THE MAKING OF A FAMILY: CONSTRUCTING COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LYON by EMILY GILKEY A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of History and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2014 ii DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Emily Gilkey Title: The Making of a Family: Constructing Companionate Marriage in Nineteenth- Century Lyon This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of History by: George Sheridan Advisor April Haynes Core Member Raymond Birn Core Member Fabienne Moore Institutional Representative and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation; Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2014 iii © 2014 Emily Gilkey iv DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Emily Gilkey Doctor of Philosophy Department of History June 2014 Title: The Making of a Family: Constructing Companionate Marriage in Nineteenth- Century Lyon During the nineteenth century, companionate marriage became a dominant marital model for the French bourgeoisie, but that ideal was poorly defined and became a point of contestation between spouses. This study focuses on Joseph and Fanny Bergier, a bourgeois couple from Lyon who created together an archive of journals and diaries spanning from 1800 to 1878. Their struggle with infertility forced them to confront the issue of what it meant to be a family and whether children were integrally necessary or if life as a couple was enough. Following a common male pattern, Joseph committed adultery, raising the issue of the place of fidelity in a companionate relationship. Their conflict over this issue, expressed in letters and diary entries, brought to light the divergence between their gendered expectations of what a companionate marriage should look like. The Bergiers’ experience of infertility led them to cultivate fictive kinship networks through philanthropy and sociability. They also used ego writing as an alternative form of family creation. Their attempts to create a family through non- biological means suggests that, despite the concurrent drop in birth rate, children were crucially important to the French vision of family life. Their disagreements over how v companionability should find expression, and what the rules governing a love-based marriage ought to be, show that the transition toward a modern family model was contested and uncertain. vi CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Emily Gilkey GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, History, 2014, University of Oregon Master of Arts, History, 2009, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History, French, 2005, University of Oregon AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Modern France Gender and Family History PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2007-2014 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: John L. and Naomi Luvaas Fellowship, 2012-2013 Center for the Study of Women in Society Graduate Research Grant, 2011 Oregon Humanities Center Graduate Research Support Fellowship, 2011-2012 Department of History Doctoral Research Award, University of Oregon, 2010- 2011 PUBLICATIONS: Gilkey, Emily. “La gourmandise au XIXe siècle à Lyon: Une approche ‘sexuée’ de la nourriture.” In Gourmandises! Histoire de la gastronomie à Lyon, edited by Maria- Anne Privat-Savigny, 46-49. Lyon: Silvana Editoriale, 2011. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the people who have made my dissertation possible. My advisor, George Sheridan, introduced me to the Bergiers’ diary and facilitated the research process. I also appreciate April Haynes, Ray Birn and Fabienne Moore for their feedback and support of this project. Funding from the University of Oregon History Department Doctoral Research Award, a grant from the Center for the Study of Women in Society and a Research Support Fellowship from the Oregon Humanities Center allowed me to travel to Lyon to do the research necessary for this dissertation. I am also thankful for funding from the John L. and Naomi M. Luvaas fellowship allowed me to dedicate myself to writing. Additionally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the curators of the Musée Gadagne who provided research space and unrestricted access to the materials in the archive. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support. My father helped fund my research and encouraged me to continue. My brother and sister cheered me on and believed I could succeed. My husband, Chris, has never complained of the sacrifices and separations necessary for my research, and is always supportive of my dreams. My mom has always been my inspiration and has encouraged me every step of the way. Thank you to all the friends and family who have made this possible. viii For Mom, who always walked with me ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 II. “TO BECOME A WOMAN LIKE ANY OTHER”: INFERTILITY AND THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE .............................................................. 11 Family Formation in the Bourgeois Restoration .................................................... 17 Dynastic Aspirations: The Inheritance-Driven Vision of Family .......................... 23 No Cost Was Too Great to Heal Herself: Cure and Conflict ................................. 33 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 49 III. ADULTERY AND EXCLUSIVITY: DEFINING THE PARAMETERS OF COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE ................................................................... 51 Adultery as an Alternative Site of Companionability: Agathe and Joseph ........... 57 The Aftermath of Adultery: Exclusivity and Companionability ........................... 78 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 88 IV. “ALMOST OUR ADOPTED DAUGHTER”: PHILANTHROPY AND SURROGACY AS FAMILY CREATION ................................................................. 91 Patronage as an Instrument of Social Control........................................................ 93 Patronage as an Avenue of Pseudo-Adoption ........................................................ 