Vulgar History - Hortense Mancini： It Girl of Restoration England

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is 0.73

00:00:15.840 Anne Foster and today we are talking about Hortense Mangini, who was a woman who lived

00:00:21.880 in the 17th century, I was going to say England, but England, France, Savoy, various places.

00:00:28.180 and we did six episodes about her in 2023 if you're a long-time listener during my international

00:00:34.460 season her story is just there's so much to it there's so many eras that it turned into a six

00:00:40.520 part miniseries about her and one of my main sources for that six part miniseries is an

00:00:46.860 academic named dr annalisa nicholson who has done so much research about hortons and she

00:00:52.160 has various articles that she generously uh shared with me when i was doing that research

00:00:56.560 honestly we reached a point when i was doing that research where i was just messaging her

00:01:00.000 asking her opinion on various things she was like really the guardian angel of that whole series and

00:01:05.580 she has got two books that are now available about hortons mancini that is she's been researching it

00:01:11.360 for so long and now these books are available and i love it the first book is called the letters of

00:01:15.860 hortons mancini a bilingual edition so it's the first ever collection of her letters like annalisa

00:01:21.180 was traveling like she's going to monaco she's going to private collections like she's finding

00:01:25.980 these letters wherever they are, finding them and translating them into English. So you can read

00:01:30.000 the letters in the original French as well as in English in this first ever collection of Hortense's

00:01:34.040 letters. And I think letters are such a good way to see what a person was like in a really direct

00:01:38.940 and informal way. The same way as if like you could, you'll listen to me in this podcast, but

00:01:42.620 if you saw my DMs, if you saw me in a group chat, like you get more of a sense of what a person is

00:01:47.020 like. And the letters really provide that for her as well. Annalise's second book, it has also just

00:01:52.500 come out is called A Salon in Exile, Hortense Mancini and the French Diaspora in Restoration

00:01:57.860 London. So two books about her, and I'm so thrilled to have Annalisa joining me on this

00:02:03.200 podcast episode. So if you remember the six-part miniseries from before, this is just like a

00:02:08.020 walk down memory lane as she and I kind of walk through Hortense's life and her influence and

00:02:12.500 her significance. And if you haven't heard those episodes yet, then this is sort of an entree to

00:02:16.500 you. And since this is coming out Christmas week, if you've got some sort of long road trips ahead

00:02:21.600 of you or anything, why not? Scroll back in your app and find the six part or taunts manchini

00:02:26.200 miniseries to really fill in the gap of this remarkable woman's life. And I'm so happy that

00:02:30.240 these books exist. I'm so happy Annalisa was able to join me. We were both looking forward to this

00:02:34.300 conversation so much and we had a really nice time. So please enjoy this conversation with

00:02:38.440 Dr. Annalisa Nicholson. So I'm joined today. I'm so excited to talk to, I don't know if this is the

00:02:47.840 first time that I use some like I work with somebody as like a helper for a podcast and

00:02:52.400 then they later come on the podcast but it's Annalise Nicholson who has two books out right

00:02:57.260 now about a woman whose name on the podcast I called her Hortense Mancini just kind of a French

00:03:03.540 pronunciation for the first name a town pronunciation for the last name Annalise

00:03:07.360 welcome and explain what we should call her hello how we should pronounce it so exciting to be on

00:03:13.560 after listening to the amazing six-parter on the woman I call Hortense Mancini. So she was born 1.00

00:03:22.540 Hortense Mancini in Italy. And then she moves to France when she's younger and her name becomes

00:03:27.820 Frenchified to Hortense Mancini. And then after that, she moves to London. And some people call

00:03:33.320 her Hortense Mancini. Some people start to anglicize it a bit. So it's Hortense Mancini.

00:03:38.400 Some people are still calling her Mancini. So there's all different pronunciation variants.

00:03:42.520 and yours is perfectly acceptable I really went through it when I was first so um one of my

00:03:47.660 sisters she studies languages or like she knows languages and I was like oh I'm reading with this

00:03:51.660 person name is Hortense Mancini and she's like in Italian it would be Mancini and I was like okay

00:03:57.540 okay and I'm like but but it's French so it's like Hortense I guess so but it's honestly I'm

00:04:03.760 grateful to be even having this conversation with you because how many people have you and I I would

00:04:08.460 assume both looked at whose names are Marie like people I just did a whole series of Marie Antoinette

00:04:14.720 and her sisters and it's just like oh my god everyone is Marie everyone's so I'm happy that

00:04:18.660 she has an unusual name which maybe it's just because where is she in the birth order of her

00:04:23.720 and all for siblings she's one of the younger ones right like they were they used up they had

00:04:27.120 like Marie they had Marie Anne like they used up all the kind of normal names yeah so they start

00:04:32.000 with with Laure or Laura and then there's Hollande and then there's Marie and then there's then they

00:04:38.600 go kind of wild with Hortense and then they go back to Marianne kind of traditional but what

00:04:44.260 Pans Mancini herself does is all of her daughters are called Marie something so it's super confusing

00:04:49.320 Marianne Marie Hollande yeah it's nice it's nice she's got this lovely cosmopolitan name that sums

00:04:54.640 up her life very memorable hard to get her confused it is interesting and you know she's

00:04:59.840 sort of destined for something more interesting than other people, because honestly, just I'm

00:05:04.380 grateful for an unusual name. That's all I'm saying. But what I was thinking we could do today

00:05:08.160 in this episode, like if people have already listened, I know that there's listeners out

00:05:11.760 there who've heard my six part season, mini series about her before, but there's people.

00:05:18.200 So this will be like, remember this, like we'll be reminiscing, but also people who haven't heard

00:05:22.400 that yet. It's like an introduction to her life for people who don't know who she is. I was thinking

00:05:25.980 in sort of like a Taylor Swift way. We can go through her eras or Tansaman Chaney because she

00:05:32.040 had very distinct, it's like, she's living here doing this. And then she's living here and doing 0.75

00:05:35.900 this. It's, and that's part of why I wound up doing a six part series because it's like, you

00:05:40.500 want to, I wanted to just like really sit and like, what was her life like here? And then it

00:05:44.220 completely changes. But actually, Annalisa, I want to ask you first, as somebody who's just

00:05:50.500 written two books about her, or like one of the books is translations of her ladders. How did you

00:05:54.860 even come across her in the first place? I first came across Fultence Mancini when I was doing my

00:06:00.320 master's in London and I didn't know what I was going to do my dissertation on. So I went to the

00:06:06.580 library and took out a bunch of books on early modern women and France to see what it would

00:06:11.880 throw up. And I came across the English translation of her memoirs. It was the most incredible story

00:06:18.440 as those who have listened to your six part will know about this woman who lives at what is

00:06:24.760 initially a fairly ordinary life in the lower aristocracy. And then she becomes this very rich

00:06:30.260 heiress and she's married off to an awful, awful husband. And instead of tolerating it,

00:06:36.840 which we might expect from a 17th century woman, she tries to get out of the marriage. And when

00:06:41.420 she doesn't, she's had enough and she flees. And she does so by dressing as a man and gets this

00:06:45.960 cross-dressing reputation. She embarks on affairs with men and with women. She goes partying. So 1.00

00:06:52.160 she doesn't let this awful marriage crush her. She spends years on the run defending herself.

00:06:57.080 She doesn't just have secret affairs either. She has affairs with like rulers. And then she comes 0.91

00:07:01.500 to London eventually, becomes the mistress of Charles II, which is where most people have

00:07:06.180 come across her before. And then she set up this salon in London. And I thought, oh, I really want

00:07:10.720 to know more about this salon. I was doing my master's in London. Her salon was in London,

00:07:14.960 but I couldn't find much about it. And so that became the subject of my master's dissertation.

00:07:19.280 but really it was those kind of contemporary echoes about her life that resonated right so

00:07:25.120 she's a experiences domestic violence and so she has to flee and she's also cross-dressing and

00:07:31.560 bisexual so experimenting at a time when it's very difficult for women to do that and I just wanted

00:07:37.100 to know more well and also I think like when we get to that era we'll discuss it I'm sure but the

00:07:41.920 whole thing in preparing to talk to you I was like going through my old notes and like obviously

00:07:45.600 looking through your books as well. And I was like, in that time period, I mean, honestly,

00:07:49.600 it's a time period, like pre, I don't even know, 1970s, like women couldn't have their own money,

00:07:55.300 really. They couldn't have their own assets. So she was, she left her husband and she, 0.98

00:08:00.140 she couldn't just be like, okay, I'll just go get a job as a bartender. I'll just like go

00:08:04.240 work in a restaurant. Like she could, she couldn't work because she was a woman. 1.00

00:08:08.780 So it's just like, what's she going to do? So there's this added level of like, 0.99

00:08:12.300 And that's why so many women still stay in terrible relationships for these financial reasons. 1.00

00:08:16.880 Like they can't support themselves. 0.97

00:08:17.980 So the fact that she was just like, fuck this, I'm going to figure something out, I think is very inspirational. 0.97

00:08:24.600 Yeah. And I think you really honed in onto something that's really important for her and what she talks about in her memoir, 0.95

00:08:33.440 which is that sense of financial dependence on her husband.

00:08:37.080 So she had been this, or essentially one of the richest heiresses in Europe, and she gets married, and immediately her husband locks her accessing that fortune.

00:08:48.900 So she becomes financially isolated, totally dependent on him, and he really uses this to taunt her and tease her.

00:08:56.400 She talks about times when she's asking for money, asking for access to her jewels, and he basically says, no, no, no, you would waste them. I'm in charge and you can't have them.

00:09:07.080 And that sense of utter dependence must have really rankled for someone who had grown up

00:09:11.740 surrounded by wealth, but also that that is her wealth that she's brought

00:09:15.560 into the marriage to him. And so she knows when she flees, she can't access it when she's married

00:09:21.720 to him, but she's not going to be able to access it at all if she flees. And she still makes that

00:09:26.040 decision. And she talks in her memoir about the fact that her exile was a kind of financial

00:09:31.320 education. She suddenly had to start really thinking about money. Because if you're going

00:09:37.000 into exile you need money for travel she's moving around she's using courses etc carriages she's

00:09:43.640 staying with people money is passing hands for protectors and the like and there's that there's

00:09:49.100 clothes this is a woman who's used to living an aristocratic lifestyle she still to some extent

00:09:55.800 wants to continue a life that she's been accustomed to and so she has to reach out to people she's

00:10:01.480 essentially writing to people asking for money looking for rich protectors and getting things 0.83

00:10:05.800 on credit using the fact that she's a duchess to gain credit. So I think, yeah, the sense of money

00:10:11.840 troubles is really there for her. And it will be through the rest of her life. You were talking,

00:10:17.420 yeah, about the different eras of her life. The first bit of exile is a financial education. The 0.79

00:10:22.860 80s, when she's in England and there are problems with the monarchy, she's seeking money. In the

00:10:27.840 90s, when her health is failing, she's seeking money. It's always there for someone who is cut

00:10:32.660 off from that wealth wasn't there something i promise listeners honestly have merry christmas

00:10:38.420 this is this episode's coming on a christmas eve this is my gift to the listeners and to myself

00:10:42.700 getting to talk to you but this is just we're just having a chat but we will start going through her

00:10:47.200 life i promise but wasn't there something about like so in historically and current day as well 1.00

00:10:52.880 like one of the reasons why women would amass jewels is because that's the way like jewelry 1.00

00:10:57.040 like that's the way that they can have wealth themselves like that's like you can't have a bank 1.00

00:11:00.840 account or whatever but if you own these diamonds if you had to pay for stuff like you could pawn

00:11:05.280 them or whatever didn't her husband like not let her have her jewels or something wasn't that part 0.62

00:11:10.180 of his like whole emotional abuse thing yes so you're absolutely right that many women in the

00:11:19.200 17th century would have accrued a kind of wealth through things like jewels or or gold and silver

00:11:26.740 a plate or other kinds of objects that they could own that were worth money and in theory that they

00:11:32.280 could sell if they needed to. And Mancini did have this incredible jewel collection. And in her

00:11:38.180 memoirs, yes, she talks about that, about her husband essentially taking her jewels from her

00:11:43.900 and refusing her access to them, even if she wanted to wear them or to see them. And it's

00:11:49.940 quite a poignant anecdote where she talks about going to him one night and asking to have access

00:11:56.440 to her jewels and he says no no I can't trust you but he doesn't just say I can't trust you

00:12:01.600 he does so with this really snide smirk as if he's taking pleasure in blocking her from it

00:12:07.840 because she wants her readers to know this isn't that this isn't reasonable he's not doing this

00:12:13.360 because he really thinks she's untrustworthy he's doing it to taunt her but the other thing to say

00:12:18.120 that unusually Manzini was actually someone who did have wealth in her own right so normally women

00:12:24.680 wouldn't have had that. Yeah, their wealth would have been kind of more jewels and play, etc. 0.99

00:12:31.080 Because families typically would appoint an heir and it would be the firstborn son or the nearest

00:12:38.660 male relative. But in Mancini's case, that's not what happened. She had a brother and he was passed

00:12:43.560 over for her. She was seen as more dutiful and a better bet with Cardinal Mazarin's enormous legacy.

