The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
The two wills of Étiennette Charpentier, maîtresse lingère
I had planned a Musing about Étiennette as a person. Instead, I have painted her portrait in my Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier. I have retained the earlier Musings in which I present the Charpentier siblings and their financial and interpersonal relationships. This particular Musing focuses on Étiennette's two wills — which shed light on the entire Charpentier family and its trajectory from the 1660s to 1709.
At six in the evening of Friday, March 22, 1709, Dame Françoise Ferrand, widow of René le Lefebvre de la Falluère, Premier Président of the Parlement of Brittany, summoned a commissaireof the Châtelet of Paris to her hôtel on the rue de Seine. Her old friend Étiennette Charpentier, a mistress lingère of the rue des Noyers, parish of Saint-Séverin, had died early that morning, having fallen ill several months earlier, during the horrible cold that had settled over Paris. That day Mme de la Falluère turned her late friend's autograph will (consult Etiennette's will, 1707) over to a notary and requested that seals be placed on the doors and cabinets in the lingère's shop. Over the next weeks, and with the firmness and savoir-faire of a person born into the highest ranks of the Châtelet, Présidente de la Falluère executed the clauses of her friend's last will and testament.
This meant fending off the inevitable protests of the heirs, Jacques Édouard and Marie-Anne Édouard (and her irascible husband, Jacques-François Mathas, who clearly had had his eye on Étiennette's money when he married endebted Marie-Anne Édouard). Day after day the heirs stood by, with their procureurs, as the scellé and inventory were drawn up, making sure that their "rights would be preserved.")
But Étiennette planned her will with great care. She had calculated in advance that — once her outstanding debts had been paid, her charitable legacies had been distributed, the contents of her shop and apartment had been sold, and notarial fees had been paid — approximately 5000 livres would remain, half of which would go to Jacques, and half to Marie-Anne. But in her will she stipulated that Marie-Anne would receive no money directly until Mme de La Falluère had overseen the payment of the niece's outstanding debts to ten marchands lingers, which totaled just under 2400 livres. The Mathases probably did not learn of these restrictions until the will was read on April 13, three weeks after their aunt's death. One can only imagine the dreams that floated through Jacques-François's mind as he and his wife stood beside their procureur, day after day, "protecting their rights "as huissier and notary affixed seals and then began to enumerate the contents of their late aunt's shop and apartment! And so it came to pass that Jacques Édouard eventually received 2301 livres in cash, while Marie-Anne and her husband were only able to pocket some 40 livres of the 2440 livres that represented their share of the estate (AN, MC, quittance, April 27, 1709).
Actually, two of Étiennette's wills have survived, the one she entrusted to Mme de la Falluère and one that she dictated to a notary in 1676, when she was quite ill (MC, XCI, 397, Jan. 30, 1676).
When the contents of the two wills are compared, some interesting evolutions in Étiennette's devotional and family preoccupations emerge. And these preoccupations cast light on the entire Charpentier family, 1660-1709:
The will of 1676
A white linen hanging at the door of her shop on the rue de la Harpe no hangings at all on her shop on the rue des Noyers, and no bells
The Mathurins should be her pallbearers (it was in their chapel, near her father's apartment, that the confraternity of the maîtres écrivains assembled and worshiped), and 6 poor people will carry torches
100 livres to the Jesuits of the maison professe of Saint-Louis, for 150 masses
30 livres to her Jesuit confessor, Father Auclerc
10 livres to the "Petits Augustins" of the faubourg Saint-German, for prayers for "the most abandoned souls in Purgatory"
200 livres to decorate the chapel of the Holy Sacrement at Saint-Séverin
She gives a total of 908 livres in charitable bequests
The will of 1707
No hangings at all on her shop on the rue des Noyers, and no bells
The Cordeliers are to be her pallbearers (note that it was the Cordeliers who, in 1687, sponsored the mass at Port-Royal of Paris for which Charpentier composed H. 5)
200 livres to the Jesuit Noviciate "in thanks" for the "instruction"
they have given her since her youth
[no reference to a confessor]
30 livres for prayers for her deceased relatives at the Capucins of the rue Saint-Honoré (where Mlle de Guise was buried in 1688)
100 livres for masses at Port-Royal of Paris
No mention of Paradise or of the Devil:,but she entrusts herself to the Virgin, her guardina angel and the saints. She sees herself as created in God's image and redeemed by His blood
Charitable bequests totaled 820 livres, including 100 livres to poor lingères
Comparison of the two wills
Etiennette gave fewer personal legacies in 1707 than in 1676, because so many friends had died during the intervening years and also because her siblings were now dead and her niece and nephews were adults. Indeed, in 676 she had been quite concerned about her close family. For example, she wanted to create a pension of 50 livres (on 1000 livres capital) for her sister Marie, the converse at Port Royal, and to pass it on to Marie-Anne Édouard after Marie's death. And she wanted her brothers' and her sister 's debts to her to be forgiven: "ce que chacun d'eulx luy peult devoir, dont il y auroit escript au nom, ne voullant pas qu'il s'en demandent rien l'un à l'autre." Her possessions , both meuble and immeuble, were to be divided equally among the legitimate offspring of her two brothers and her sister, although her three siblings would have the usufruct of these possessions for life. They were, however, forbidden to mortgage anything or make any substitutions. (That she forsaw the possibility that Marc-Antoine might marry and produce heirs reveals that, until he took vows at the Sainte-Chapelle in the late 1690s, the composer was not a religious, not a "petit abbé," but a layman.)
Some clues provided by her death inventory of 1709
Two bundles of documents described in her inventory of 1709 reveal that Étiennette continued to lend money to her relatives, expecting full well that she would eventually have to forgive their debts. Titre 6 in the inventory tells of "12 documents that are IOU's [reconnaissances et billets] for money given and lent by the late Étiennette Charpentier, either to the late Élisabeth Charpentier, her sister, or to Sieurs Jacques Édouard, Mathas and his wife, and other pieces relevant to the settlement of the estate." And titre 15 provides information about her composer brother. There was a bundle of "five documents concerning the succession of Me Marc-Antoine Charpentier, music master of the choirboys of the Sainte-Chapelle du Roy of Paris, brother of the said deceased. (This allusion to a "succession," without reference to a notary, provides pretty conclusive evidence that Marc-Antoine's inventory was done sous seing privé and there is virtually no hope of finding his death inventory.) Among these documents were "two pieces, one of which is the paper brevet of an obligation ...for the sum of 2700 livres which she loaned him." (The document was signed before notary Carnot on January 12, 1699, but notaries did not keep copies of brevets. )The second piece was a "promise" made by Charpentier to his sister on January 12, 1700, for the sum of 122 livres, plus another one for 70 livres dated April 24, 1700. In all, 2892 livres that Marc-Antoine never repaid (or was never expected to repay?) Was her brother that bad a manager? Or, in 1699-1700, did he unexpectedly have to come up with close to 3000 livres? Is it a coincidence that my Musing on François Chapperon's last will and testament shows that he had been obliged to pay his predecessor, Ouvrard, 3000 livres ! Are we to conclude that Étiennette agreed to advance the money that a new music master at the Sainte-Chapelle was expected to pay his predecessor (or his predecessor's estate)?
For the will of 1676, Étiennette chose as executor Louis de Paris, procureur in the Châtelet of Paris. By 1707 he had died, and she named Françoise Ferrand in his stead. In doing so, she seems to have entrusted her succession to members of the same savvy family: as an article on the Ferrands planned for the fall will show, President de La Falluère's brother had married "Marie Paris."