Lisa Hilton (1) (1974–)

This is an intriguing little piece. I'd never heard of The City of Ladies - and now want to find a copy.
In the intro, the author describes the book by Christine de Pisan, the City of Ladies. IN this, the Christine uses the dream narrative as a tool toe enter into a discussion with Reason, Rectitude and Justice on the condition and position of women in early 15th Century France. (spoiler alert - not good). The book has been criticised for using the dream narrative at all and for the show more protagonist taking a submissive position that the 3 characters then argue her out of. The argument seems to imply that author took the views of the books' protagonist, rather than those of the characters that reason with her. I knew nothing of that book - and should look it out. It was seen as a feminist work of its time.
In this, Lisa Hilton starts by reviewing the book, then falls asleep on it and has her own dream with 3 characters who come to reason with her. In this case Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the great all appear. The one downside of Christine's City of Ladies is that they are all virtuous. These three could be described by many phrases, but virtuous is not one of them. The dreaming author gives us a potted history of each lady, and then they enter into a debate about how women are perceived. As one of them says "No one talks about Napoleaon's cock" or, indeed, the sex life of most men of history, but it seems that discussing the sex life of the women is allowed. No one castigates Mark Anthony for taking a lover and dismissing his wife, but everyone damns Cleopatra for her affair. It's a double standard that sees these women (and more like them) cast out from Christine's City of Ladies when men acthing in the same way would not be castigated.
The author puts aside the dream narrative, as having served its purpose, and argues that while Christne wrote of her City of Ladies lasting for ever, maybe we should not be defining people primarily by the gender, but by their actions and effects on the world around them. Its a very interesting book and a neat presentation of the argument she is making. show less

Stephen Vincent Benét was right; some French names are like silver spoons. The three principal mistresses of Louis XIV were Louise de la Vallière, Duchesse de Vaujours; Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemarte, Marquise de Montespan; and Françoise Scarron, Marquise de Maintenon. Louis also had brief flings with others: Mademoiselle de Beuvais, who seduced him when he was sixteen despite being 24 years older and missing an eye; two of the three Mancini sisters, Marie and Olympe; Henriette show more d’Angleterre, his sister-in-law; Marie-Angélique de Fontages, who contemporaries described as “as beautiful as an angel and as intelligent as a basket”; and assorted ladies-in-waiting, serving girls, and who knows what else. Except for the first few encounters, this all happened while he was married to Marie-Thérèse of Spain; although Louis was dutiful and produced children by her, since she was not particularly bright, was ultra-religious, and had the unfortunate Hapsburg features, which make the males of the line look like cartoon characters and the females look like someone had set their face on fire and beat it out with a shovel.


Of these, I’d heard of Louise de la Vallière, who figures in the Dumas novel of the same name and got a style of necklace named after her. (My introduction to the lady was by way of the jewelry; during my adolescence it was briefly in vogue to give a necklace of this type as a “going steady” token. A coed of my acquaintance volunteered that “she had been lavelliered”, and being totally clueless of the meaning I responded with “Omigod! Did they catch the guy?” This was not the right thing to say.)


The heroine of Athenais, however, is the middle lady. The life of the royal mistress, while lucrative, was fraught with tension; there were plenty of ladies in the wings eager to replace you. Athénaïs was brilliant at this sort of court intrigue. The previous mistress, Louise de la Vallière, based her approach on playing hard to get; Athénaïs correctly decided that the king was tired of coyness and took the “extremely easy to get” tack. She managed to maintain Louis’ interest for twelve or thirteen years, apparently by a combination of witty conversation, slandering other mistress applicants, talent at arranging court festivities, and bedroom skills. The court festivities part included some spectacular ballets, with music by Lully and libretti by Molière. Typically the King danced in the leading role, with Athénaïs and other ladies of the court as the corps de ballet. We owe Athénaïs some thanks here; she developed an early form of recording choreography and these are the first ballets where there’s some clue to how they were danced. (It occurred to me that having the government present ballets might be an interesting tradition to revive. I can picture the current administration doing The Nutcracker, with Dick Cheney as Herr Drosselmeyer, Condilezza Rice as Clara, President Bush as the Prince, Saddam Hussein as The Mouse King, and Larry Craig as the Sugarplum Fairy.)


