The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Guise Musicians Talon, Grandmaison, and Guyot
Antoinette Talon
Antoinette Talon was a child of the vast parish of Saint-Sulpice, where Mme de Guise played a leading role after 1673. She was born in 1669, rather than in 1666, as I proposed back in 1987 [Fich. Lab., 61729, where she stated that she was twenty-six when she married on August 3, 1695]. In other words, when she sang her first solo part in the summer of 1684, Talon was just fifteen years old. She had probably entered Mlle de Guise's service several years earlier and had honed her musical talents under Montailly, q.v., and Loulié, q.v.
Was Mlle Talon a relative of Marie Talon, the friend of the Charpentier family? It is impossible to say for certain. The young singer definitely was not a close relative of these illustrious Talons, who were but the most showy branch of a vast family tree rooted in Châlons-sur-Marne (where they were close friends or relatives of various persons surnamed "Antoine" and "Guyot"). Talons from all the branches of that tree made their way to Paris as the seventeenth century progressed, and a certain number of them settled in the parish of Saint-Sulpice. The possibility of a distant cousinship between the Guise singer and the daughter of the famous advocate general therefore cannot be categorically ruled out.
On January 27, 1648, Jacques Talon, "maistre menuisier en ébène," son of Nicolas and Anne Vivier, married Claude Bourgoin, daughter of Claude Bourgoin, master roofer, and Anne Grungot. Jacques's brother Michel, a menuisier, was also present and who lived in the same parish. Over the next few years, Jacques twice asked his father and mother to godparent his children at Saint-Sulpice. Jacques's wife was Claude Bourgoin, whose brother (?) Jean was a roofer. (Was Claude Bourgoin related to the mother of Carlier, q.v.?) In 1650 the young Talons lived with Claude Bourgoin's relatives on the rue Sabot, just off the rue du Four and midway between Saint-Sulpice and Croix-Rouge [Fich. Lab. 67126, 61727, 61728; and BN, ms. fr. 32839, pp. 175 and 185: the relative was "Mme Geneviève Bourgoin"]. Two of the couple's children survived to adulthood: Marie-Geneviève, who married Vincent du Faure, sieur de Talence, in February 1682 at Saint-André-des-Arts, and Antoinette, the Guise musician. That Saint-André-des-Arts was the parish as Élisabeth Charpentier and Jean Édouard opens the possibility that Marc-Antoine Charpentier may have recommended little Antoinette to Mlle de Guise. On the other hand, the Talon family's proximity to the Luxembourg Palace may mean that it was Mme de Guise was responsible for the girl's arrival at the Hôtel de Guise, circa 1680.
Mlle Talon was shifted from pillar to post after Mlle de Guise's death. In April 1689, when she collected the first 1000 livres of the 4,000 livres that had been willed her, she stated that she "usually lived at Versailles" [Chantilly, A 15, April 19, 1689]. Six years later, she was at the Hôtel d'Armagnac: in other words, she had moved from one Lorraine to another. It was at the Hôtel d'Armagnac that Antoinette met and married François Desnoyers, a forty-two year-old widower who served the Count of Armagnac as valet de chambre. In addition to her sister Marie-Geneviève, the bride was assisted by a bevy of Lorraines — the count and countess, and all the princes and princesses of their house — and by a a half-dozen domestics of the Armagnacs. By then, the bride had accumulated 5,000 livres but was still waiting for the final 500 livres willed her by Mlle de Guise. Antoinette Talon seems to have lived out the rest of her life in the entourage of the Lorraines of Armagnac.
For the Guyots and the Antoines, see BN, ms., D.B., 624, "Talon," f. 106, 109; P.O., 2790, f. 300; P.O. 2791, f. 679; and, for the vastness of this family tree, the Dossiers bleus, with their fold-out family trees. For Antoinette's acts: MC, V, 235, marriage, July 20, 1695; and, for rentes she purchased, XXXIX, 205, Feb. 22, 1698; 214, Dec. 21, 1699; and 216, Feb.16, 1700.
Marie Guilbault de Grandmaison
The bas dessus that Charpentier indentified with the abbreviation "G," was born Marie Guilbault (or Guillebault) de Grandmaison. Evidence about her origins is scanty, for she used notary Plastrier, whose records have been destroyed. In April 1689 she was described as a "fille majeure," which means that she was born prior to April 1665 [Chantilly, A 15, legacies]. That she retired to the parish of Saint-Michel-du-Tetre, Angers, after the death of her husband [MC, XIII, 181, procuration déposée, July 28, 1714] suggests that she was born in that city circa 1664. There were indeed Guillebaults in Angers in the 1650s: "noble homme Henry Guillebault, sieur de la Besnardière" was a notary in the parish of Sainte-Croix [BN, ms., P.O., 1444, f. 7]. Just how a seventeen year-old girl from Angers happened to come to Paris and to live "auprès de" Mlle de Guise [Chantilly, A 15] remains a mystery, although the fact that the executors of Her Highness's estate took care to distinguish this girl from the singers who were true domestics ("femmes de chambre") suggests that she came from a family with some pretensions to nobility. The mystery about her origins is scarcely elucidated by the fact that there were "Guilbauds/ Guillebaults/ Guilbauts" in the Guise circle in the 1660s, and that the musician Loulié, q.v., counted among his family friends a swordpolisher named "Guillebault."