00:12:51.220 So what was even more grating for her is she was in this incredibly rare position to be a woman, basically with her own wealth.

00:13:00.440 And still, still because of the misogyny in the marital law at that time in France, when her husband blocked her access to that wealth, there was nothing she could do about it.

00:13:11.220 She appeals to everyone, every aristocrat, even to the king of France.

00:13:15.500 But the way that the law is structured in that time, there is nothing anyone can do.

00:13:19.880 nobody can force the duke of mazarin to mend his ways okay so we're talking so she gets this wealth

00:13:26.420 because she becomes the heiress of her uncle a couple people's i forget if i said this when we're

00:13:31.520 recording or before but i did ask on instagram and on patreon i was like listeners what do you

00:13:35.180 remember about this story because this is like one that people bring up to me this is like

00:13:38.600 a memorable person who i've covered on the podcast i think her story is as we're gonna if you don't

00:13:44.240 know the story it's a memorable and interesting story but what some people did mention was like

00:13:48.980 oh she had that terrible she had that mean uncle so that's what some people remember so the first

00:13:53.920 era like she's in Italy she's this little girl growing up but her through her mother I think

00:13:58.440 right she's connected to the most powerful man in France so what's what's what's her early years

00:14:03.560 yeah so this is her dutiful era so she's born in Rome but then as a child she and her sisters

00:14:11.160 are taken to France because as you say their uncle is essentially the most powerful man in France

00:14:17.240 His name is Giulio Mazzarino or Cardinal Mazarin, as he's now known.

00:14:23.540 And he'd risen up the ranks to become first minister or prime minister to the child king, Louis XIV.

00:14:30.300 So the king of France is in a minority and Cardinal Mazarin is de facto ruler, making decisions on behalf of the child king.

00:14:38.920 and Cardinal Mazarin has amassed the most enormous fortune from this position made up of things like

00:14:46.160 jukies and the income that you get from owning land and estates from palaces and from his huge

00:14:52.480 artwork collection he was a real collector of fine pieces of artwork and he brings his relatives to

00:14:59.540 France mainly to marry them to the aristocracy to fortify his own power base it's not just to

00:15:06.580 to indulge them or to be kind to his relatives. It is totally strategic. He wants to marry them

00:15:12.020 to nobles in the land, to solidify his wealth, but increase his own power.

00:15:17.980 And he probably planned to leave his wealth to one of his nephews. But for various reasons,

00:15:25.060 that doesn't happen. And he seems to have a kind of favoritism towards Hortense from a young age.

00:15:32.480 She must have been quite a likable child because one of her sisters, Mary, would later say that their mother also treated Hortense more kindly than the other than the other children.

00:15:44.240 She had, I would say, a star quality.

00:15:47.540 A star quality. She was like, yeah, she was the the she was the perfect child.

00:15:52.200 She was kind of dutiful and she didn't get herself mixed up in too much scandal at the

00:15:58.920 court like her sisters did. She kept herself a little bit to the side. She seems to have been

00:16:04.520 quite a reflective child. She talks about reading a lot in her youth, writing down philosophical

00:16:11.900 questions and watching on as her sisters get involved in some of the most scandalous intrigue

00:16:18.380 in that era. And she seems to have had a good relationship with her uncle. She does talk in

00:16:23.420 her memoir about her uncle complaining that he didn't think she and her sisters were religious

00:16:27.840 enough. But I get the mean uncle, which is that he has brought all of these girls to France and

00:16:34.420 he just wants to marry them off. And he's not interested in who they want to marry or giving

00:16:39.000 them an education. It is only in marrying them to the most or to the people he thinks it's best for

00:16:45.640 to marry them off to in terms of just from like what it's funny because I was like what do I

00:16:51.120 remember but I'm like what do the listeners remember because I know I like went off on

00:16:53.980 tangents that are like not in my notes in episodes but remind me this so actually listeners

00:16:59.760 so I did a few months ago we did a whole like Marie Antoinette series and we talked a lot about

00:17:04.740 Versailles so this is like the little boy who would grow up to build Versailles but like Versailles

00:17:08.960 is not a thing yet it's like other palaces is what we're talking about but this is also historically

00:17:13.880 the time period where various things are happening in england that we don't need to get into because

00:17:19.040 it's very complicated but ultimately the man who will become charles ii is in exile in france right

00:17:24.540 now and he's not the king but he and hortense meet each other as young people and the uncle

00:17:30.340 blocks them from being together am i remembering that something like that he meets her and he's

00:17:35.300 like won over by her and he's like oh maybe i could marry her but then she wasn't allowed to

00:17:38.820 something like that so what happens is yeah so Hortense is quite young at this point she's

00:17:44.060 probably about 11 or 12 and the exiled Charles II has heard that Cardinal Mazarin is making

00:17:54.220 this young girl Hortense his heiress and Charles II is in exile he wants to reclaim his throne but

00:18:02.160 he has no money. And therefore, this young girl, young teenager is appealing to him.

00:18:09.120 So he and his advisors start working on a proposal. But Cardinal Mazarin rejects this proposal

00:18:16.280 because Charles II is a penniless exile. And that is not what he's interested in. He wants

00:18:21.340 to marry his relatives to the best matches in France or in Europe. And that is somebody rich.

00:18:27.560 that is somebody with the status of a duke and prince and with very good prospects for the

00:18:33.920 future. He doesn't want his wealth squandered on trying to reclaim the throne of England.

00:18:40.400 We don't know if Charles and Hortense had met properly. I mean, they definitely crossed paths

00:18:46.220 during those years because they would have seen each other at court performances and balls,

00:18:50.740 but we don't know how much if they ever spoke. And she's like a child. It's not just like,

00:18:56.320 oh it's not even like oh she's 18 and it was like this lost love connection this is a child who's

00:19:01.540 going to inherit money and he's like i could get she's a little bank account and maybe i can marry

00:19:05.380 her like that's what's going on perfectly put and these negotiations are going on for years

00:19:10.020 for years because charles comes back again and he brings he's rejected at first and he comes back

00:19:17.060 and says oh are you sure um cardinal mazarin sort of because he doesn't want to offend charles he

00:19:23.760 says, oh, no, no, no. My niece is far too lowly to marry somebody as great as the king of England.

00:19:31.320 But Charles comes back and says, no, I'm very happy to advance this proposal again.

00:19:38.820 And Hortense is in the background, dutiful as ever, not involved in any of these negotiations,

00:19:45.720 simply waiting for her uncle to decide who she's going to marry. And the uncle rejects Charles

00:19:50.880 again. And then Charles does reclaim his throne. He is invited back to become the king of England,

00:19:57.580 Scotland and Ireland again. And Cardinal Mazarin then sort of discreetly tries to bring up the

00:20:05.820 subject of his niece Hortense. Oh, would you in fact like to marry her now? But by that point,

00:20:11.500 Charles is a monarch and yeah, his sights are higher. He wants to marry the daughter of a monarch

00:20:18.640 probably so it's not what happens and it's a it's a real shame in a way because i think they would

00:20:25.040 have been quite well matched neither of them have neither charles and hortense end up with

00:20:31.060 a perfect or particularly happy marriage and we can only imagine the kind of power couple they

00:20:38.060 would have been alas it didn't work out and hortense is then married to this very pious

00:20:42.660 man that cardinal mazarin has chosen for her before before we talk about this horrible man

00:20:47.760 who she marries i do want to just like follow that thread because that was what one another

00:20:53.140 listener said like when i was like what do you remember and she was like if only she had married

00:20:57.960 charles and they could have like they would have had so much fun together they would have probably

00:21:01.440 had a bunch of kids because each of them in like and then well first of all like timmy i'm just like

00:21:06.500 oh and that's a huge sliding door to like the entire british royal family um if he had had

00:21:11.460 legitimate heirs but also i'm like sexy as hell because hortense was gorgeous i mean yeah she's 0.99

00:21:17.900 a child at this point but she like grows up to be this beautiful gorgeous like very sensual woman

00:21:22.980 charles ii as listeners of this podcast know i find very attractive and he was like a good time

00:21:29.160 guy like he had a nice he like the two of them together would have had fun that's what i mean

00:21:34.420 it would have been like a sexy power couple yes too bad didn't work out agreed yes they

00:21:41.120 they were they both had this wonderful sense of wit and also a kind of joie de vivre like they

00:21:48.980 want to enjoy life no matter what was thrown at them they seem to have always risen to it with a

00:21:57.340 smile with a joke let's have some wine let's have some fun lives for living and it is fun to speculate

00:22:03.900 about what would have happened it would have saved Hortense from a really miserable marriage

00:22:07.680 and Charles as you said probably from a succession crisis um I do wonder and maybe we'll talk about

00:22:13.440 it later when we're thinking about Hortense's London era about how Charles feels towards 0.98

00:22:19.800 infidelities he is a bit weird on the one hand he is this restoration fuck boy and he goes around 0.95

00:22:26.140 sleeping with like court women and maidservants etc there there are like numerous books that are 0.99

00:22:32.220 called like the mistresses of charles the second like he had like a catalog yeah but sometimes he

00:22:39.520 gets his backup quite hypocritically about these women um taking other lovers which he does with 0.51

00:22:46.400 he will eventually do that with hortense so you don't know but all all we know is she was definitely 0.88

00:22:52.060 his type she had really she was strong-willed and yes loved partying loved drinking and had that

00:23:01.340 kind of libertin libertin values that they both had in common so they would have understood each

00:23:06.460 other i think better than the people they ended up with so it's just sort of a it's an interesting

00:23:11.980 sliding doors moment because like two people don't know the story like charles ii is coming

00:23:15.980 back in the story but we'll get to him later this they're just two sexy ships passing in the night 0.93

00:23:21.640 they're both called the fubs and then so she's married to this guy god damn it explain explain 0.78

00:23:31.020 who this guy is. So this guy, his name is Armand Charles, French name, kind of clunky to say in 0.76

00:23:38.720 English. From this point onwards, we'll call him the Duke of Mazarin because that's the title he

00:23:44.120 gets. And he's much older than her. She marries him when she's about 14, 15, and he's probably in

00:23:50.440 his 30s. He's a very plain looking man. But worse than that is he is a huge bore, super pious,

00:23:58.060 obsessively so. And he's chosen by Cardinal Mazarin because he's seen as a safe pair of hands

00:24:04.660 for this huge wealth. It's a total misjudgment on Cardinal Mazarin's part because Achim al-Charler 0.77

00:24:12.220 will turn out to be not just really pious, but this massive litigant. He just wants to sue

00:24:19.220 everyone, anyone who's easily offended. And anyone who offends him, he wants to sue. And so he ends

00:24:25.280 up squandering this wealth on so many legal cases. But yes, Cardinal Mazarin picks this man.

00:24:31.040 And at first, Hortense, there's no protest at marrying him, even though she is a catch. She's

00:24:37.220 the most beautiful of all of these sisters, and they are seen as very beautiful sisters.

00:24:42.700 She comes with this huge dowry. And some of the other matches that she is offered are younger

00:24:50.920 guys that she might have liked more but she still marries this very plain looking very religious

00:24:55.240 bore and almost instantly the marriage proves unhappy he is controlling he wants to have a

00:25:02.160 wife that is at home all the time and praying and yeah not doing much else allowing him allowing him

00:25:09.040 to confiscate her jewels and the like and she's used to a life of partying she's got four sisters 0.99

00:25:15.820 though by this point one of her sisters might have died but she's she's used to being around

00:25:19.400 lots of different people going to little salons, spending a lot of time in the Louvre Palace

00:25:23.840 and her husband doesn't want her to. And they are constantly clashing. But she puts up with it at

00:25:30.480 first because that is how she's been raised to be, to be kind of subservient, to accept it.