101 Creating an Heir: The Dynastic Potential of Philanthropy .................................... 109 Contested Surrogacy: Family Creation and Informal Sociability .......................... 118 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 131 x Chapter Page V. BETWEEN CONFIDENCE AND SECRECY: DIARY WRITING AS FAMILY FORMATION ....................................................................................... 134 Defining the Archive.............................................................................................. 136 Composing Companionate Marriage: Fanny’s Record .......................................... 138 Writing for Posterity: Joseph’s Writing ................................................................. 145 Keeping the Diary Jointly: Fanny and Joseph Write as a Couple.......................... 159 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 172 VI. CONCLUSION...................................................................................................... 175 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 187 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION From the eighteenth to the twenty-third of March 1878, the final seven entries that Joseph Bergier of Lyon wrote in his diary said simply “suffering” in large letters, leaving blank pages until his death on May tenth. Bergier kept this diary nearly every day for forty-five years, beginning in 1833. His life spanned the fall of Napoleon and two French revolutions in 1830 and 1848 as well as the silk weaver rebellions in Lyon in 1831 and 1834 that were seminal moments in the formation of working-class consciousness. During parts of this period, his wife Fanny kept the diary, creating a joint account of their lives as a couple. This fact, that the diary was the creation of a couple, is the characteristic for which it is best known. By the evidence of the journal, Joseph and Fanny were a very close couple who had a relationship based on affection and mutual respect. Although they shared a desire for companionate marriage, what that should mean in concrete terms was unclear. My dissertation explores this ambiguity in this case by focusing on the unstable definition of companionability among the French bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century, and the complex negotiations within marriage as couples struggled to meet an uncertain ideal. The Bergier diary comprises three main elements. The Agendas kept from 1833- 1878 mostly by Joseph and partially by Fanny, ten volumes of agricultural and housekeeping notes, known as récoltes diaries, written almost entirely by Fanny and a two volume autobiography. Each of these volumes measures approximately twelve by thirty-four centimeters. The récoltes diaries and the autobiography were both written 2 free form on blank books. The Agendas came preprinted with spaces for two to three entries per page, allowing enough space for a paragraph in a large hand or several paragraphs of cramped script. In general, Joseph favored miniscule writing with a very sharp nib to allow for maximum expression in the allotted space. In contrast, Fanny tended to push the quill harder, creating darker and larger letters. The author of a given entry can generally be told at a glance. Both Bergiers employed abbreviations of their own devising, and Fanny often neglected spelling or punctuation. The first research task was therefore learning to decipher their idiosyncratic writing. In addition to the diaries, the Bergiers left enough letters to fill several boxes with their correspondence. These letters have been entirely ignored by historians. They provide a valuable counterpoint to the diary entries, which, due to the constraints of space, are frequently terse and ambiguous. The letters made it possible to tell the story of the couple with a richness of emotional detail that the diaries alone could not provide. Joseph took great care to insure that his personal archive would remain intact and preserved beyond his death, a subject I treat in detail in the fourth chapter. Ultimately, however, it was only by chance that Joseph’s archive survived. For around forty years his papers likely rested in the Asile Bergier, a foundation that he created, untouched and unknown to scholars. Through an obscure turn of events, the collection fell into the hands of a second-hand book vendor in the early 1920s. Possibly the Asile needed the storage space for other reasons, or Joseph had passed from living memory and the volumes seemed to be of little worth. It may have changed hands before that, but the book vendor eventually became the owner. He contacted Justin Godart, a politician native to Lyon who dedicated himself to preserving Lyonnais history and culture, 3 bringing “four great sacks of old papers” that had been cleared out of an attic.1 The luck of a bookshop owner knowing of Godart and the latter recognizing the value of the materials enabled the archive to be preserved in its near entirety. Subsequently Godart donated a large portion of his collection of Lyonnaiseries to the Musée Gadagne in Lyon, including the Bergier papers. I was drawn to the archive by my interest in the history of the couple. My master’s thesis focused on public debate over the future of marriage in Belle Époque France, but I was interested in looking earlier in the nineteenth century to see the longer- term roots of the problems I discussed for the fin-de-siècle.2 The Bergier archive has been all but ignored by historians, but its dual-author format was well known which is what made it appealing. Before I began to read it I had no information whatsoever about their biography. The subjects I treat in these chapters arose out of what I found in the archive rather than my preconceived notions of what the problems of companionability were. The terms companionability, or companionate marriage, are in a sense problematic in this context. The primary issue with the designation is that there is no parallel phrase in French. Compagnonnage signifies a type of apprenticeship, while companionabilité, which might seem like the logical cognate, is not a word at all. A viable alternative designation might be mariage de sentiment, as the emphasis on sentiment places it in contrast with the arranged marriages of past eras. The descriptors 1Justin Godart, “Le journal d’un bourgeois de Lyon pendant la Révolution de 1848,” Revue du Lyonnais 6 (1923): 123–132. 