Let us look first at the family that spelled its name "Guilbaud". In 1620, Jehan Guillebault (that is how the notary spelled his name), who had been born in a town outside of Nantes thirty-three years earlier, married Claude Poireau, the daughter of a bourgeois de Paris. (Nantes was, of course, situated in a different province, but it is just downstream from Angers.) By the time of his death in May 1657, "Jean Guilbaud" had become a conseiller du roi and treasurer in the "mortes payés" of Brittany and had purchased a house on the rue du Petit Bourbon, just behind Saint-Sulpice and a short stroll from the Luxembourg Palace where Gaston d'Orléans had resided until his disgrace in 1653. That the family was in contact with Monsieur's household can be deduced by the fact that several of Gaston's officers were renting lodgings from the Guilbauds. Their son, "Jean Guilbauld," sieur of Beaulieu, was a captain in the infantry regiment of the Duke of Guise and lived at the "garrison at Guise." The elder Guilbauds were likewise in touch with the Guises: in 1648 they had loaned money to the duke's argentier [MC, XCVIII, 194, inventory, May 3, 1657]. His father's offices were passed on to young Beaulieu, who remained in the Guise regiment after the death of Duke Henri and had become a captain by the time of last duke's death in 1671. In short, it is clear that the "Guilbaud" family had served the Guises for at least two decades. But were they related to Marie "Guilbault"?
What about the "Guillebaults" of the Left Bank? Pierre Guillebault, a swordfinisher lived on the Pont Marie well into the 1670s [MC, LXXXVIII, 207, sale of office, March 24, 1668]. His wife was Marguerite Croyer, the close cousin of Guise musician Étienne Loulié, q.v. (Loulié's mother, Denise Fourmy, was Marguerite Croyer's aunt.) The Guillebaults were, of course, also close cousins of Robert Cambert, the composer. (Loulié's maternal grandfather, Cambert's father and Mme Guillebault's mother were first cousins.) Instead of having family ties to the Loire Valley as Marie Guilbault did, Guillebault the swordfinisher seems to have come from Fontaines, just outside Chantilly. At any rate, he had a cousin there and, when that cousin died, Guillebault ceded to a domestic of the Condés his share of the real property he had just inherited and stated that he had made Paris his "irrevocable domicile" — an expression that may suggest that he or his parents had once lived at Fontaines [MC, 269, transport, July 12, 1676]. More than the differences in spelling and the physical distance separating Chantilly from Angers, the social distance separating a craftsman of the Pont Marie from a girl who was entitled to add "de Grandmaison" to her family name, suggests that, if Marie Guilbault owed her protection by Mlle de Guise to her relationship with a servant of that great household, that relationship involved the captain of the garrison of Guise rather than the musician Loulié and his late cousin, Robert Cambert.
Mlle de Grandmaison must have come to the Hôtel de Guise circa 1683, when she was approximately nineteen. During the summer of 1684, Charpentier first composed a work specifically for her: the Magnificat (H. 75) of cahier 41, which she performed with Mlles Brion and Thorin. After some five years spent "near" Mlle de Guise, Marie was willed 4,000 livres. As with the other "filles de la musique," this legacy served as her dowry. She received the first installment, 1,000 livres, on April 22, 1689. She was entitled to remain on at the hôtel de Guise, but by June 1688 Marie had moved into rented quarters on the rue Saint-Merry, in the house of Anne Guenin, a marchande mercière who had separated from her husband, Mathieu Le Roux. Her landlady advanced her the 4,000 livres that Marie expected to receive in the near future from the executors of Mlle de Guise's will. (How could she forsee that payment would drag on for more than a decade?) When payments were delayed, her landlady apparently had second thoughts about the loan, so Mlle de Grandmaison turned to Jacques Plastrier, a retired notary, and transferred her legacy to him. She also left the parish of Saint-Merry for that of Saint-Sulpice, and by early 1689 she was dwelling in the "hôtel de Richemont" on the rue de Sèvres [Chantilly, A 15, payments of legacies dated April 15, 1689]. By April 1690, she had wed Jacques Francas, the commis of Mlle de Guise's treasurer, Jean-François Le Brun. Working closely with Le Brun on the succession, Francas retained his quarters at the hôtel de Guise; but by March 1691 he had left to become the intendant of the Count of Morsten [see Le Brun's scellé, Y 10962, March 27, 1691]. The newly-weds soon moved to Langres, where a daughter was born in 1694. Francas ended his career as intendant of the Duke of Chevreuse's estates at Châteauvilain and Arc-en-Barrois [MC, XIII, 181, procuration deposited July 28, 1714]. His career therefore brought him full circle in a sense, for Arc-en-Barrois is just south of Mlle de Guise's lands at Joinville. After Francas's death, Marie Guilbault moved to Angers with her children.