Athénaïs’ downfall came in a Baroque scandal generally called “The Affair of the Poisons”. Athénaïs, like many other women of the time, frequented an assortment of witches, wizards and other such for love potions, charms, cosmetics, spell casting, fortune telling and so forth. While technically quite illegal under both state and religious law, this sort of thing was fashionable for court ladies (probably just because it was illegal) and the authorities usually looked the other way. Unfortunately, one of the witches was overheard bragging to a tavern audience that she had provided poisons to certain “high people”. This was something the police could not ignore, and the whole coven of Paris was brought in for “questioning”. Questioning at the time involved breaking the informant’s arms and legs with a sledgehammer, and the wizards and witches were quick to volunteer torrents of information on their activities, including stories that just about everybody at court had tried to poison just about everybody else, and that Athénaïs and other ladies had participated in Black Masses, with their own naked bodies as altars to receive the blood of sacrificed babies – also claimed to be their own. This was getting out of hand, and the King ordered the prosecution stopped – after having all the witches burned so they couldn’t talk any more. However, he was apparently suspicious enough that Athénaïs was guilty of at least some of the accusations that he switched his affections to Françoise de Maintenon, a highly religious lady who justified the situation by claiming she was sacrificing her virtue to save the King’s soul. (The King had met Françoise while she was, ironically, the governess of his illegitimate children by Athénaïs).


Athénaïs retired to her country estate (this was considered presumptuous by her critics; discarded mistresses were supposed to enter a convent) and busied herself with various charities. She did not write the entire shelves full of erotic memoirs attributed to her; she wouldn’t have had time and wasn’t the kiss and tell type.


I found it interesting that two recent reads have both involved supposed poisonings – this one and Unnatural Murder. Accounts of the Renaissance and Baroque are full of poisonings, with poisoned gloves and poisoned books and poisoned rings and so on, but the actual poisons known were probably just heavy metal compounds – arsenic and mercury – plus maybe mushroom poisons. Certainly there were plenty of people died suddenly and uncomfortably back then, but I suspect a lot of supposed poisonings were just bad luck with sanitation.


Good background for The Three Musketeers and the sequels, Cyrano de Bergerac or Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy. show less

This book explores the life of this lady who was the mistress of King Louis XIV of France for many years, eclipsing in her beauty, wit and intelligence the non-descript real real Queen Marie Therese. Her rivalries with her predecessor as mistress, Louise de Vallieres and with her successors La Fontanges (briefly) and Madame de Maintenon are well described and often quite amusing. The bizarre and horrible Affair of the Poisons is well described and while I don't believe Athenais was involved show more in the alleged poisonings and supposed Satanism, my main sympathy was with the innocent victims kept imprisoned for the rest of their lives under the horrible lettres de cachet process. The stultifying etiquette-bound atmosphere of the court at Versailles is also well described, as is the phenomenon of gloire which The Sun King and his whole court and indeed the whole country promoted around the person of Louis. There are some very colourful characters here during Louis's long reign - 72 years, the longest in West European history - plotting, betraying, loving, marrying, having affairs with each other, it's like a giant baroque soap opera. 5/5 show less

I admit that I bought this book because I was mildly interested in Louis XIV and it had a beautiful cover. It is one certain example where it is perfectly acceptable to judge a book in this manner, however, as I was pleased to discover.

This is the artfully woven story of one of the Sun King's mistresses; it tracks her relationship with the King, her influence in the realm, and the long-standing effects of what amounts to her "reign" as Louis's favorite. Glittering and gorgeous throughout, show more it's a captivating story. The writing is slightly inclined toward a female audience, but any male interested in the period would obtain equal enjoyment from it. Educational in an unpretentious, gentle way, "Athenais" is written with all the passion Lisa Hilton has for the subject. And that is a considerable amount. show less