00:25:37.540 She doesn't know at this point how else to be. So she kind of concedes to her husband. She argues

00:25:44.380 with him but she gives in he plants spies around her so he makes all of ensure that all her

00:25:50.040 servants are in fact his his spies to see what she's doing clearly jealous and paranoid to have

00:25:56.440 this very young very beautiful wife he can't handle it um and he really is the villain of this piece

00:26:03.180 he also seems to have been quite volatile himself there are lots of anecdotes that come out from

00:26:10.880 this time about very bizarre behavior that he engages in. The Duke de Saint-Simon has one where

00:26:17.320 the Duke of Mazarin asks all the servants to stand around him and water him because he's decided he's

00:26:23.740 a flower for the day. There's another story that crops up in maybe the letters of Boussy de Faboutin

00:26:30.060 about him changing the appearance of all the women servants in his household because he's worried

00:26:36.200 that they're going to inspire lust in in the men around so yeah unfortunately this is who she ends

00:26:42.340 up with doesn't he have something i don't know i think it might be later but it ties in with what

00:26:46.420 you're saying about his behavior where like they inherited from mazarin like this beautiful this

00:26:52.740 incredible art collection and didn't he like paint like like all the nudes he like covered up their

00:26:58.840 nudity or he like smashed like the genitalia off of statues and stuff like he had a real compulsion

00:27:04.940 about that sort of thing. 0.56

00:27:06.820 Yeah, so it is a little bit later,

00:27:09.720 but essentially in reaction to Manzini's flight

00:27:13.300 and her continued refusal to return to him,

00:27:17.300 he decides to take out his rage

00:27:20.320 on the Mazarin art collection.

00:27:23.480 And so he smashes up all of the nude statues.

00:27:27.200 He throws black paint over those Renaissance paintings

00:27:31.020 of women, nymphs bathing, that kind of thing. And word gets out that he's done this. So one

00:27:39.340 of the servants must be so terrified to see his master destroying this art collection,

00:27:44.780 not just because these pieces are culturally important, but because they are worth so much

00:27:50.820 money. One of the servants must tell someone because the minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste

00:27:57.620 Colbert, somebody very senior in the French government, comes rushing to the Mazarin Palace.

00:28:03.220 It's not very far. The Louvre Palace and the Mazarin Palace, or what's now the Bibliothèque

00:28:07.380 Mazarin, it's a really short distance between them. But he comes rushing over to stop the Duke

00:28:13.500 of Mazarin. And he hinders him, but he can't undo the damage. And it's a huge amount of damage.

00:28:20.600 And his motivations are mixed. In part, he is destroying some of Mancini's wealth and dowry,

00:28:26.900 some of what she's inherited because these artworks are worth so much money. But he's also

00:28:32.900 showcasing that obsessive, this obsessive way he sees sin everywhere and feels the need to

00:28:40.160 do something about it, to, to destroy it, erase it. So this is, yeah, like it's in terms of like

00:28:47.600 just me and the podcast and how many stories I've done about women in past centuries getting into

00:28:52.960 terrible marriages. Like this, this is maybe the most terrible marriage to the most terrible

00:28:57.920 person. Like he's just, and a lot of this is documented. We'll get to this when she writes

00:29:02.540 her memoir, but she explains like, this is in a very misogynistic culture. This is, this is

00:29:11.180 worse than what anyone else is doing. Like this is horrifying everyone else around them. Like

00:29:15.920 he's so extreme and she's this very young woman. And so I think this, this introduces her next

00:29:21.180 era, which will be her escape. Escape era. Agreed. It is a really terrible marriage, 0.79

00:29:29.520 even by early modern standards. And she knows that he is so uncompromising. At this point in

00:29:37.400 the 17th century, lots of couples do separate. Lots of aristocratic couples, once they've had

00:29:43.320 a few children, will live separate lives. They might live in separate wings of their palaces,

00:29:48.780 or even simply separate rooms, they divide their wealth up. 1.00

00:29:53.820 Sometimes the women receive an annual pension 0.56

00:29:56.320 and the Duke of Mazarin is having none of it.

00:29:59.720 So after sort of seven years of putting up with the Duke of Mazarin,

00:30:05.880 of going to confidence, of turning to the court,

00:30:07.880 of finding, trying to convince him to accept an arrangement,

00:30:12.680 she gives up.

00:30:13.680 He's never going to change his ways.

00:30:15.280 And she, as you say, enters her escape era.

00:30:17.820 Well, and also I just, I wanted to just mention, so like you said, like she tried other things first. She wasn't just like, screw this and put on some trousers and ran away. Like she tried like people do today, honestly. And this is where the story has. And I think like the fact that your books are coming out now, like, I think this is such a good story for people to read now because it just kind of shows yet another example of like a woman who like appeals to the authorities. And it's just like, this is happening to me. And they're like, oh, sorry. Like it's, that still happens today. 1.00

00:30:45.320 So like she tried the legal remedies and just nothing there was possible.

00:30:50.280 So she had to go to this extreme measure.

00:30:52.440 Yeah. She has lots of sympathizers, lots of sympathizers. 1.00

00:30:57.080 Many of the court judges want to rule in her favor.

00:31:03.020 But it's difficult because there are older judges and it seems like the Duke of Mazarin might have bribed some of them or persuaded some of them to take his side.

00:31:10.840 And there's only so much anyone else can do.

00:31:14.040 There's only so much somebody outside of the household can do because ultimately husbands have so much authority over their wives in this era. 0.96

00:31:22.020 And her case study illuminates, exposes how terrible that balance of power is when it gets to this extreme, that she can be socially and financially isolated.

00:31:34.740 and she starts to fear for her life a little bit because not because she thinks he's going to kill

00:31:41.060 her but because he does things that are pointlessly dangerous to her health. He makes a go on these

00:31:46.320 long trips to his estates when she's only just had a child for example and things like that he

00:31:52.420 doesn't really seem to care about her. So she eventually realises she has to leave and it has

00:31:59.400 to be now while she's still able to leave. So she spends a few months planning what she's going to

00:32:08.040 do. And she tells as few people as possible. She only tells her brother and a couple of servants

00:32:14.620 who are going to accompany her. And she's so scared. She's so scared and anxious. And then

00:32:22.300 she becomes more anxious thinking someone's going to notice because I'm not eating and I'm not

00:32:25.980 sleeping but nobody does it's quite a sad revelation that i find in her memoir that she

00:32:32.440 says but she's so sure somebody is going to ask her what's happening why are you so

00:32:37.940 worried all the time but nobody notices um and so she flees and she takes some of her jewels

00:32:46.760 not entirely sure how she's managed to wrangle that but she manages to take some of her jewels 0.92

00:32:51.740 because she knows she's going to need money en route

00:32:54.780 and packs like a couple of trunks of things 1.00

00:32:57.440 and flees in the night, flees in the night.

00:32:59.820 And she says in her memoir that they leave Paris

00:33:01.840 and they basically don't stop

00:33:03.800 until they are well, well away

00:33:05.540 because she knows her husband will eventually realize

00:33:08.580 and he's going to send his soldiers after her.

00:33:10.920 So they have to make the longest headstart possible.

00:33:14.960 And this is like, just to emphasize

00:33:17.500 how long ago this was,

00:33:20.200 Like this is, there's not paved roads in all the places where she's going.

00:33:23.580 Like she's in a carriage being driven by horses. 0.77

00:33:26.400 Like this is, it's a very fraught thing that she's doing where it's just like, oh, she

00:33:31.900 ran away.

00:33:32.480 It's just like, no, this is like, this is an intensely dangerous thing she's doing.

00:33:36.640 Like the route itself is dangerous.

00:33:38.280 The trip is dangerous.

00:33:39.200 If her husband finds her, what's he going to do?

00:33:41.300 Like, this is an extremely risky thing that she's doing, but she knows this is the only,

00:33:44.520 but also another person in the situation would have just been like, well, I guess this is

00:33:48.400 my life.

00:33:48.920 Oh, well.

00:33:49.580 Yeah. 1.00

00:33:49.680 And she was just like, fuck this. Like, this really speaks to what kind of person she was. 1.00

00:33:54.360 It does. And she must have thought that her life before that just simply wasn't worth living,

00:34:01.280 that something had to be done. And I think there's something intriguing about that,

00:34:06.760 the value that she puts on freedom, essentially, that it isn't worth it to live, to live in this

00:34:13.060 state of incarceration and surveillance. So she flees. And as you say, it's super dangerous.

00:34:18.600 they have carriages sometimes they don't even have carriages they're just going on horseback

00:34:22.920 and the roads are dangerous there are bandits on on different parts of it she's never really

00:34:31.660 done this particular journey before and she's going a long way she is going to rome where one

00:34:37.380 of her sisters lives her sister marie it's a long journey from paris to rome and they have to go a

00:34:43.440 kind of snaking way um uh they are going to go sort of via different kind of alpine ways

00:34:54.700 then into milan it's quite treacherous when they get to milan there's an outbreak of plague so

00:35:01.900 they're quarantined at some point she also has a kind of fall in just her leg and she can't travel 0.74

00:35:08.760 for a little bit and she's really worried that then the duke of mazarin spies are going to catch

00:35:12.940 up with her. But she makes it. She makes it eventually into Italy and her sister reunites 1.00

00:35:19.840 with her and then they go to Rome. And the reason she goes to Italy is because her sister is married

00:35:24.880 to the Prince of Colonna. So one of these aristocratic princes in Rome, because only the

00:35:32.240 protection of somebody that important can save her from her husband's soldiers. Her husband's

00:35:38.120 soldiers cannot take her from the house of a prince in Rome. And that's why she has to go there,

00:35:44.020 which just speaks to the stakes of this. She can't go and stay with one of her friends in Paris

00:35:49.140 or another aristocrat in France. It has to be somebody with more power than the Duke of Mazarin

00:35:57.040 who can protect her. And this is where, so she and her sister, I'm just remembering this part

00:36:02.260 of the story. So, cause she and her sister Marie, like they're still quite young. Like they're like,

00:36:06.800 I don't know, late teens, early twenties. And just the two sisters become these celebrities

00:36:12.580 just for being beautiful women. Like they become the muses to like every artist in Rome. That's

00:36:16.980 this period, right? Yes. Yes. So, I mean, what has also happened in this space between the

00:36:24.020 flight from Paris and her arrival in Rome is Hortense Manzini has now become an international

00:36:29.740 celebrity because the story of her flight has spread everywhere and not just by word of mouth

00:36:38.460 but often by street songs so people make up these songs about her and they pass all through the

00:36:45.120 towns and the marketplaces and the taverns her story comes into kind of essentially local

00:36:50.640 newspapers these little gazettes and everyone wants to know more about this woman she seems

00:36:57.040 like a character from a book. So she arrives at Rome and yes, she's beautiful, just as everybody

00:37:03.540 said. But she's also made this incredible journey. And there's a curiosity, I guess,

00:37:09.080 people have about her that she's done this quite scandalous thing. So some people are

00:37:14.820 really looking down on her, but lots of people are curious to meet her, want to know more.

00:37:20.220 They're intrigued by her story. And she and her sister spend a lot of time going to parties

00:37:25.660 and carnivals and enjoying themselves. And painters are clamoring to paint their picture,

00:37:32.720 paint their miniature, because there's this booming market for it. There's even a fight

00:37:37.940 that breaks out. I can't remember if it's in Rome or if it's in Venice, but a fight breaks out

00:37:44.220 between these two men over one of the miniatures. Because I don't know whether there's some kind of

00:37:49.980 mix up over the artist and whose miniature was meant to be produced first. But they go to duel

00:37:56.640 with each other to fight over a miniature of Hortense Mancini because this is how hot this

00:38:02.380 stuff is. Everyone wants a miniature. And the artist, they would sometimes write something

00:38:07.320 underneath the image and claim it was something Hortense said, like some sort of, I don't know,

00:38:14.460 sweet words or erotic words to really get their buyers going yeah so she's in it so this is like

00:38:23.700 if if anyone like if you just go like when i was first just i first encountered hortense because

00:38:31.660 just some random account i follow on instagram that's like portraits of people from olden days

00:38:36.240 and i saw the portrait and i was just like oh she looks interesting she had this sort of like

00:38:39.600 sailor moon hairstyle these like big buns yeah which is like she always had this hairstyle it's

00:38:43.940 It's like, who's this? And then even just her Wikipedia page, there's so many portraits on

00:38:48.240 there. And I'm just like, this, this person was like, who is this? Like, why would there be so

00:38:53.440 many portraits painted of someone who's not, you know, a queen of a country or something? And it's

00:38:57.880 just because she was such a celebrity. Like there's so many portraits of her and Marie,

00:39:02.500 always looking beautiful, dressed up like different goddesses and things like they were just,

00:39:07.700 they were, I don't know. It's not even quite, I think at the time I did the podcast a few years

00:39:12.460 ago i was like they're kind of like the kardashian sisters and i guess that's the closest allegory

00:39:16.780 now it's just like they're two like the most famous and their sisters and they're beautiful

00:39:21.780 yeah like yeah no one can get enough of it yeah i i think that is there are a few echoes there

00:39:29.480 because like the kardashian sisters there is this early earlier childhood story that people got to

00:39:39.060 no first, right? And with Florence Mancini, she is this niece of Cardinal Mazarin and people

00:39:44.760 remember him. Like at first she's just famous because of her uncle and then she becomes his

00:39:49.580 heiress and people are like, okay. And then they hear, oh my gosh, she's done this really scandalous

00:39:54.300 thing. Do you remember that super rich heiress of Cardinal Mazarin? Can you believe she's done

00:39:58.420 this scandalous thing? It's like these kind of echoes there of, and how someone becomes an

00:40:03.880 international celebrity in this time is through doing multiple scandalous things and then yeah

00:40:12.280 she and maria kind of living it up it's one thing that's nice i mean this is a nice moment in the

00:40:16.520 story portenza's had to flee but she gets to see her sister again and she hasn't seen her sister

00:40:21.520 in a while for aristocratic women in the 17th century they are often married off to men who 0.98

00:40:27.700 might live really far away from where they grew up or or they might just simply have to settle like

00:40:33.560 married back in Rome where she was born but far from her sisters who remained in France. And so

00:40:38.560 they get this really lovely reunion and they enjoy themselves. But they enjoy themselves and there's

00:40:44.720 a lot of concern over Hortense Mancini in Rome. The papal envoys are asking her to reconsider

00:40:54.420 returning to her husband essentially. They don't think it's appropriate that Rome should harbour

00:40:58.880 her. They don't think it's appropriate that she should be living independently from her husband

00:41:04.820 when he doesn't want her to. So there's a lot of discourse going on about Mancini, not all of it

00:41:10.940 positive. And this is also in terms of, I like this throughout her whole story, like she goes

00:41:17.060 through various things. And this is where you talk about this quite a bit when both of you are

00:41:21.620 in your books, how she is, her intellect is often discounted because of her partying ways.

