, that many have been discussed in the cabinet [of the queen] and that I have applied myself to listen to the actors in them when they spoke. Those that were of consequence, coming thus to my knowledge, I shall write down as they may happen to occur to me, --- without being careful to know them all, or any of them to their full extent, because I have no intention of writing a regular history.
But I have taken care to tell only the truth; which has always come to me solely from those who had the chief part in such affairs. [p.170]
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"...consider that she ruled a free people and not slaves."
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[In 1648 one of the leaders of Paris appealed to the queen to help those suffering from the effects of the Thirty Years War (the minister who disapproves is of course Mazarin):]
He [the Parisian leader] represented the misery of the people...; telling her that she ought to consider that she ruled a free people and not slaves; but as things were, these very people found themselves so oppressed by subsidies and taxes that they might indeed say nothing was their own but their souls---for these could not be sold at auction; and the laurels and victories won from the enemy with which the necessities of the people were being met, were not meat to feed them nor clothes to cover them....
His boldness was not approved by the minister....
On this very day certain counsellors of the parliament, who came to see me... said that France would have been happy indeed had she [Anne] chosen to govern it, or, at any rate, if she had not abandoned it too much to her minister. [pp.224-25]
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"I could hear nothing except that we ought to be killed."
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[As tension and rumors of violence grew, in January 1649, in the middle of the night and without informing Parlement, the queen left Paris with her children to go to Saint-Germain, outside of the city. The Parisians feared, with good reason, that the next royal step would be an attack on the city. Motteville, at her Paris home, was told that she might follow, but she declined, a decision she soon regretted:]
When the departure of the king, the queen and the whole Court, was known in Paris, despair took possession of all minds, and confusion began at the dawn of day.... Cries were loud in the streets and the excitement was universal.
The first who heard the news sent word of it to their friends, and many persons of quality fled to Saint-Germain to fulfill their duty. Others, merely to escape the confusion,... left Paris to seek in their country houses the peace and security of which the rebellious city was about to be deprived.... [Vol. 2; p.47]
[Two days later Motteville and her sister finally saw the wisdom of leaving the city:]
The persons who were attached to the king but remained in Paris were the ones to be pitied; for the populace threatened continually to pillage them, and we dared not show ourselves for fear of our lives. My sister and I resolved to escape from Paris....
But the Parisian soldiers, excited against everyone who seemed to wish to go to Saint-Germain, so frightened us by their threats that we retraced our steps....
[Unable to leave and chased by stone-throwing Parisians, the women eventually got to a church. A mazarine was a supporter of Cardinal Mazarin, which Motteville definitely was not:]
Thanks to God, we arrived there in site of the insults and threats of the canaille, eager for prey and pillage. As soon as I was there I fell on my knees before the great altar where High Mass was being celebrated. But these dragons who had followed us respected divine service so little that a woman, more horrible to my eyes than a fury, calling out that I was a mazarine, and I ought to be knocked down and torn in pieces....
The populace gathered more and more into the church, entering in crowds, till it echoed with howls, in which I could hear nothing except that we ought to be killed. The noise brought the rector, who spoke to them and silenced then with difficulty....
Not being able to live at peace at home, I went to entreat the Queen of England [the soon-to-be widow of Charles I] to receive me under her protection at the Louvre. This she did, some days later, with the greatest kindness.... [pp.54-56]
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"All favours to be bestowed on great and small depended
on him alone."
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[In 1661, Cardinal Mazarin died; Motteville saw what many of her contemporaries did not: that Louis XIV would become France's first absolute ruler:]
The king succeeded to the throne of France on the day of Louis XIII his father's death [1643], being then only four years old; but it may be said that the day of Cardinal Mazarin's death was really that of his coming to the crown,---that on which he began to be king and to show that he was worthy of being so; for it was then that he resolved to take upon himself the care of his affairs, and to make it known that all favours to be bestowed on great and small depended on him alone. [p.243]
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"...provided they were rightly done."
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[According to Motteville, Anne did not regret losing the power of her regency. Other memoirs suggest that the agreement between mother and son was not quite as complete as described here:]
Neither ambition nor jealousy troubled their repose. The king sought glory only; and the queen his mother, desiring it solely for him, and informed of all matters by him, was content, provided they were rightly done, liking as well to have them done by him as by herself, and even better. [p.247]
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" The hour for pleasure over, he always returned...."
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[Anne left statecraft to her son but did attempt --- unsuccessfully --- to limit his infidelities to her niece, his wife of a little over a year. Yet Anne never tried Louis too far; when she became irritated over his amorous affairs:]
These dissatisfactions made the courtiers imagine that sensual delights might perhaps detach the king from the queen-mother; but that great prince was too attached to his duty, and too naturally virtuous for such disunion to arise. The hour for pleasure over, he always returned to the queen his mother.... [p.257]
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"By an amazing contradiction of passions and desires...."
