Chevalier de Mailly

The courtesy title chevalier de Mailly is accorded in France to a younger brother of the marquis or the comte de Mailly in each generation. Though several have carried the designation,[1] the celebrated Jean, chevalier de Mailly ([2]-?1724)— possibly a brother of Louis II de Mailly (1662-1699), comte de Mailly, seigneur de Rubempré, seigneur de Rieux, seigneur d'Haucourt—[3] was the author of literary fairy tales, imaginary adventures, racy novels and romances, often published anonymously by necessity, sometimes published outside France. Departing from the formulas established by Mme d'Aulnoy, he introduced magic and marvels in his fairy tales to entertain his readers and bring his gallant lovers together. His fairy tales have often been reprinted and collected.

Life and works

He appears to have become embroiled in a gay scandal in 1682, in which an aristocratic underground circle practicing le vice italien was uncovered.[4] The supposed Confrérie italienne was even ascribed a constitution with a set of rules.[5]

The chevalier de Mailly contributed a poem to the Mercure Galant December 1700, on the occasion of the departure for Spain of the duc d'Anjou as Philippe V.[6] He declaimed his verses in the Café Procope, with the other wits of Paris.

Still, as a result of his scurrilous and anonymous secondary literary career, he could not fail to come to the attention of the lieutenant of police, Marc-Renée de Voyer d'Argenson, whose notes asserted that, far from being a godson of Louis XIV who had been wounded more than once in the armies of the King,[7] he was actually the bastard of a maid in the hôtel de Mailly, brought up, out of charity by the marquise de Mailly. The wife of a bookseller, Auroy, who had advanced him 50 écus testified against him in 1702; it appeared to her that the manuscript, La Fille capitaine,[8] instead of working up the personal memoirs of a well-known Parisian woman— recognizably the adventuress and singer Julie d'Aubigny—[9] which Mme Auroy had entrusted to him;, produced a result instead that proved to be too scandalous to publish: it featured bedroom scenes and an escaping nun setting a fire to her convent. It appears that Mailly was required to quit Paris. A follow-up report of 15 September 1711 noted that he had returned to Paris and, being apprehended, spent a month in the Châtelet, following which he retired quietly to Rouen,[10] where he seems to have remained, for his last work was printed there.

In the deductive reasoning shown by his princes of Serendip, taken up by Voltaire in Zadig, the chevalier de Mailly is sometimes credited as the originator of the clue-driven detective novel.[11] The tale was retold in English by Horace Walpole,[12] and the idea of serendipity passed into the English language.

Some works

All of the following, partly as listed at www.worldcatlibraries.org, were published at Paris except as noted. The chevallier de Mailly's works were quickly reprinted at Amsterdam, for the most part.

Notes

  1. ↑ The chevalier de Mailly, son of the marquis, was married in July 1687 to Mlle de Sainte-Hermine, a kinswoman of Mme de Maintenon; the King gave her 100,000 livres for a dowry and a position for the chevalier in the household of Monseigneur (Mémoires du marquis de Sourches sur le règne de Louis XIV (1883) vol. II p 62). The chevalier de Mailly (died 1757) of a later generation was chef de corps of dragoons in 1740, (Dragoons) thanks to the offices of his sister-in-law Mlle de Mailly, the second of three Nesle sisters who were successively mistresses to Louis XV. (Mémoires du duc de Luynes sur la cour de Louis XV vol. III (1860), under March 1740, pp 148ff).
  2. ↑ A date 1657 is apparently wrong.
  3. ↑ (Genealogy of the house of Mailly)
  4. ↑ Maurice Lever, Les bûchers de Sodome (Paris:Fayard) 1985 pp 156-67.
  5. ↑ Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy's Histoire amoureuse des Gaulles in the chapter "La France devenue italienne"; letters of the Princess Palatine, the confidante of "Monsieur", Louis XIV's gay brother.
  6. ↑ (on-line text )
  7. ↑ According to a note attached to his secret police dossier.
  8. ↑ Nothing is known of this work. Pierre Clément, La police sous Louis XIV p. 456.
  9. ↑ Oscar Paul Gilbert, "Mademoiselle Maupin"
  10. ↑ Paul Cottin, editor, Rapports inedits du lieutenant de police René d'Argenson, (1697-1715), 278.
  11. ↑ A. Craig Bell, "The rise and fall of the detective novel"Contemporary Review April 1998.
  12. ↑ Walpole, The Three Princes of Serendip (1754)
  13. ↑ "[L'oeuvre] porte tous les caracteres de la précipitation avec laquelle il fut composé. Diffus, plein de négligences, de redites, de méprises, de contradictions, il etoit peu digne des éloges qu'il reçut quand it parut & qui furent sans doute plutôt donnés à la naissance distinguées & au mérite personnel de l'auteur qu'à son Livre."
  14. ↑ Leon Fraser, "A Study in Literary Genealogy" Modern Language Notes 21.8 (December 1906), pp. 245-247.
  15. ↑ "The Novel in Europe, 1722"

References

External links

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