00:41:28.880 And I think that you said, like she grew up and she went to these parties and then her husband wouldn't let her do this thing.

00:41:35.080 And then she sees her sister and she's finally able to just like have a nice time.

00:41:37.860 And I think that's nice.

00:41:38.500 And I think it speaks well of her kind of strength that she's able to, that she's not just sitting around praying all the time.

00:41:46.620 That's not her personality.

00:41:47.620 She's just like, she wants to live a life and she wants to have fun.

00:41:51.020 And that doesn't mean that she didn't, she's not traumatized.

00:41:54.120 That doesn't mean that she's not intelligent.

00:41:55.860 That just means that's just another facet of her personality.

00:41:58.200 so I appreciate that she goes to Rome and she's just like hell yeah let's have some fun like

00:42:03.280 that's always part of her like she's not going to suppress that part of her personality just

00:42:07.380 because the situation she's in yes yes she has probably been like you know so full of all these

00:42:17.660 things that she's wanted to do for so long and she needs a release and imagine the adrenaline

00:42:23.600 that must have been coursing through her in the run-up to that flight and then the whole way

00:42:29.380 through that journey because it's not until the journey is over that she's safe and of course then

00:42:35.640 she wants to let loose and have fun and party and do everything that she couldn't do before

00:42:39.860 of course and and these were these were all the things that she that she'd grown up around really

00:42:45.680 there is sometimes a reluctance as a result of that to see her intellectual activities and

00:42:53.520 to focus on her partying but it'd be great for people to acknowledge she can be both she can be

00:42:59.620 someone who enjoys reading and talking to philosophers etc and her and Marie they do set

00:43:05.840 up a little salon in Rome where there are cultural activities going on as well as going to carnival

00:43:11.920 as well as going to parties and it seems in the 17th century people were undermining their little

00:43:19.260 salon in Rome by suggesting it was it was more like a brothel than a salon essentially making

00:43:26.260 fun of the sisters and saying they were too libertine to have a real salon and that even

00:43:30.980 scholars today repeat this kind of misogynist they're kind of lazy kind of misogynist take on

00:43:39.120 her by not allowing her to be someone that has a salon and who goes to carnival well and I was

00:43:44.880 trying to think about like right now I'm in I'm in the midst of doing this series about

00:43:48.240 the Regency era which is interesting I feel like Hortons would have fit in great in the Regency

00:43:53.420 era but just in terms of at that point it was sort of glamorous and people like Lord Byron for

00:44:00.180 instance was known for his like extremely messy social life for being on opium all the time for

00:44:05.240 partying and he was this respected poet it's like oh well if it's a man then the partying doesn't

00:44:11.380 discount his intellectual stuff but when it's a woman that just means oh well you can't be both 0.99

00:44:15.980 like you're either a whore or you're an intellect and you can't be both but it's like 0.98

00:44:20.940 how many like every man from the regency era was gambling and going to parties and drinking and 0.99

00:44:28.840 constantly on opium and it's like oh and this is a great thinker of the time like yes anyway i'm

00:44:33.800 just mad on her behalf but she kept doing her thing and i respect that yes yes um yeah that's

00:44:39.460 So yeah, I think your example of Lord Byron is a really good one. I often try to think of these

00:44:44.600 to explain to people the problem of casting Mancini only in one particular light, because

00:44:50.100 it's true. And in the 17th century, there are lots of intellectual men who are having affairs,

00:44:56.920 who have mistresses, who gamble, who drink a lot, who go to all these parties. But if you go on the

00:45:03.260 Octodictory of National Biography, their page will be like scientist, philosopher. Mancini's

00:45:09.200 being mistress um and there's nothing you know that that she also was a mistress but she did

00:45:14.860 other things too she was all of these things and yeah i mean i guess though one thing to level it

00:45:21.860 out i suppose it is simply just people were so scandalized at that time why the fact she chose

00:45:28.860 to leave her husband and she unapologetically then went on these like you know four-day partying

00:45:36.760 the streets. And it was surprising. It was outrageous. She could have just maybe lived

00:45:42.900 in Rome discreetly and hoped everyone would just forget that she's left her husband. Maybe they'll 0.56

00:45:48.020 stop harassing her to go back to France. No, she is out every single night. To the extent that

00:45:53.940 Mary's husband, the prince of Colin and Lorenzo, he starts to get annoyed. He feels like they're

00:45:58.720 drawing way too much attention to themselves and is desperately trying to contain them,

00:46:04.080 asking them to do less. When they're in Venice for the carnival, he wants to go home early.

00:46:08.140 Yeah. Unapologetic partying. Yeah. And I think it's also that thing that perhaps this will come

00:46:14.060 up because I think we're going to soon or shortly at some point get into her era of writing her

00:46:19.720 memoirs and why she did that and explain to everybody how bad her marriage was. But even

00:46:24.560 today, you see if a woman has been assaulted or something and it's like, well, but then she was

00:46:29.660 laughing. So that means she wasn't really upset where it's like how people's emotional reactions

00:46:34.860 to things that makes people doubt that the thing was so bad that happened to them. So I think the

00:46:39.720 fact that she was partying and have a nice time and not just, I don't know, fasting and being in

00:46:45.360 prayer. It's like, well, could it have been that bad? Why did she run away? Like if she's clearly

00:46:49.800 not her trauma response we see throughout her whole life is like to drink and to party. Like

00:46:56.960 that doesn't mean she's having a nice time necessarily that just means that's her trauma

00:47:01.080 response but yeah so that's we still see that today this is we're just like reading her story

00:47:05.000 it feels like she's very much of her time I don't want to be like she was ahead of her time but it's

00:47:08.800 like she's of her time but there's so many echoes today of this exact same she was ahead of her time

00:47:14.400 though because she was she wanted to make the argument that the marriage laws were unequal

00:47:22.680 and people would say oh but does it really matter how often does this happen you know

00:47:28.960 most most husbands are quite nice to their wives aren't they like do we really need to change these

00:47:33.980 laws and she's like yes you do because I have this extremely awful husband and there's nothing

00:47:39.980 I can do to access my wealth again or to go and live back in my childhood home or to see my

00:47:46.920 children again and so she is quite ahead of her time in making this argument that she if her

00:47:51.760 husband's refusing separation she should have a right either to divorce or that the courts should

00:47:57.520 allow her to live separately like they do when it's for men. This is similar to I did an episode

00:48:03.480 recently-ish about Mary Wollstonecraft and a lot of what she was writing about was like

00:48:07.240 similar stuff where it's just like women should be if they're in a terrible abusive marriage they

00:48:11.480 should be able to leave and everyone was just like I don't know about that Mary Wollstonecraft

00:48:15.160 it's like yeah yeah yeah so like people were thinking these things back then I think it's

00:48:20.440 important to know yes so her rome era like just kind of partying like being free but what how does 0.97

00:48:28.580 that end what what is her next era that she moves into so her sister mary comes to her three four

00:48:36.340 years later and says i want to leave my husband mary wants to leave her husband the prince of

00:48:42.760 colina because she thinks he's planning to kill her and this might sound unexpected and extreme

00:48:49.760 and Hortense received it that way, was really surprised. However, Mary had her reasons. The

00:48:55.660 first one was that Lorenzo had been having an affair for a long time and she was concerned

00:49:00.500 he wanted to marry his mistress. The second was that in 17th century Rome, a number, a very small

00:49:07.240 number, but a number of women had been killed by their husbands and their husbands never faced

00:49:12.960 any justice for it. And the third was that Marie was a kind of, yeah, I guess she was an astrologer

00:49:20.400 and she looked into her horoscopes and became convinced that she was going to die. And she

00:49:26.600 thought it was at Lorenzo's hand. And it's very easy to laugh this off, but she clearly felt

00:49:32.540 strongly enough and was scared enough that she thought it was a very real possibility.

00:49:36.880 She knew she had annoyed Lorenzo as well with her partying. She knew he was in love with this

00:49:41.640 other woman and so she has says to hortense i need to flee and hortense then has to flee too

00:49:48.160 because if marie goes she's no like ally in rome so then they decide to go on this double flight

00:49:56.040 and well i feel like they're just like i feel like she goes to hortense and hortense is like great

00:50:00.920 i've got these trousers i'll get you a pair like i've done this before like let's put on our

00:50:06.080 unconvincing she's like yes yeah it is a bit like that i know what we're doing like she's also like

00:50:11.500 I have to come with you because I've done this before and it's hard.

00:50:14.160 So you're going to need someone.

00:50:15.600 Yeah.

00:50:16.820 So then there's like, there's flight two,

00:50:19.880 where now there are two of them dressed in male clothes, fleeing Rome.

00:50:24.720 I want to emphasize unconvincingly.

00:50:26.960 This is like from her memoir, isn't it? 0.99

00:50:28.800 Where it's just like the servants kept calling them, but damn. 0.98

00:50:31.460 Like they, they were not, does she say in her memoir, she's just like, wow. 0.98

00:50:35.320 You know, like in, in plays,

00:50:36.920 it seems like this is a lot more convincing than it is in real life for a

00:50:40.860 to put on trousers and fool anybody yes part of it is probably that yeah they're not actors they're

00:50:47.900 not used to dressing as men so you you can just sort of imagine the masculine wigs not being put

00:50:52.880 on properly and like the the doublets not being done up maybe as well just their appearances

00:50:59.060 and their gait and everything else is not masculine convincing but they they still maybe want some

00:51:05.980 kind of disguise so they're not very obviously the mazarin sisters but yes throughout her memoirs

00:51:11.840 she says that people just don't believe don't believe that they're men at all and now for a

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00:52:54.300 I'm Anne Foster, and I have never watched the show Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

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00:53:45.920 You Should Know, and listen to an episode right now, Something You Should Know.

00:53:52.920 And we're back. I just love a bad disguise moment. It's just, it's a nice moment of levity.

00:53:58.300 Yeah, it's hard to tell that. I mean, sometimes I wonder if she says that just to play it down.

00:54:05.180 Does she say in her memoir, oh, but nobody really believed the disguises, because people were

00:54:09.720 quite angry about the cross-dressing side to her escapades that element that detail had spread

00:54:16.540 quite fast and she may well have tried to play it down so that it's right right scandalous like oh

00:54:23.700 yeah it's true that I did dress up as a man to leave but nobody believed me anyway so I wasn't

00:54:27.880 really doing the gender bending thing we don't know but the sisters yeah they pack their trunks 0.87

00:54:33.360 together. And they pick a few trusted servants and they flee. And this seems to be a, maybe 1.00

00:54:40.940 because she's with her sister, this seems to be a slightly more exciting flight. She talks about

00:54:45.760 them leaving Rome in the carriage, kind of shouting things together as they're going.

00:54:51.560 So they're not doing this discreetly at all. And then they have to find their boat that they've

00:54:58.000 had this boat moored for ages, waiting to take them back to France. And they were waiting for

00:55:06.320 a night when Mary's husband wasn't around. And they find their boat. But it's a bit sketchy.

00:55:12.720 They don't really know the sailors and the captain. And the sailors and the captain are

00:55:17.220 just a surprise to see them. They can tell that these travelers are not their usual stock.

00:55:23.580 They married Mortence would have struggled to have hide their wealth.

00:55:26.960 It would have been obvious, you know, just from their hair and the way they spoke and

00:55:31.780 probably their clothes that they were very rich.

00:55:35.120 And the sailors asked them if they'd killed the Pope, to which they replied, no.

00:55:40.440 But they are nervous that they might be robbed.

