Balzac, French mistresses, the last regicide and Saché
Although born in Touraine, Balzac [1789–1850] became uber-Parisian, and most of his stories occur in the capital. Many of his books discuss my ancestors on the Houdart side, who were from old Parisian families. Balzac spent two years [1818–19] as a legal clerk in the office of my Great-great-great Grandfather Edouard Victor Passez [1778–1840], a friend of the Balzacs and the subject of “Le Notaire” (1840). Balzac famously hated his time there, and legend wants that he declined to take over Passez’s study (Victor’s son at the time, Edouard-François Passez [1815–1848], was only five). Passez was married to Zémia Jenny Touchard [1794–1877], heir to “Les Petites Messageries.” The company is the topic of Balzac’s “A Start in Life”’s first chapter. But perhaps more strikingly, in “The Physiology of Marriage,” Balzac writes on the subject of marital infidelity, which is rife in France.
Zémia’s brother, François Touchard [1795–1875], was the stepfather of the Oreille de Carrière brothers, illegitimate sons of the murdered Duke of Berry [1778–1820], the King’s nephew, son of the future Charles X and heir to the throne, whose wife fascinated Balzac. In 1843, François married the danseuse Eugénie Virginie Oreille [1795–1875], the Duke’s mistress, also known as Virginie Letellier or Oreille. There is a camouflet that says:
The good Duke was most fruitful.
He was for the trifle:
This was his only fund.
Was the court scandalized?
When this prince came:
For once, here is the marvel,
Said Louis XVII to Du Cayla*:
The Ear (l’oreille) makes our children!
[Countess Du Cayla was Louis’ mistress]
Oreille had previously been the mistress of Jean-Baptiste Maréchal Bessières, Duke of Istrie [1768- 1813], whom she allegedly ruined. It is to see Oreille that, on 13 February 1820, Berry went to the Opéra in the Rue Richelieu to see “Les Noces de Gamache”: he was murdered there by a Bonapartist. She was briefly at his side when he died in the theatre until the Duchess’s entourage whisked her away. For some strange reason, my ancestor, Philippe-François Touchard [1759–1836], Zemia and François’ father, by then 61 years old, was a witness to the birth of Ferdinand Oreille de Carrière later that year along with Pierre-Marie-Hippolyte, Count of Livry [1791–1847] bodyguard of the King. Livry, aide de camp to the Count of Polignac, his uncle, was himself the son of première danseuse at the Opéra Marguerite Saulnier [1770–1813]. Livry’s father is quoted as saying about that union:
It is time that this disgraceful state of affairs should cease. To the winds with family prejudice! The ci-devant marquis must marry the danseuse
The commonality between Berry, Livry, and Touchard is that my ancestor’s mistress was the actress Louise Marie Sophie Leroy [1787–1833], whom he eventually married in 1823 after his first wife, my great-great-great grandmother, died in 1804.
Upon leaving the stage, Sophie Leroy married Touchard, a rich entrepreneur well-known for the public coaches that bore his name; this caused one of her former peers to say: ‘How happy she must be to be able to ride at the same time in fifteen coaches!’ This marriage, which was merely the formalization of a prior liaison, legitimized two daughters.
That’s a lot of mistresses. Now, back to Balzac. On my mother’s side, my great-great-grandfather Ernest Benjamin [1854–1900] was the General Secretary of the Society of Men of Letters created by Balzac in 1838. His son, the writer René Benjamin [1885–1948], who wrote “The Prodigious Life of Honoré de Balzac” (1927), ended up living in the château de Saché, where Balzac used to stay to escape his creditors when Jean de Margonne owned it[1780–1858]. Benjamin, seriously injured during the 1914 Battle of Verdun, asked his volunteer nurse who cared for him, “Do you know Balzac? » to which she responded, “If I know him!” I sleep in his bed! Her name was Elisabeth Lecoy [1890–1973], and her parents owned Saché in Touraine. He married her in 1916 in Saché, which became the Balzac Museum in 1951.
In the pictures below: François Touchard as a child in 1809, the murder of the Duke of Berry in 1820, Élisabeth et René Benjamin in Balzac’s room in 1915, and the actress Marie Louise Leroy.
Cfr. De Reiset: Les enfants du duc de Berry d’apr. des nouveaux documents (Paris, 1905, in-8).