Madame Montansier’s Marvelous Adventure

Except for a brief spell during the French Revolution, most women in France were prevented from owning property or land right up to modern times. The only way a woman could be financially independent was to be an unmarried heiress… or use her wits and talent (and, often, looks) to carve out a life for herself. Few, however, were as successful — and lucky — as the 18th-century theater manager Madame Montansier.

This woman truly had the luck of the devil. Although she was only a modestly-talented actress, she became mistress of the Intendant of Martinique, ran a string of theaters, escaped the guillotine despite her friendship with Marie-Antoinette, persuaded Napoleon to let her open a theater after he had clamped down on them, and finally died at the venerable old age of 89. Whew! In a world that has been dominated by men until recent times, she stands out as an early female entrepreneur and theater impresario (actually, should that be impresaria?).

Like many people in the theater, Montansier did not live under her real name. She was born as Marguerite Brunet in 1730 in Bayonne and was evidently an independent and strong willed girl from an early age. At the age of 14, she was sent to live with an aunt in Paris, Hyacinthe Montansier, from whom she later took her stage name and who owned a fashionable dress shop. There, Marguerite quickly learned how to capitalize on her looks to attract men. One in particular, a young and ambitious (and married) Councillor in the Parlement de Paris named Hurson, fell for her.

When Hurson was promoted to the post of Intendant, or administrator, of the Windward Islands on Martinique, he ensured that Marguerite arrived shortly after himself and his wife. What he was not expecting was his mistress disembarking on the arms of a husband! Marguerite and a young fortune-hunter called René Bordelais, who had left his own wife in France, had struck up an acquaintance on board ship. To make her look respectable he had agreed to pass himself off as her husband. Hurson was having none of that and the hapless Bordelais was soon shipped off back to France.

At first, life on Martinique was exotic and exciting but it was not Paris, and after a while its limited attractions started to pall. Basically, Marguerite was bored and started to take a little too much interest in the new men who regularly arrived on the island. Fearing that she would leave him, Hurson offered her a dress shop to manage and keep her occupied. At the time, there was very little regulation of business affairs and everyone practiced “under the table” deals. The problem with Marguerite was that she was not discreet and being under the protection of the Intendant only went so far. Eventually she was denounced and the authorities were forced to act, eventually sending her back to France.

Never one to sit on her hands, Marguerite decided to open a gaming house on the fashionable Rue Saint-Honoré. It was an astute choice of location and the house quickly became the place to see and be seen, frequented by raffish and wealthy young clients. Through them she acquired another entrée to Parisian high society and became the mistress of the Marquis de Saint Contest.

Saint Contest was evidently very taken by her, for he set her up as the manager of a small theater on the Rue Satory in Versailles. And in middle age Mme Montansier finally found her métier as a theater manager. She discovered that she had a talent for it and by 1779 she was managing a whole string of provincial theaters across northern France: in Rouen, Nantes, Caen, Le Havre, Orléans and Fontainebleau, among others. More importantly, she caught the eye of Marie Antoinette and they became good friends. Legend has it that Montansier became friendly with the queen by feeding her soup during a performance of a play called Les Moissonneurs (“The Harvesters”).

By 1775 she was in sole charge of organizing the entertainments at Versailles: plays, dances, masked balls. She moved on from the small Théâtre de Versailles to open her own, the Théâtre Montansier. Its opening night was graced by the presence of the king and queen.

Such royal patronage was all well and good but once the Revolution broke out, having aristocratic friends was more of a liability than an advantage. Distancing herself both socially and literally, Montansier returned to Paris and took over the Théâtre des Beaujolais under the arcades of the Palais Royal. Over the next 15 years it went through numerous name changes before ending up as simply the Théâtre du Palais Royal, the name it bears today (viewed from the Rue Montpensier, it has a fabulous wrought-iron fire escape incorporated into balconies running the length of the outside of the theater, built in the 19th century to meet fire regulations).

To burnish her revolutionary credentials further, Mme Montansier then gathered a troupe of actors and followed the French army into the Austrian Netherlands, where she took over a theater in Brussels in 1793 and patriotically renamed her company Les Comédiens de la République Française.

Unfortunately this wasn’t enough to prevent her falling foul of the Reign of Terror and in November 1793 Montansier found herself imprisoned under the charges of espionage and accepting money from the English. But like the proverbial cat with nine lives, she managed to survive until the death of Robespierre when the charges were dropped and she miraculously avoided execution. Not only was she released after 10 months’ incarceration, but she also received a hefty sum in compensation as well.

Undaunted, she set up yet another company, a troupe of Italian singers called the Opéra-Buffa. But compared to her pre-Revolution glory years, the new regime under Napoleon proved to be less than accommodating. Her singers were first moved to the Salle Favart – also known as the Opéra-Comique – in 1802 and two years later she was removed altogether as director.

Things got worse when she was imprisoned a second time – for debt – and then ousted from the Palais Royal in 1806. But this time Montansier fought back. Through a personal audience she persuaded Napoleon to allow her to build a new theater on the edge of Paris, even though it would exceed his limit of only allowing eight licensed theaters in the city.

The result was the Théâtre des Variétés on the present-day Boulevard Montmartre. Today it sits in the middle of the busy Grand Boulevards surrounded by restaurants and bars and only a block from the great Rex cinema, but in 1806 it was almost in the countryside. Surrounded by trees, the theater fronted an unpaved road and the line of the old 15th-century fortifications was still visible and undeveloped.

Marguerite Montansier finally passed away in July 1820. Her life had spanned the reigns of the last two kings of France, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the restoration of the monarchy. Although in many ways she was a chancer, she had an indefatigable spirit and never gave up throughout all the vicissitudes of her life. Bizarrely, she lives on in cyberspace with a cameo role in the computer game Assassin’s Creed. Quite a woman!