00:55:42.600 And somehow, miraculously, they aren't.

00:55:44.520 And they are able to travel into Provence.

00:55:47.240 So now Mortence has gone back.

00:55:48.620 She's gone back to France where she will not be able to stay there.

00:55:52.460 and she knows it and the Duke of Mazarin spies are straight onto her so she just takes her sister

00:55:58.120 into France to safety and then she goes herself to Savoy because the ruler there has promised her

00:56:04.420 sanctuary if she ever needs it and if she's ever nearby. Where is Savoy? Is that its own

00:56:14.580 thing at this point is it part of france what is it so the duke of savoy um is kind of it's more

00:56:26.000 northeastern italy and it's a kind of sovereign state though much of its territory is disputed

00:56:33.480 with france but it is a sovereign state and therefore the duke of savoy can offer hortense

00:56:39.180 mancini sanctuary and she'll be protected you know that french soldiers can't get her her husband

00:56:44.320 can't get her. And so she goes to stay there. She's welcomed with open arms. Again, people are

00:56:49.980 really excited to meet this woman that they've all heard about, but exhausted. She has a kind of

00:56:58.300 retreat time for a bit. So for the first few months, she is just going to the chapel every day

00:57:03.300 and everyone is very confused by this. They thought the party girl is going to come and

00:57:08.860 bring the party to Savoy. And at first she doesn't. She's probably knackered because she's

00:57:13.500 been on this stressful journey with Marie and she knows she can't rest in France she's then got to

00:57:18.340 go back to Savoy and exhausted by it all she spends a lot of time on her own but after a couple

00:57:24.560 of months she comes back to herself and she's at the theatre and going hunting etc and it's then

00:57:31.160 that she decides to write her memoir probably wanting to intervene in the public discourse

00:57:38.400 about her life. A lot that is being written about her is either made up or it's exaggerated.

00:57:44.520 The Duke of Mazarin is always trying to tarnish her reputation, so she decides to write her memoir.

00:57:51.700 And it's quite an audacious decision because women don't habitually write memoirs in the 17th century.

00:57:58.620 The only women who had done it so far in French had been queens, or there'd been a couple of

00:58:06.480 anonymous memoirs published, but she is going to write a memoir under her own name and she's

00:58:13.880 going to publish it while she's still alive. And nobody has done this in French before.

00:58:18.560 This reminds me of a bit, a bit ago, I had a listener ask for recommendations of women's

00:58:25.200 history in their own words. Cause you know, so many stories are just like, well, here's what

00:58:28.680 this person wrote about them. And here's the letters of this other person. And I thought of

00:58:32.240 she wrote a memoir and some of the other memoirs of other like quote unquote scandalous women from 0.98

00:58:38.660 history like were probably at best a collaborative effort between them and somebody they hired but

00:58:45.680 probably it was just somebody else wrote it for them but this is like she like you talked about

00:58:49.860 her as a young girl she was intellectual she loved reading like she was clearly capable of writing

00:58:54.540 a good book and she did like this is these are her own words this book yes but it's good that

00:59:00.920 you brought it up because she did have help from a historian that she meets in Savoy called

00:59:08.540 Saint-Réal and in the 19th century some scholars started to say that actually he'd written the

00:59:18.060 memoirs even though the style is so different even though it's kind of published like with her

00:59:25.640 initials so it's very obvious it's by her and she probably wouldn't have done that unless she

00:59:29.600 wanted it to be written by her and a lot of the style is similar to the way that she wrote letters

00:59:36.340 in her time so um she did but she he seems to have maybe been an editor for her like many women

00:59:43.020 at that time she didn't have as good an education as we might expect even though she was the niece

00:59:49.140 of Cardinal Mazarin she did not receive anything like the education that her brothers got um so

00:59:55.340 son real would have been responsible for like uniforming the spelling and he would take the

01:00:02.580 manuscript and get it to the publisher um to get it printed the the sort of thing that she would

01:00:08.440 have no idea how to how to go about it but yeah she she sits down and she puts the story of her

01:00:16.200 life together but she makes it very obvious from the beginning that this is a kind of defense of

01:00:21.920 herself this isn't a memoir about everything on her in her life it really is focused on her marriage

01:00:28.400 and why it broke down and why she has fled to justify what she's done um and the word memoir

01:00:35.780 memoir in french at this time has this kind of legal undertone so a memoir is a witness statement

01:00:44.340 that people give in court um it could be like uh like a character statement if you're if you're

01:00:51.400 saying something positive or negative about someone's character, or it could be a witness

01:00:54.740 statement if you'd seen something. And so there's two things going on here. It's a kind of literary

01:00:59.900 memoir in that tradition where she's talking about her life, but also something legal. It's an

01:01:05.640 intervention in this legal suit because she is still trying to get access to her wealth. She 1.00

01:01:11.820 still has a legal case going on with her husband. Just things that this is making me think of,

01:01:16.660 Like so much of her story feels like it resonates so much with so many

01:01:21.860 contemporary things.

01:01:22.660 Like you see so many actors now where it's just like,

01:01:24.960 people are spreading stories about them and what they're doing.

01:01:27.180 And then at this point, Jennifer Lopez or whoever, it's just like, Hey,

01:01:30.800 I just made this documentary about my life. Like, so here's,

01:01:33.860 I would like to present my side of it or some,

01:01:35.800 even just like an Instagram statement, like people like we see,

01:01:39.720 cause she was a celebrity in her time and her name is being constantly 0.99

01:01:42.900 destroyed by her horrible husband. And you see that now just with, especially female celebrities 0.99

01:01:48.700 who are like Taylor Swift or whoever, just like, I would like to correct the record. Like I, and

01:01:52.620 in so doing, I made this album or whatever. Like this is just her way to, to get her point of view

01:01:57.880 across. And I think the fact that it's so unusual for, for a French woman to do this also speaks to

01:02:06.240 the fact that she's of her time, but also very much feels contemporary. Like she's making decisions

01:02:12.040 that other women wouldn't have made like she's just she's she's just thinking of things that

01:02:16.460 no one else would think to do and I think it's so impressive yeah and you can see as well how much

01:02:22.120 her husband's behavior has radicalized her so she has gone from being this really dutiful niece

01:02:29.180 and to some extent wife but it has ground her down to the point she's had enough and so she

01:02:37.180 flees and then she goes partying and then she helps her sister go flee and now she's like oh

01:02:43.680 and I'm gonna write a memoir and no one's really done this before but I'm gonna do this before and

01:02:47.300 I'm gonna expose the cruelty of my husband which is also quite outrageous because they're they're

01:02:52.620 in the aristocracy and this is sort of taboo to be laying out all your dirty laundry etc but this

01:02:59.440 is how much she's been radicalized um she yeah she is really on her striking out on her own now

01:03:06.480 and and it's a kind of like you say it's a form of pr isn't it um when celebrities want to correct

01:03:12.380 the record and they say i'm going to do it in my own words they're pushing for that sense of

01:03:16.740 authenticity this is my own pr like don't believe everything you hear this is the real deal and

01:03:22.120 mancini's doing this with her memoir and so it does get published it gets translated as well

01:03:27.760 people love it they're so excited it gets translated into english into german into italian

01:03:34.400 there are multiple printings only a few years after it comes out so we know that it's sold

01:03:39.540 really well so it was quite a money spinner really no idea if she herself would have made

01:03:44.440 any money for it or if it was the publisher or son real i've not been able to find any kind of

01:03:49.760 documents on that but it does really well so lots and lots of people are reading this story and are

01:03:55.660 really excited to read to read what she is saying happened well and i think too like when we you

01:04:02.260 were talking about how people dueling over her miniatures in Rome and whatever like she is such

01:04:08.500 it's the same now it's just like oh my god Cher wrote a memoir Britney Spears wrote a memoir it's

01:04:13.380 like people are interested because the person is so famous and you want to know in their own words

01:04:17.720 what are they going to say so it's very much we still see that today I think just kind of she is

01:04:22.860 so famous people are dying to know like but what was really happening like and people read it and

01:04:28.200 it is a very sympathetic portrayal of herself explaining how shitty her husband is and how 0.54

01:04:32.280 people get that. They understand maybe a bit better why she ran away. Yeah. Yeah. And she's, 0.95

01:04:37.660 she's quite clever in the way she argues things in her memoir. So she, she talks about her

01:04:45.840 husband's awful behavior, but she says, Oh, but this isn't the reason I left him. You know,

01:04:50.780 if it was just that I would have put up with it. However, he was squandering the wealth and I

01:04:54.760 didn't want my son who should have been the richest boy in france to grow up the poorest

01:04:59.640 um and so she makes these quite quite clever arguments to get people on her side by saying

01:05:05.760 well it wasn't just awful to me he was squandering the wealth of the children and wouldn't you have

01:05:10.240 done the same um and she also knows that people were fascinated by all of her travels so her going

01:05:18.720 from paris to rome she goes back to france very briefly to try and sort things out with mazarin

01:05:23.720 then goes back to Rome then she takes Mary to Provence so she talks through all of the travels

01:05:28.220 and kind of how they did that knowing that people are going to want to read about it

01:05:32.200 to to hear what actually happened what's it like to be a woman on the run

01:05:39.340 and she knows this because she because this is the sort of thing that happens in French novels 0.99

01:05:45.840 she's really into novels she loves them and yeah these kind of runaway women is the stuff of the

01:05:51.740 17th century so maybe she's a bit inspired by that too but telling her this is you know this

01:05:57.920 that this is a true story version right um sometimes when you read a book and it starts

01:06:03.120 with this is a true story it draws you in more this isn't just fiction this is what really

01:06:07.220 happened and it's so interesting too i don't wonder how much she read all these books like

01:06:12.060 she was a big reader and then how much her escape was partially inspired by what she read people did

01:06:17.560 in books and then she knows i can write a book about this because i know other people the same

01:06:21.300 as now people like are inspired by things they see people do in movies or in books and it becomes

01:06:25.720 this kind of like self-fulfilling thing like how would she have thought like I'm going to put on

01:06:29.780 trousers and escape it's like well she probably read a book where somebody did that and that's

01:06:33.200 actually so at one I think one of the papal envoys says something like this is what happens 0.93

01:06:41.300 when you let women read okay there's a lot of this stuff going on but yeah you're right

01:06:48.500 17th century novels the kind of stuff that she and other women are reading often have female

01:06:54.620 characters who run away dressed as men so that is probably where she had the inspiration for it

01:07:00.020 in the first place it's a classic clearly she wants to reach lots of people yeah and she wants

01:07:05.440 them to right because like can you explain as well like she is still in this ongoing legal case well

01:07:11.660 is it like her husband loves to sue everybody like that's just his personality and he was obsessed

01:07:16.620 with her so he's not stopped trying to get her back ever since she ran away so yeah part of this

01:07:23.140 is like the whole thing she has to go to savoy like she has to go somewhere where she's protected

01:07:26.640 because her husband and his spies will grab her no matter where she goes so this this memoir is

01:07:31.720 also her sort of um it's a volley it's like it's her attempt to kind of this legal way to kind of 0.61

01:07:39.120 show here's my point of view and i do think it's very clever of her and it sucks but it's clever

01:07:44.740 of her to be like oh no he's wasting the money and my son so actually this isn't just who cares

01:07:50.180 about me but like this young boy might not get his inheritance and maybe people will care about that

01:07:56.060 like yeah and they do so she was right yeah and there's also something to be said about

01:08:02.780 the fact that people will be angrier that this man is wasting money wasting cardinal mazarin's

01:08:11.380 fortune because the kind of mistreatment of money and possessions is taken more seriously than the

01:08:18.920 mistreatment of a wife and she knows that so if she can find a way to persuade people actually

01:08:25.360 he's the one that's squandering and wasteful etc he's the problem not me she'll have more people 0.92

01:08:30.460 on her side and what she wants is she wants two things so she wants a separation of goods which 1.00

01:08:37.480 means that a court draws up, they inventory her and her husband's shared wealth, and then they 1.00

01:08:44.140 divide it between them so that she would be independently wealthy. And she also wants what's 0.99

01:08:49.360 called a separation of bodies so that they can also live separately, legally. And the Duke of

01:08:56.640 Mazarim just probably wouldn't be allowed kind of in the perimeter of where she's designated to live.

01:09:01.500 he is kind of countersuing her to have her forcibly brought back to him. So they've both

01:09:08.220 got their legal battles against each other. And her memoir is her defense of herself and her

01:09:14.780 reasons why the judges should rule in her favor. And is it at this point, so she's in Savoy under

01:09:21.120 the protection of the Duke and then he dies. Is that what happens next? Yeah, so he dies.

