Clients and Friends: The -in-waiting at the Court of Anne of Austria (1615–66)

Oliver Mallick

A valet who served Louis XIII and Louis XIV consecutively described in his memoirs the advantages of offices being held by women: But the best offices are held by women: of honour, lady-in-waiting, first maid of the chamber and all the other (female offices); if you have a wife, daughters, female relatives or female friends you should therefore pay atten- tion at an early stage in order to broker for them in this regard.1 And indeed, in early modern France women played a significant role as office holders within the system of (courtly) patronage.2 Patronage is nor- mally understood as a form of social relation where the patron possessed resources in the form of power, wealth, influence, and/or connections and offered these to clients, who offered in return their loyalty and, in some cases, even their own networks which could be useful for the patron.3

1 [“Mais les meilleures charges se sont les femmes quy les possèdent: d’honneur, dame d’atour, première femme de chambre et anyssy (sic) des autres (charges); ce à quoy il fault prendre garde de bonne heure, si l’on a femme, filles, parantes (sic) ou amies aux­ quelles l’on puisse faire avoir semblables choses”]. Marie Du Bois, Mémoires de Marie Du Bois (Vendôme: Société archéologique, scientifique et littéraire du Vendômois, 1936), 136–7. See also Eugène Griselle, ed., État de la maison du roi Louis XIII, de celles de sa mère, Marie de Médicis, de ses sœurs, Chrestienne, Élisabeth et Henriette de France; de son frère, Gaston d’Orléans; de sa femme, Anne d’Autriche; de ses fils, le dauphin (Louis XIV) et Philippe d’Orléans (Paris: P. Catin, 1912), 36, no. 1663. 2 Caroline zum Kolk, “Catherine de Médicis et sa maison: La fonction politique de l’hôtel de la reine au XVIe siècle” (PhD diss., Université Paris VIII, 2006), 276; Katrin Keller, Hofdamen: Amtsträgerinnen im Wiener Hofstaat des 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 204–5. 3 see Sharon Kettering, “Patronage and Politics during the Fronde,” French Historical Studies 14, no. 3 (1986): 410, 430–3. For a general view on patronage see Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., , Patronage, and the : The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c. 1450–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Yves Durand, ed., Hom­ mage à Roland Mousnier: Clientèles et fidélités en Europe à l’époque moderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981); Charles Giry-Deloison and Roger Mettam, eds., Patronages et clientélismes 1550–1750 (France, Angleterre, Espagne, Italie) (London: Institut Français du Royaume-Uni, 1995). 232 oliver mallick

Patronage did not necessarily require an emotional bond.4 But occasion- ally, friendship was also a part of a patron-client relationship because friendship at times consisted in doing favours for one another while affec- tionate gestures and words often served as a special, additional token of such a close relationship.5 So, patronage and friendship were sometimes symbiotic, working on a give-and-take basis which was advantageous for both the patron/friend and the client/friend.6 On the one hand, single, married or widowed women could benefit in equal measure from an office in the household of a queen (or another female member of the ) as well as from their presence at court by gaining advantages for themselves, their families, their friends or their own clients.7 Women were an important link to power and influence at court, especially when there were no male relatives who possessed a charge in a royal household.8 On the other hand, the queen could win loyal clients and confidantes among her (female) office holders. Nevertheless, until today there has not been any detailed work about Anne of Austria’s ladies-in-waiting. There are a few studies dealing with them in a wider perspective: Sharon Kettering has shown how Louis XIII and especially Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis, of Richelieu exerted influence on her household,9 while Mathieu Da Vinha has concentrated superficially on its development on a whole10 and Ruth Kleinman has examined the family background of some of the queen’s ladies and maids

4 see Wolfgang Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen: “Verflechtung” als Konzept zur Erfor­ schung historischer Führungsgruppen, Römische Oligarchie um 1600 (Munich: E. Vögel, 1979), 37–40. 5 sharon Kettering, “Friendship and Clientage in Early Modern France,” French His­ tory 6, no. 2 (1992): 139, 143; Reinhard, Freunde und Kreaturen, 40, 60. See also Ronald G. Asch, “Freundschaft und Patronage zwischen alteuropäischer Tradition und Moderne: Frühneuzeitliche Fragestellungen und Befunde,” in Varieties of Friendship: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Relationships, eds. Bernadette Descharmes, Eric Anton Heuser, and Caroline Krüger (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011), 272–3. 6 oliver Mallick, “Freundin oder Gönnerin? Anna von Österreich im Spiegel ihrer Korrespondenz,” accessed 13 August 2013, http://www.perspectivia.net/content/publikation en/discussions/8-2013/mallick_freundin/?searchterm=Oliver Mallick. 7 see Keller, Hofdamen, 200–1; Sharon Kettering, “The Patronage Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen,” The Historical Journal 32, no. 4 (1989): 826–9, 841. 8 Zum Kolk, “Catherine de Médicis,” 276; Keller, Hofdamen, 204–5. 9 sharon Kettering, “Household Appointments and Dismissals at the Court of Louis XIII,” French History 21, no. 3 (2007): 269–88; Kettering, “Strategies of Power: Favorites and Women Household Clients at Louis XIII’s Court,” French Historical Studies 33, no. 2 (2010): 177–200. 10 Mathieu Da Vinha, “La Maison d’Anne d’Autriche,” in Anne d’Autriche: d’Espagne, reine de France, ed. Chantal Grell (Paris: Perrin, 2009), 155–85.