Mademoiselle de La Vallière (Arsène Houssaye)

Overview

Mademoiselle de La Vallière et Madame de Montespan: études historiques sur la cour de Louis XIV is a semi-historical, richly written study by the French man of letters Arsène Houssaye (1815-1896), published in Paris by Henri Plon in 1860 (Folger Shakespeare Library catalogue record; Internet Archive scans of the Plon edition). It follows Louise de La Vallière (1644-1710), the first long-term maîtresse en titre of Louis XIV, who ended her life as a Carmelite nun, and her rival Madame de Montespan. Houssaye's preface sets the tone: La Vallière "n'aima pas le roi parce qu'il était le roi, mais parce qu'il avait l'air d'être le roi" (Plon 1860 text, Internet Archive scan).

Marie and this book

• 19 January 1874 (015.0260): "J'ai commencé 'Mlle de La Vallière'. J'adore Houssaye. Il dit tout ce que je pense..." She then lifts Houssaye's sentence about La Vallière and the king and turns it on the Duke of Hamilton: "J'aime le duc parce qu'il a l'air d'un duc et non parce qu'il est un duc. (Elle aimait le roi parce qu'il avait l'air d'un roi etc.) (Houssaye)". The wording is Marie's paraphrase of the passage quoted above, which confirms the identification.
• 21 January 1874 (015.0279): she hurries through her day "pour dédier plus de temps à la lecture de 'La Vallière'".
• 1 February 1874 (016.0071-0072): finished. "Houssaye est monotone, cependant je le lis avec plaisir et il se lit à vapeur." Next she plans Les Courtisanes du monde, after Dickens's Nickleby, "pour que Houssaye ne m'ennuie pas".
• 28 April 1874 (019.0028): in a game of imagining her future household at fifty-five she names a greyhound "La Vallière" (alongside dogs called Athos, d'Artagnan, Fouquet, Colbert and Malicorne), which is a reference to the personage, not to the book, but shows how thoroughly the Louis XIV cast had entered her imagination.

Notes and doubts

• Marie only writes "La Vallière" or "Mlle de La Vallière". The identification with Houssaye's 1860 volume rests on her own attribution ("J'adore Houssaye", 015.0260; 016.0071) and on the exact echo of the "air d'un roi" sentence in that volume. Which printing she held cannot be determined.
• The older stubs `people/mentioned/LA_VALLIERE.md` and `people/aristocracy/MLLE_DE_LA_VALLIERE.md` both describe this book (not the historical woman) and are superseded by this entry. The stub `ARSENE_HOUSSAYE.md` mentions a title "Louis XIV et ses femmes", which the project has not been able to tie to Marie's text.
• For her reading habits in these months see Reading.

Sources

• Folger Shakespeare Library catalogue, record 44624 (Houssaye, Mademoiselle de La Vallière et Madame de Montespan, Paris: Plon, 1860, 3rd ed.): https://catalog.folger.edu/record/44624
• Internet Archive scans (see `full_text` above), preface and chapter on the "air d'être le roi".