01:09:25.980 and so she has to leave and she doesn't know where to go but then the English ambassador

01:09:33.240 Rafe Montague says why don't you come to England and she's not sure but she does it's kind of her

01:09:39.920 only viable option so in the coming weeks she doesn't tell anyone she doesn't tell anyone in

01:09:46.220 Savoy but she makes her plans as per usual and vanishes one night and again you have

01:09:52.760 word spreads everyone in Europe is wondering where's she going next where's she going next

01:09:57.720 is it going to be back to Rome is she going to go back to her husband is she going to England

01:10:01.380 and it is England that she's going to go to so finally she is going to see properly this man

01:10:09.340 this king of England who she could have married and the reason Rafe Montagueis ambassador has

01:10:16.040 invited her to England is because he wants her to become the mistress of Charles II

01:10:21.460 because because there's i just want to clarify well and also just see if i remember correctly

01:10:26.880 because at this point charles ii's mistress is louise right yeah to aka fubs who which which 0.99

01:10:34.580 was a word then that meant kind of like we might say stick now she was like a curvaceous person

01:10:40.060 and she's called fubs and he had a a royal yacht that's called the hmy fubs and i believe

01:10:46.480 that this is the ship that hortons takes over um at some point she rides in the fubs and i was

01:10:51.180 really excited when i saw that in my notes but fubs is there and she is sort of a sort not a spy

01:10:56.800 but she's kind of like there to you know to like bring up the french matters to the king and just

01:11:02.360 kind of like and rafe montague was like i would prefer if that wasn't the mistress of the king 0.56

01:11:07.680 i prefer if it was somebody who wasn't like constantly trying to um lobby for the french

01:11:12.220 right like so he wants court and he's just like oh my god she is also i just think it is telling

01:11:18.940 that all along her route she keeps finding people who champion for her people who want to help her

01:11:23.900 it's the same way like when she was the kid she was the favorite kid like she was there's something

01:11:28.300 so her star quality like people are drawn to her and they want to help her like and they also know

01:11:33.360 like if we send her to England like the king is gonna take her as his mistress like that's not

01:11:38.920 even a question she's gorgeous she's amazing like they they almost got married before like 0.98

01:11:44.420 to just be like i'm gonna send her to england and she will supplant the mistress as the new 0.88

01:11:51.020 mistress is like an audacious plan but it happens like because she's amazing yes yeah she yes she

01:11:59.600 comes to england and even when there are just rumors of her arrival there's this sense of

01:12:06.300 anticipation i think it's more when is it gonna happen than if it's gonna happen because as you

01:12:13.060 say she has this star quality she's witty she's very beautiful people know that she's likeable

01:12:21.240 and she's funny and they want to be around her because she's everywhere she goes she's surrounded

01:12:25.400 by people and she has these salons and people are want to want to talk to her want to hang out with

01:12:31.520 her and she comes to England and her cousin Mary of Moderna is there and this is the conceit so

01:12:41.160 the official line is that Hortense Mancini is coming to England to see her cousin, Mary of

01:12:46.380 Modena. And she goes, she's with Mary. It seems to have found out she was pregnant around that

01:12:52.940 time. And because she's often at Mary's bedside, she sees Charles and they have these.

01:12:59.160 So just to clarify, so people reminder, Mary of Modena is the wife of the future James II.

01:13:05.460 so charles's charles's younger brother's wife yeah new wife yeah new child bride yes she she's

01:13:14.280 his sister-in-law basically and charles often goes to visit mary of moderna yeah to see how she's

01:13:22.080 getting on to see if she's okay when she's unwell when she's pregnant and hortense mancini is often

01:13:27.500 there and so they are thrown together and that detail is important because they're not just

01:13:32.840 walking past each other in Whitehall or a court. They're in this kind of intimate confines of Mary

01:13:40.200 of Modena's bedroom. And they're kind of crossing paths and they're not as in the eye of the court.

01:13:47.820 They're getting to sit together and talk together semi-privately, if you like. And

01:13:55.280 Louise de Caruana is worried. The French ambassador is worried. Everyone who is part of that pro-French

01:14:00.860 faction is really worried because Charles and Mancini hit it off but they're also very discreet

01:14:06.900 about it so Mancini is giving nothing away she's not going around telling everyone oh the king has

01:14:13.140 just paid me this favor or Charles is really helping me with my marital case or she's not

01:14:19.300 saying anything she's super discreet and is mostly carrying on with sort of talking to people about

01:14:25.040 yeah Mary of Modena of other things I suppose she's quite she's quite witty and fun there's

01:14:30.480 no sense that she's a massive gossiper at least maybe not about her own life that she's witty and

01:14:37.120 she likes to talk about novels and yeah philosophy and yeah yeah she's not giving anything away

01:14:44.700 about this relationship well I think also she we haven't dwelled on it but you know I have a six

01:14:51.160 part miniseries people can listen to she has had various lovers throughout this whole period like

01:14:56.540 she she she is a woman of the world she is experienced and so when she meets charles who is

01:15:03.420 a man of the world who has had many lovers like they're both you know they're both i don't want

01:15:09.040 to say cynical but they're both just sort of like they've been around the block like they know what

01:15:12.820 to do they're not gonna be like too obvious about this yes yes because it's worth saying a lot of

01:15:18.500 time has passed by now since she first fled france she's now 30 so she's grown up a lot

01:15:25.400 and she also probably knows that discretion is important if you're having an affair or you want

01:15:32.740 to have an affair with a king that wandering around Whitehall you know bellowing to anyone

01:15:38.980 who will listen that you just had the flirtiest chat with Charles isn't going to get her anywhere

01:15:45.700 it's not her style anyway but yeah and within months they are very clearly having a full-on

01:15:53.580 affair she is paid a lot of favor she's at charles's side quite prominently at balls this is

01:15:59.760 how you know that somebody is the most prominent mistress and this is like just what i'm recalling

01:16:05.360 england never used to have like a official mistress type position but charles spent so

01:16:10.620 long in france where they do do that that he kind of like introduces this whole concept to england

01:16:14.680 right yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah so manzine she's very familiar with this concept she's grown up with

01:16:19.780 in france but like kings obviously have always most of them had mistresses but there was never

01:16:26.640 like here's my mistress and like this is her resident like charles this is how you know that

01:16:31.280 like fubs has been supplanted because like now hortense is like doing these roles it's like okay

01:16:37.400 this is the official mistress it's like now it's like you've gone so it's very different from how

01:16:42.620 things have been in england before or after frankly but it's a very french way it is a very french way

01:16:47.880 and by this point it's people have gotten used to Charles and his mistresses um so there is a real

01:16:54.740 and he's great sorry I just want to mention I love him and I think he's great um he's just like

01:17:00.640 he's known as the merry monarch and he's just like a cool guy like he has these mistresses and

01:17:07.060 he like pays them like allowances and like the mistresses are like friends with each other often

01:17:12.060 this very interesting party atmosphere at court is what she's wandered into it's like there's

01:17:19.040 just so people like other English courts even French court like this is like a cool time to be

01:17:25.280 it's like a fun undergraduate university vibe like everyone's just having a nice time that's

01:17:30.980 that's what's happening here England is not often like this but it is like this at this point she's

01:17:35.860 met her people she's come to England and everyone is into the party and into the wine drinking and

01:17:43.100 she's like oh what I this is all I wanted to do this is all I ever want to do yeah she's met she's 1.00

01:17:49.800 met her people and they're quite excited for her to come to right that this is a libertine court

01:17:54.840 she's this supposedly libertine woman it's a good match and yeah Charles's brother buys her a house

01:18:02.680 that's basically beside St. James's Palace.

01:18:06.560 And, you know, Charles keeps wandering home very, very late

01:18:11.660 from the direction of St. James's Palace.

01:18:13.820 Everyone knows kind of what's going on.

01:18:15.980 But Mancini, even though she gets this official mistress position,

01:18:21.120 which comes with an annual pension and she gets rooms at Whitehall 0.78

01:18:24.900 and all this kind of prominence, 1.00

01:18:27.560 she doesn't really do what the other mistresses tend to do, 1.00

01:18:32.060 which is just focus all her energies on Charles and keep him and obsess over him she continues 0.65

01:18:37.440 as she was before she has a kind of affair with Charles's daughter Anne Leonard who's very young

01:18:43.820 at the time by the way Mancini's 30 and Anne Leonard's about 15 years old and they have this

01:18:49.060 strange kind of affair and I say strange because when it comes to women's intimacies the sources

01:18:54.620 can be a little bit fudging over it but we know that they that they had yeah a super close

01:19:01.660 friendship that they they're kind of always in each other's company there's one particular

01:19:07.920 episode where they are out in st james's park in their nightgowns doing like a pretend jewel

01:19:13.800 and this is seen as like super scandalous but most important of all is that ann leonard's husband

01:19:18.840 is so enraged by the friendship with Mancini that he takes his wife and incarcerates her in a

01:19:25.520 convent. And she apparently still, according to one of the letter writers, kisses Mancini's picture

01:19:31.520 every night before bed. So I think all of those things together are suggestive that the two women

01:19:36.800 have an affair. And that's, this is interesting. I mean, I just, you know, we're on my podcast,

01:19:42.500 we always like to like, when we find queer stuff in history, like it's, we want to highlight and

01:19:46.960 point out and this part it's like it's complicated because at first when i was researching her i was

01:19:51.260 like oh wow like this bisexual woman this is great and i'm just like oh my god the person she's with

01:19:55.800 is 14 and then i'm like but the 14 year old is married and has a husband so it's like this is

01:20:01.080 like a weird time this is it's it's i can't be like oh wow like this this super sexy bisexual 0.88

01:20:09.420 love story it's just kind of like it's not yeah hell yeah sapphic it's just like they wouldn't

01:20:17.480 if they made a movie of this they would not have her be 14 like this is yes it is it is hard to

01:20:24.660 know what to do with it but those yeah those are the facts those are the facts that we have

01:20:29.700 and we don't know what the extent of it was people certainly at that time thought this is what was

01:20:35.160 going on so this just lends to her whole like cross-dressing like this like libertine like

01:20:41.860 so just the fact that she was seen as probably bisexual and she probably was um just kind of 1.00

01:20:46.940 adds to her all her whole like scandalous allure i guess yes yes court is outraged by this affair

01:20:54.720 charles doesn't seem to care he's he's he does it because he's because he's because he's a cool guy

01:21:00.480 He's just not bothered, so much so that Anne Leonard's mother, who is Barbara Villiers, Charles's kind of first mistress, is writing to him saying, you need to do something.

01:21:12.400 You must do something about this. And he doesn't.

01:21:15.440 But then Manzini has another affair with the Prince of Monaco, a man called Louis, very dashing, this Prince of Monaco.

01:21:25.560 And he has been trying to get something started with Manzini for a long time.

01:21:29.980 and she's always said no but then maybe because Anne is now away she she gives in and she's told

01:21:37.460 she's told by her friends don't give in do not have an affair with the prince of Monaco Charles

01:21:41.960 won't like it but she does anyway and Charles really cares about this prince of Monaco Charles

01:21:46.740 is not having it no he's not and this is the point I think where we see a part of Charles

01:21:54.140 that sometimes we like to ignore because we like to think of him only as the merry monarch but he

01:21:59.420 is he can be difficult Charles and he is furious about this relationship and he he doesn't just

01:22:07.120 break things off with Manzini he cuts off her pension so this kind of annual this money that

01:22:12.780 she's really dependent on and he considers expelling her from the country he doesn't in

01:22:19.200 the end he does calm down but there is something hypocritical going on here because he is probably

01:22:26.620 having affairs a little bit when he's with Mancini, because that's just the kind of person 0.87

01:22:33.480 that he is. And he's really mad at her for having an affair with the Prince of Monaco. I mean,

01:22:38.240 maybe because it's a fellow prince and there's a rivalry there. Maybe he wasn't having any other

01:22:42.940 affairs and he's really angry. But anyway, he's not happy. And then Mancini, yeah, he breaks

01:22:48.700 things off with her and he does calm down and he lets her stay in England, but they don't kind of

01:22:53.820 resumed their affair with any intensity like it was before she's not the official mistress anymore

01:22:59.000 they maybe have some on off like reunions but they're not she's not his proper mistress and

01:23:06.700 he takes up again with the fubs with carol well he attends to loyal carol um so manzini by the

01:23:12.680 way doesn't care about this she is he does not care that she was official royal mistress and 0.99

01:23:17.740 now the king's breaking off with her she's just doesn't give a fuck and she is like okay fine 1.00

01:23:23.040 no worries um I'm still I'm gonna you know focus all my attention now on my salon because she had 0.98

01:23:29.680 started this salon earlier when she got to England yeah and can we talk about her best friend um

01:23:35.800 Charles Evermond I don't know how to say his name what are all his names yeah yeah his name is

01:23:41.800 Charles de Saint-Evermond we will just call him Saint-Evermond and he is sort of 60 odd years old

01:23:48.920 at this point he's a he's a french exile like her but he's a political exile so he has been