The swordpolishers descended from Radegonde Briou, who married Jacques Fourmy and Gilbert Cambert. The genealogy was determined on the basis of relationships stated in the following documents: MC, XVIII, 151, f. vicxviii, Dec. 3, 1610; XVIII, 242, f. iicix, Feb. 9, 1628; XVIII, 245, f. cxlii, Feb. 14, 1629; XXX, 46, marriage, June 7, 1655; II, 169, inventory, Nov. 28, 1642; Y 136, f. 68v; Y 181, f. 182.
Jeanne Guyot
The papers of Mlle de Guise's estate reveal that Jeanne Guyot was a minor in April 1689, and that she was still a minor when she married in April 1690. In other words, she was not born until 1666 at the earliest and was in her teens when she entered Mlle de Guise's service. The name of this "femme de chambre et ordinaire de la musique" first appears in Charpentier's manuscripts in January 1687, although Mlle Guyot doubtlessly had already lived for some time at the Hôtel de Guise before she was permitted to sing in public.
Jeanne was the daughter of Philippe Guyot and Jeanne Dupin. After his wife's death, Guyot became a priest and doctor of theology [MC, LXXII, 124, marriage, April 10, 1690]. This linking of the names Dupin and Guyot is most intriguing, for it raises the possibility that the singer was the child of close friends of the Charpentier family. For example, was Jeanne Dupin the sister of Nicolas Dupin, Marc-Antoine and Armand-Jean's guardian? Was Jeanne Dupin the "Mme Guyot" who had helped nurse Charpentier's dying father? The fact that these two family names are so common has hampered research into Mlle Guyot's origins and has prevented me from answering these tantalizing questions.
Nor can the possibility that Jeanne Guyot was related to a Guise officer be ruled out. For example, in 1685 — that is, when Mlle Guyot was being trained to sing — Nicolas Guyot, avocat in the Parlement of Paris, was Mlle de Guise's procureur fiscal for the barony of Ancerville and her receveur général for the principality of Joinville. It should come as no surprise that Nicolas Guyot's late father, Sanson Guyot, had been the procureur fiscal at Joinville. Nor were people named Dupin unknown to the domestics at the Hôtel de Guise. For reasons that are clear, the huissier de la chambre of the late Mlle de Guise was the executor of the will of a certain Marie-Marthe Dupin, spinster [MC, LXXV, 402, inventory and will, Sept. 7, 1694]. That her papers do not mention Mlle Guyot suggests that, if the two women were related, the relationship was very distant and did not involve strong affective ties.
That Mlle Guyot was willed 4,000 livres for only a year of singing before the public suggests that she actually entered Mlle de Guise's service circa 1680, when she was very young, perhaps after her mother's death. Having decided to enter the church, her father would have been eager to ensure that his daughter would be cared for and dowered. When Jeanne Guyot did marry, in April 1690, she did not, however, bring a dowry to Claude Précelle, sieur d'Herneuse, infantry captain in the Lignières regiment. Précelles was the son of Claude, a deceased procureur in Châtelet of Paris, and Catherine Maurice, his wife. He may have been related to Pierre Précelle, who just one year later would purchase the office of procureur in the Châtelet [MC, CXVIII, 173, inventory of Jeanne Thevenin, his wife, Sept. 4, 1692, titre 3]. At the time of her marriage, Jeanne Guyot had given up her quarters at the Hôtel de Guise and was living in the same parish, on the rue des Mauvais Garçons [A.N., M.C., LXXII, 124, marriage, April 10, 1690]. After the spring of 1690, the Précelles disappear.
Present at Jeanne's wedding was her cousin, Geneviève Dupin, wife of Sieur Collet, secretary of M. de Barre, lieutenant general of the royal armies and governor of Amiens, and his brother, Pierre Collet de Fontenelles, secretaire of the ambassador of Sweden. Jeanne had a brother, Jean Guyot. For the Guise officer at Joinville: MC, CXII, 393, traité, Sept. 22, 1685: he is also mentioned in cahier 15 of Roquette's account of his visits to Mlle de Guise's lands in the fall of 1682, A.N., 300 API, 922*.