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[Anne had once used Motteville as intermediary to try to end one of Louis' affairs; this had not endeared Motteville to the king. When Anne asked him to give Motteville an influential post, Louis refused. Looking back at the incident in later years, Motteville gives one of Memoires' rare reports of self-analysis:]
...I saw myself exposed to the misfortune of either losing the peace of my life or of being deprived of an honour for which I had wished. The latter happened to me; and it was not, I own, without suffering from the painful stabs of my enemies.
By an amazing contradiction of passions and desires, I found myself wounded by the deprivation of a benefit which would have gratified my self-love, while at the same time I was inwardly consoled by the hope of enjoying for the future a great peace.
I now desired to cure myself entirely of ambition, and I resolved to no longer aspire to elevations which one naturally desires to obtain at Court, but to stay there solely to satisfy the attachment that I owed to the queen-mother.... [pp.271-72]
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"History could never please unless it contained both good
and evil."
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[After describing Anne's long illness and painful death in 1666 from breast cancer, Motteville concludes her work, once again asserting her role as an honest historian:]
Having now written the life and death of Anne of Austria, I think that I ought to end this narrative of her virtues by relating a thing she did me the honour to say to me on the subject of these Memoirs. I made known to her one day, in the time of her good health [before 1663], that I had written something about her, and that I intended, with the grace of God, to continue it.
She answered as to that, in a tone that was truly humble, that I was very foolish to amuse myself in such an occupation; that she could trust me to say whatever I wished; but that the one thing she feared was that I should give her more praise than she deserved; for she believed that the affection I had for her would prevent me from seeing her faults and making them public.
As I saw that she had a true uneasiness as to this, I was constrained to promise her seriously that I would tell the truth, as much against her as in her favour.... I told her also that as no human creature was ever exempt from faults, history could never please unless it contained both good and evil, and unless the the faults as well as the good actions were equally set down. [pp.355-56]
Portrait of Anne
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"She is not enough touched by the affection persons have
for her."
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[Wormeley's translation of the Memoires also includes a portrait of Anne, written and circulated in 1658 (and so surely seen by Anne). Unlike the Memoires, probably revised after Anne's death, the portrait gives Motteville's description of the living woman whom she had then served for 15 years. As in all of the pen-portraits of the day, praise is balanced with criticism, and some passages reveal as much of Motteville as of Anne:]
She always judges serious things according to reason and good sense; and in public matters she takes instinctively the side of equity and justice; but she is lazy; she has read nothing....
....I think she is not enough touched by the affection persons have for her; but, as kings always hear the same language..., it is doubtless excusable, and even reasonable, that they should not let themselves be easily convinced of what by its nature is so deceitful....
She hates her enemies just as in early life she loved her friends. Her natural inclination would be to avenge herself willingly; she is capable of carrying her resentment to extremes; but reason and conscience restrain her; and I have often heard her say that she has difficulty in conquering herself in this particular. [Vol. 3; pp.130-33]
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[Ruth Kleinman's biography of Anne of Austria makes extensive
use of Motteville's Memoires, translating and paraphrasing
many passages. Kleinman is especially useful on explaining the
labyrinthine political background of the period:]
Kleinman, Ruth. Anne of Austria, Queen of France. Columbus: Ohio
State University Press, c1985. (xiii, 350 p.: port.)
LC#: DC124 .K55 1985; ISBN: 0814203892
Bibliography: p. [331]-340. Includes index
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[Charles G.S. Williams' essay in this collection, "Madame
de Motteville and War" charts Motteville's changing attitudes
toward war and toward the major figures in Memoires in
the years from 1643 to 1649: what Williams calls her "social
and political re-education." Quotations are not translated,
but are usually made clear by the context. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Homage to Paul Benichou / edited by Sylvie Romanowski and Monique
Bilezikian. Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, c1994. (340
p.)
LC#: PQ243 .H64; ISBN: 091778698X
Includes bibliographical references
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[Wendy Perkins' article looks at Motteville's Memoires and (in less detail) at those of a contemporary, Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, to see what they reveal of the period's view of illness. Perkins describes Motteville's emphasis on the causes of illness (usually related to external stress) and the attitude the sufferer should take (stoic acceptance of the will of God). Quoted passages are not translated but are usually made clear in the discussion. (See the issue's table of contents online.):]
Perkins, Wendy. The Presentation of Illness in the Memoirs
of Mme de Motteville and of Bussy-Rabutin. Seventeenth-century
French Studies, 12 (1990), 26-37.
LC#: DC33.4 .S48; ISSN: 0265-1068
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[The first two chapters of G.P. Gooch's 1946 study of the memoir genre discuss Motteville and the Memoires, giving extensive quotation in Gooch's own translation and providing useful historical background:]
Gooch, G. P. (George Peabody). Courts and cabinets. New York,
A. A. Knopf, 1946. (372 p. illus.)
LC#: D107 .G6 1946; ISBN: 0836929012
Studies of the memoirs of thirteen English, French and German
writers, with
quotations from their works. "Bibliographical notes":
p. 366-372
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Updated 09-30-08