01:23:55.060 exiled from france for satirizing actually mancini's uncle cardinal mazarin and then had to

01:24:02.500 have to leave france and he's an epicurean and like her loves witty chat loves wine loves sort

01:24:09.940 of sitting and talking about philosophers and they become fast friends even though there's a 30 year

01:24:15.140 age gap and it's like this relationship is so fascinating to me because they become fast friends

01:24:20.260 he's like 30 years older than her but it's there's it's never it does not seem to be a sexual

01:24:26.000 relationship at all it seems to me it feels like a gay man and a and a woman like it just feels

01:24:33.100 like they're just like platonic besties it's like a will and grace situation with a 30-year age gap

01:24:38.880 like they are just yeah he's so supportive of her and he's so kind to her and i just love that for

01:24:44.760 her that she has like a man in her life who is not her lover who is not being creepy to her

01:24:50.120 it's just like a guy who just like supports her and it's nice um yes he he does sometimes play

01:24:57.140 the the the role of lover in a joking way to her so he sometimes writes her these love letters but

01:25:03.940 they're all tongue-in-cheek maybe because he knows he's so much older and he doesn't have a chance

01:25:09.580 and he's like you know he writes a letter saying i love you knowing that it would never happen

01:25:15.360 anyway but he he's a huge support for her and to her he's really popular as well so he brings out

01:25:23.700 all of these friends people that can be her allies too and it is kind of together that they set up

01:25:30.220 or at least host this salon in her rooms beside saint james's palace um and this is from this

01:25:37.940 point onwards that is what she's known for in England really is that she has this exciting

01:25:43.160 salon. Essentially she hosts a community of intellectuals who come and talk about philosophy

01:25:49.420 and history and science. They gamble together and they talk about the latest French novels

01:25:54.420 and it's quite an important space because women are welcome there too. So it's a space where women

01:25:59.760 can have these intellectual conversations blocked as they are from other places where they might 0.76

01:26:06.440 happen like the royal society or universities i'm just looking at because this is like the two books

01:26:11.560 that you have out right now one of them is her letters and one of them is a book about the salon

01:26:16.620 and i was just i just took some some screen captures of various some of the things that

01:26:22.340 just struck me from that book so or maybe this is from an article you wrote but this is

01:26:27.260 salons grew out of women looking for spaces to talk about intellectual things

01:26:31.300 and to socialize because women are excluded from most other spheres where you would do this this

01:26:35.900 something you had written so the fact that this salon is like men and women both go and everyone

01:26:41.660 when you're there you're kind of all equal and nowhere else is like that yeah so other intellectual

01:26:48.420 spaces at this time are academies and universities and societies where women are barred and beyond 0.99

01:26:59.880 that, even in the kind of households that aristocratic women might grow up in, they are 0.98

01:27:07.200 treated a little bit differently from their brothers. Like I said, Manzini did not receive

01:27:11.000 anywhere near as good an education as her brothers. So there's an inequality to that access to

01:27:17.820 learning. And this version of the salon that Manzini is establishing in London, it comes out

01:27:26.580 of France. And yeah, this desire that women have to be part of those conversations. They want to

01:27:33.200 know about these new discoveries, about these inventions. They want to talk about the latest

01:27:38.980 plays that they've been seeing to be part of literary criticism because they're blocked from

01:27:43.640 the French Academy too. So it is a really important and vital space for women to have,

01:27:48.960 and they make it themselves, right? So they establish it and they shape it themselves and 1.00

01:27:53.500 they bring in all the kinds of people that they want to talk to and their friends too um and

01:27:59.120 manzini has grown up around this in france and she imports it if you like to london and people

01:28:04.640 are excited about this because they've heard of these french style salons and now they have a

01:28:10.380 french exile in fact two french exiles hosting this this salon in london right so it's there's

01:28:17.480 an air of authenticity to it and she brings objects to this is just something else that

01:28:23.960 you wrote about like she brings objects there because this is like what are i don't know what

01:28:28.460 decade we're in this 16 whatevers but it's just like north america is still new like there's all

01:28:34.360 this stuff that's happening all this colonization that england is doing and people it's just like

01:28:37.820 here's some objects from different places like here's like museum sorts of things where people

01:28:43.040 would come in and they would like see these things and talk about them and maybe somebody

01:28:46.260 who discovered it would talk about it like it just sounds like there's it's such an eye-opening

01:28:50.920 thing especially for women who wouldn't be able to go to university and stuff to like see these

01:28:55.460 objects and to talk to people and to learn about these papers like it's so I really want to you

01:28:59.700 talk about this is one of the main theses of your book about the salon but it's like it's such an

01:29:04.420 intellectual space as well as having fun and gambling but like the fact that she wanted to do

01:29:09.520 this speaks to you know the whole case about like oh she's just like this flighty woman it's like 0.99

01:29:14.620 no she's like so interested in learning things she's so intellectually curious and that's what's 1.00

01:29:19.680 happening yeah yeah yeah there's a real curation to a salon environment you know some of the things

01:29:26.520 that she has in her salon are probably accidental i.e all of her french fans and lots of the books

01:29:34.600 that she buys for her library are going to be in french because that's what she she reads but um

01:29:39.500 I mean, one thing I was really struck by when I was looking at the inventories of the stuff she

01:29:45.320 owned when she died was the number of maps that she had, all these places that she'd never been

01:29:51.760 to. And she must have spent so much money on all of these maps that she would have had displayed

01:29:57.800 in her salon so people can look at them. And this wasn't something that she bought just to collect

01:30:04.560 maps or to say I bought a map it was because people hadn't visited these places but there

01:30:09.780 was a real sense of excitement to look at a map to see all of these rivers and hills and mountains

01:30:15.620 of faraway lands to learn something about the world can you talk about the this is something

01:30:21.020 else that if you when I ask my listeners what do you remember about the story people were like

01:30:24.380 champagne she popularized champagne can you talk about the food and the drink at the salon

01:30:29.500 Yeah. So another thing she really brings to her salon is French wine. You can't have a French style salon without wine. And she and Saint-Sévremont are, they're wine connoisseurs, Saint-Sévremont mostly. He is a total wine snob. 1.00

01:30:46.520 and so he persuades her to serve wines from Champagne at her salon almost exclusively

01:30:55.940 because he thinks that wines from Champagne are the best kinds of wines and it's an interesting

01:31:03.340 his logic is the in fact the opposite of the way we rate wine today and it's not because he thinks

01:31:10.880 the wine from Champagne have this wonderful taste of Champagne that you can't get anywhere else

01:31:15.360 On the contrary, he thinks that wines from Champagne taste just of wine. They taste perfectly

01:31:21.560 just of wine. They have no hint of their environment and therefore they are the ideal wine.

01:31:26.140 And at this time, most of the wines from Champagne are actually still and not the sparkling ones that

01:31:31.520 we're used to. So they're having a lot of this still wine from Champagne. But when you get to

01:31:35.920 the 6090s, that's when the sparkling version starts to come through. So they probably were

01:31:40.140 having that too. And because this French style salon is having these wines from Champagne,

01:31:45.880 other people in Restoration London also want to have this wine too. They want to be like the

01:31:51.020 wine snob and have the fancy wine, the special wine, the superior wine. And by the end of the

01:31:57.420 century, it's pretty established, this wine from Champagne as a staple, so that when the sparkling

01:32:03.020 variety takes off, that's when champagne becomes instilled as the drink, the go-to drink for a

01:32:09.180 social occasion and it still is we have it still is this is that detail is fascinating to me um

01:32:17.340 but then also she's like they're importing england and france throughout history that the alliance

01:32:25.320 comes and goes but there's times while she's hosting the salon where it's like there's you

01:32:29.360 know very familiar to me living right now in canada tariffs are a big deal or like french

01:32:34.780 things are not allowed to be brought in but she's like bringing this stuff in she's like i'm bringing

01:32:38.200 in my french food my french wine like i'm gonna smuggle it in like my salon is gonna have french

01:32:44.200 food and drink yeah yeah she so yeah so what's happening on and off throughout the 1680s and

01:32:52.200 1690s is that england and france are at war with one another and so there are lots of tariffs on

01:32:57.300 lots of goods and sometimes there are just outright outright blocks on on importing french goods but

01:33:04.340 She is adamant that she needs the French wine. She pulls out all the stops in order to get this 0.96

01:33:11.440 French wine, essentially writing to people who might be traveling with someone important,

01:33:17.480 like an ambassador, so that they can sneak wine into England. She wants the French wine.

01:33:23.660 Finding agents that are... It's a black market. She's looking on the black market, essentially, 0.83

01:33:28.760 to bring the French wine to her salon because, and this might resonate with people who spend a

01:33:36.220 lot of time in France or who are French, but she basically thinks all English wine is terrible and

01:33:40.560 disgusting and she doesn't want to have it, but she wants wine. So it has to be from France.

01:33:45.520 And there is an important part of her salon. And there is something in this time, a belief that

01:33:49.640 having things like wine and beautiful smells and tastes kind of stimulate the intellectual mind.

01:33:56.060 and that's the sort of um that's the sort of environment she wants to nurture in her salon

01:34:03.600 she wants people to be stimulated and can you also talk about i'm just looking at my like

01:34:07.840 the pictures i took of like things i wanted to ask you about from your book but um people from

01:34:13.860 different religious and national backgrounds coming to the salon like we talked about men and

01:34:17.440 women are able to interact in a way they can't other places but in this time of like religious

01:34:23.000 chaos which it was in England for a really long time like and all these wars but at the salon

01:34:30.660 it's like everyone's welcome seems like yes so that is a defining characteristic actually of

01:34:37.420 her salon which is it's a really mixed space it's a pan-european space I'm not sure if she

01:34:43.180 necessarily sets out to do that but it happens by accident and it's kind of indicative of the

01:34:49.560 person she is, which essentially that because she and Santa Evermore have set up this salon

01:34:55.040 and they're French exiles, lots of French exiles want to come. Lots of French expatriates like

01:35:00.620 merchants and ambassadors want to be there too. Restoration elite in London, they want to come.

01:35:06.680 So they're mostly Anglican. They're like the courtiers around Charles II. So now you've got

01:35:12.100 these French exiles, mostly Catholic with these Anglicans. And then other European exiles want

01:35:17.740 to come too. So Dutch and Italian Protestants are there. There are some Portuguese Catholic exiles.

01:35:24.980 And she doesn't invite these people to force cosmopolitan on the space. She herself is super 0.86

01:35:31.200 open-minded. So I wonder if it even occurred to her what that necessarily meant. She wanted

01:35:38.620 cool people there. She wanted people who were witty, who wanted to have fun. Or if they weren't

01:35:44.640 witty and fun that they had a kind of expertise or something that they could bring to the salon

01:35:49.780 that was what you needed to do or to be um to gain entry to this circle and the result was this very 1.00

01:35:58.060 this unusually mixed group of people people from different national and religious backgrounds all

01:36:03.960 mixing together um in an intellectual space which was uncommon for the era and it did earn the

01:36:10.460 salons and criticism but also i guess generated new conversations because these people weren't

01:36:18.040 always hanging out together well that's where i wonder like the invisible influence of the salon

01:36:22.620 and the people who went there and what they learned and how that affected their research

01:36:26.480 or their writing like we don't you can't quantify that but just because the salon was around for i

01:36:31.400 want to say 15 years something like that like 24 24 so like if you think about 24 years and all of

01:36:39.200 these people coming and going and meeting people they might not have ordinarily have met like how

01:36:42.560 does that influence the work of so many people like we don't know but clearly it would have

01:36:47.540 yeah it's true um we don't have minutes from a salon and people might not always credit those

01:36:55.600 conversations in their works but it's always interesting to see who's there and how often

01:37:01.240 they're there and the ideas that they might have carried forward from those meetings that's

01:37:06.680 definitely something that's a work in progress in salon studies now, how we might speculate

01:37:12.620 responsibly about how the salon might have influenced their works. I mean, what you can say

01:37:19.020 is that Mancini's salon was definitely part of a growing conversation about toleration.

01:37:26.880 And it's part of that movement in the Enlightenment to more tolerant, more religiously

01:37:32.620 mixed communities and the benefits of doing so her salon is a good example of that in that era

01:37:39.200 I'm just looking at the the descriptions of like when I ask people what do you remember

01:37:43.480 of the story one person described it as her cool little social club in her England home

01:37:48.180 love it love it yeah and her salon by the way up until quite recently was written off as just a

01:37:56.180 gambling den um and it's a shame that for such a long time that was people's impression of it

01:38:03.700 because it wasn't that at all it was a space and people did gamble there and people did drink

01:38:07.860 champagne there but they did all kinds of stuff um they operated on pieces of literature together

01:38:14.620 they performed operas together they had scientists give lectures there yeah they had scholars come

01:38:20.700 and read out their works it was all different things happened in the salon not just gambling

01:38:26.080 but speaking of gambling if we're moving into her final era which involves a lot of gambling

01:38:32.780 and a lot of drinking um and so we started off talking about her finances and stuff like

01:38:37.480 eventually not to get into it but there was some upheaval in who is the monarch of england

01:38:43.980 and eventually it stopped being her friends so she was at that point i think was she cut off

01:38:49.940 from any money she had been receiving from from the royal family and she'd had to yes so yeah the

01:38:57.280 house of Stuart is no longer on the throne of England and so the pension that she gets from

01:39:03.380 them is not being paid and William and Mary's kind of joint monarchy joint Protestant monarchy are

01:39:11.040 not too keen on her they're not too keen on her because she's French she's Catholic and she has

01:39:15.640 a connection with the ousted stewards yeah and money problems are starting to weigh her down

01:39:22.580 her husband won't give her any he's still um trying to have her forcibly repatriated 0.56

01:39:28.980 luckily for her because she's a duchess she can take on lots of debts now this isn't some

01:39:36.480 isn't a position she wants to be in but she is able to get credit and that is what she's living 0.70

01:39:43.100 off. I mean, she's also living off her winnings, her gambling winnings. But that's always a 1.00

01:39:48.620 slippery slope, right? There's wins and there's losses, but mostly it's credit. And she's taking

01:39:52.860 on a lot of debt. And she's in an extremely precarious position, vulnerable. And she never

01:40:01.820 really wanted to be in England in exile for all this time. Although she was having these lovely

01:40:07.140 years of salon hosting, it was always her hope that she would get to return to France. And it's

01:40:12.640 starting to seem less and less likely so perhaps it's not that surprising that she does turn to

01:40:18.300 alcohol more and more and she gets these dependency issues and becomes an alcoholic essentially

01:40:24.840 well and i think we saw that like in her this is a trajectory that just is familiar to me from

01:40:30.400 i don't know life but going from being like a good time girl in her 20s who like was dealing with

01:40:37.920 various psychological problems by partying and drinking by the time you get into your 50s if

01:40:43.080 that's been your main coping mechanism like you need to drink more to get that soothing effect

01:40:51.340 or whatever it is so it's just sort of like of course this is in a time before like with her

01:40:58.100 husband on her back this whole time I can't believe he's not dead yet tragically but the

01:41:03.160 fact that he's been there like and she's got this uncertainty it's just kind of like there's not

01:41:06.840 like what else is she going to turn to? Like, I feel like in her situation, there's not like

01:41:13.060 talk therapy. Like how is she going to deal with all of the stuff that's going on inside of her

01:41:18.320 mind? Like anyway, it just, and she's in this den and she's not dead salon and she, there's always

01:41:26.160 wine around. So, but like you see, like, this is in your book of the letters. Like you see Santa

01:41:30.640 Vermont is concerned, like even in this context of olden days and a lot of people drink a lot 1.00

01:41:36.820 of stuff and no one's drinking water really like he's like girl like slow down like what are you

01:41:41.300 doing yeah it's quite tragic i think to read some of the letters towards the end of her life where

01:41:47.040 she's really begging her agents to get her wine she claims it's for her health and her best friend

01:41:54.320 santa evermore is increasingly worried about her that she's drinking too much that she's gambling

01:41:59.700 too much that she's occasionally isolating herself she is somebody who is being crushed

01:42:06.040 by so many so much misfortune she's clearly exhausted by it all and the alcohol dependency

01:42:14.480 is only exacerbating all of those issues right so the more alcohol she's drinking the more depressed

01:42:19.260 she's getting and the more money she needs to buy the alcohol so the more debt she's getting into

01:42:23.660 and it's like this awful vicious circle for her so that by the end of the 1690s she is much more

01:42:33.140 disconnected from her social circles than she used to be and then you have this really final

01:42:40.260 tragedy in her life which is when her daughter comes to visit her and bearing in mind Mancini

01:42:47.520 has not been able to see her children very much over these years while she's been in exile but

01:42:53.020 her daughter comes to visit her her daughter is is herself on the run her daughter has decided to

01:42:58.340 leave her husband and Mancini is is welcomes her but is unhappy had advised her daughter not to do

01:43:07.320 it essentially said it's not worth it try and stay if you can but her daughter comes to visit her

01:43:12.620 nonetheless and Mancini at that time is in a relationship with Arnold Eust van Keppel

01:43:19.400 and her daughter also becomes attached to arnold's van keppel also um takes him as a lover

01:43:29.820 and this breaks her this utterly floors her to be in a kind of love triangle with her daughter

01:43:38.600 at a moment in her life where she's so vulnerable where she's so unwell it completely upends her

01:43:45.100 sense of reality and her reaction is is quite harsh she asks William III to intervene to expel

01:43:56.140 her daughter from the country and not long afterwards she locks herself up in her house

01:44:03.780 and drinks so much that she eventually dies so it's a really very very sad end to her life

01:44:13.880 marked by this one kind of tragedy love triangle you know you think of Mancini and all these

01:44:21.020 different infidelities that she herself had been involved in and it kind of marks the end of her

01:44:27.620 life too but in a really sad way when her daughter's tied up with it and and so is alcohol

01:44:33.680 and depression her suicide is talked about by some people as typical of her libertine spirit

01:44:40.080 and typical of her roman stoicism but there is no doubt that she did die in quite tragic

01:44:46.560 circumstances heavily in debt never got to return to france husband still alive and kind of mired

01:44:55.420 in this scandalous love triangle with her daughter and this is where well saint evremont wrote uh

01:45:02.140 he wrote something upon her death right some sort of a beautiful tribute to his friends like

01:45:06.900 i'm just so grateful that she found him when she did like no one could have been a better friend

01:45:11.140 to her in that era than he was i think yes and he was such a close friend to her that when she dies

01:45:19.460 people write their condolences to him you know they're writing to him saying we are so

01:45:25.800 so sorry for your loss you must be so upset blah blah blah um which is it's unusual for the time

01:45:32.180 to have even her relatives were writing to him. And I mean, then he perhaps in a weird way,

01:45:39.760 that's when he decides he's going to publish his writings. So for a very, very long time,

01:45:44.360 Sansevano had refused to publish his writings. And after Mancini dies, he decides he's going to.

01:45:50.840 And maybe it's because so many of them were inspired by her and her salon. There's a nostalgia

01:45:57.520 he wants to recreate um and thankfully because he published his writings we're able to reconstruct

01:46:04.680 so much of her life and about the salon because those writings are kind of brilliantly allow you

01:46:11.520 to recreate that world see who was there the topics they were talking about the operas that

01:46:17.380 they perform he he collates them and like writes them out properly and then they're then they're

01:46:23.540 later published um he himself doesn't live too long after he dies a few years later but yes i'm

01:46:30.320 probably going to have to go in a second yes um because i need to go and see my baby i'm sure

01:46:34.800 but we got to the we got to the end of her life um just let everybody know about your two books

01:46:40.040 if they want to learn more about hortense mancini okay so so i have one book out now it's an

01:46:47.320 academic monograph though i've tried to write it as excessively as possible and that's about

01:46:52.260 Hortense Mancini's salon. And if you go to the Bloomsbury page, you can read it all online for

01:46:58.500 free. You can download a PDF. It's completely open access. And I've also done an edition of

01:47:05.260 her letters in the original French and with an English translation where you can read about her

01:47:11.460 life in her own words. Thank you so much for all of your work. Thank you so much. I'm sorry to say

01:47:17.920 I have to go. Um, it's just, yeah, no, it's fun. I knew this would be a long conversation.

01:47:24.020 Yeah. I get it. But thank you so much for joining me and thank you so much for having me. Um,

01:47:33.120 yeah. Also good luck with your book. Good luck with, um, Carolina Brunswick. Um, hopefully when,

01:47:40.740 yeah, when I'm a bit calm with baby stuff, I can read it because I think she is so cool.

01:47:46.860 and yeah then i was thinking is there going to be an audiobook there is an audiobook yeah and

01:47:51.260 that is going to be available in the uk so yeah yeah great yeah yeah yeah i might do it because

01:47:56.200 i'm starting to turn more to audio stuff now good for for new parents yeah yes thank you so much um

01:48:03.420 i have to go but this has been great thank you so much so again both of her books are now available

01:48:12.100 if you want to get some more hortense in your life so the letters of hortense mancini a bilingual

01:48:17.520 edition is available to read her letters and then a salon in exile hortense mancini and the french

01:48:22.880 diaspora and restoration london so as she mentioned that one is like an academic book you know it's

01:48:27.780 priced for the academic market comma but it's also available open access as an ebook and i will put a

01:48:33.640 link to that under these show notes so you can you can take a look at that for free and as well

01:48:37.840 put a link to the letters of hortense mancini that you can buy from wherever you get your books from

01:48:41.840 If you want to buy it from my bookshop shop, that's the link I'm putting down below.

01:48:45.880 And so what a treat, honestly, like looking back at my notes from my episodes about Hortense

01:48:51.180 Mancini, reading through Annalise's books, I was just like, oh, the memories, the memories,

01:48:56.540 fubs, all of it.

01:48:58.740 Like what an era that was for me personally. 0.64

01:49:00.900 Like this was a woman's story.

01:49:02.420 Like I truly, I think I said it in this recording.

01:49:04.260 I just found out about her first just seeing this portrait.

01:49:06.580 I was like, who's this portrait?

01:49:07.600 That's an interesting hairstyle.

01:49:08.640 and it turns into this fascinating person

01:49:10.620 and it turns out Annalise has been doing all this research

01:49:12.860 about it and now these books are out there

01:49:14.380 more people are finding out about her

01:49:16.320 and I think Hortense Mancini is such a role model

01:49:19.440 a heroine for people escaping abusive situations

01:49:22.980 for people living life on their own terms

01:49:25.820 for people just like speaking up

01:49:27.520 finding their voice like she did

01:49:29.040 writing her memoirs

01:49:30.120 you can find her memoirs

01:49:31.380 the translation of them I think is available

01:49:33.100 basically on the internet

01:49:34.760 if you want to read that

01:49:35.600 or in book form as well

01:49:36.780 to really get a sense of her voice

01:49:38.340 her sense of humor. It's just in terms of this podcast and like Scandalicious Women and like 1.00

01:49:43.500 tits out lifestyle and all of it, like she just epitomizes that. And part of where I was so 0.87

01:49:47.820 excited to revisit the story for you today is your Christmas present was because when I ask

01:49:52.720 listeners sometimes like, what are the people who you most remember? Like what are the most

01:49:55.980 important episodes to you? And her story always comes up. I think she's just really epitomizes

01:50:01.340 that sort of like lesser known woman from history, but who is actually so significant.

01:50:05.220 She was never really given her due for a long time until people like Annalisa started really demanding that people pay attention and take her seriously in her salon and all of it.

01:50:14.680 So anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

01:50:17.220 We're going to be back again with another.

01:50:19.560 We'll be revisiting a classic episode that I think will be nice for our final episode of the year 2025.

01:50:26.480 Anyway, I do want to just remind everybody, I too have a book that is coming out in February.

01:50:31.220 It's called Rebel of the Regency, The Scandalous Saga, Carolina Brunswick, Britain's Uncrowned Queen.

01:50:37.060 It will be available as a book, as an e-book, as an audio book.

01:50:41.160 So however you like to consume books, that should be available to you.

01:50:44.660 It's available right now at any North American store for pre-order.

01:50:48.460 Go to rebeloftheregency.com to get all those links.

01:50:51.940 And it's like trickling its way out.

01:50:54.000 You can pre-order at some stores in Australia, some stores in the UK.

01:50:58.100 I'm hoping to have more concrete information about that.

01:51:01.500 But if you live in one of those countries and you want to pre-order the book, you can.

01:51:04.400 And hopefully when it comes out, you'll be able to buy it from a store in your country.

01:51:08.380 I hope to have information for you soon about where I will be and when for my alleged book tour.

01:51:15.000 I'm going around. I'm really excited to launch this book in front of people.

01:51:19.040 Anyway, go to rebeloftheregency.com for all the information about my book coming out in February.

01:51:24.820 and other than that I mean Merry Christmas if you're celebrating champagne you know think

01:51:31.320 about Hortense think about her bestie think about how it is because he was a wine snob that that's

01:51:36.660 become a drink that we all drink at celebratory times and anyway until next time keep your pants 0.99

01:51:41.920 on and your tits out. Fulker History is researched scripted and hosted by Anne Foster. Editor is 1.00

01:51:49.460 christina lumagi theme music is by the severin duo regency era artwork by karen moynihan social

01:51:55.600 media videos by magdalena denson transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com

01:52:01.140 by aveline malik you can get early ad-free episodes of vulgar history by becoming a paid

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Vulgar History - December 24, 2025

Hortense Mancini： It Girl of Restoration England

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