2 Emily Gilkey, “Marriage in Crisis: The Individual and the State in Belle Époque France” (master’s thesis, University of Oregon, 2009). 4 “sentimental marriage” or its relative “affective marriage” were to my mind less than ideal choices because they captured the emphasis on feeling, but did not adequately reflect the importance of partnership and exclusivity that was central to the Bergiers’ debates about marriage. Alternatively, “egalitarian marriage” as a descriptor was, in this period, simply inaccurate. The Napoleonic Code ensured that there was nothing equal about the relative positions of men and women in society. “Conjugal marriage,” coined by Helena Michie, underemphasized the aspect of friendship and overemphasized the importance of sexuality in a way that does not capture the phenomenon I discuss here.3 I use the term “companionate marriage” because it most closely captures the type of marriage that the Bergiers exemplified: a couple who married for love, and shared expectations of emotional fulfillment as well as a degree of partnership. This is the story of a bourgeois couple. Class permeated every aspect of their lives and is an important element of all four chapters of this dissertation. When I characterize the Bergiers as bourgeois, what do I mean? The classic Marxist definition of the French bourgeoisie relied heavily on analysis of levels of wealth. Adeline Daumard was the leading proponent of this approach, using tax records, inventories and other economic indicators to create a careful taxonomy of a class she separated into several tiers. The grand notable, bourgeoisie moyenne and petit bourgeois had in turn a direct correlation to political opinions, allowing scholars to make a neat tie between concrete economic indicators and the turbulent politics of the nineteenth century. By this standard alone, the Bergiers belonged to the moyenne bourgeoisie, rising above the status of 3 Helena Michie, Victorian Honeymoons: Journeys to the Conjugal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20. 5 shopkeeper but falling far short of the captains of industry. This structuralist model of understanding the bourgeoisie has remained popular among some French scholars.4 The Marxist categorization of the bourgeoisie has fallen out of favor as historians began to question that a bourgeois revolution had occurred at all. Patrick Joyce proposed a linguistic approach in which class was but one identity among many that an individual might feel in relationship to wider society. Joseph Bergier embodied this idea as he saw himself as both a member of the Lyonnais elite and a republican, the latter identity constituting an imagined collective identity that transcended class boundaries.5 In contrast to the linguistic approach, some historians have taken an ethnographic path that sees class as a device of social negotiation. Rather than having a primarily political or economic significance, class was about navigating relationships.6 One of the advantages of the ethnographic approach is that it included women as both producers and readers of class. Earlier definitions of the term bourgeois relied on socioeconomic signifiers that left women out; they were bourgeois by virtue of being related to someone who had access to the means of production, not because of anything they did or were. 4 Adeline Daumard, La bourgeoisie parisienne de 1815 à 1848 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1963); Adeline Daumard and Félix Codaccioni, Les fortunes françaises au XIXe siècle: enquête sur la répartition et la composition des capitaux privés à Paris, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux et Toulouse d’après l’enregistrement des déclarations de succession (Paris: Mouton, 1973); Jean-Pierre Chaline, Les bourgeois de Rouen: Une élite urbaine au XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1982). 5 Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1-2; Carol E. Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution: Recent Approaches to the Middle Class in European Cities,” Journal of Urban History 31 (2005): 384-385. 6 Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution,” 386. 6 Monographs from this school of thought address topics such as fashion, vacations, family life and sociability.7 My work on the Bergiers draws from both the linguistic and the ethnographic approaches to understanding and defining the bourgeoisie. The Bergiers were bourgeois in the sense that class was a means of describing them as part of a large group the members of which they would never meet. They saw themselves as belonging to the non-aristocratic elite of Lyonnais society, extending that perspective to include the bourgeoisie of Paris and other regional capitals over the course of their travels. This gave a sense of belonging to a class despite the fact that they would never meet most of the people who fit in that category, giving their bourgeois identity an imaginary quality. Yet their day-to-day interactions, the guest lists for parties and the membership in the charity Joseph founded showed confidence in their ability to identify and associate with the right sort of people. The fact that class was largely imaginary did not inhibit their ability to use it as a marker for sociability and distinguishing subtle social hierarchies.8 The influence of class identity on the definition of companionate marriage and family creation appears as a theme throughout this work. This dissertation is about the definition and meaning of family, but it is also the story of one specific couple. To facilitate the understanding of the reader I will provide a 7 Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1994); Douglas Peter Mackaman, Leisure Settings: Bourgeois Culture, Medicine and the Spa in Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Christine Adams, A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Catherine Pellissier, Loisirs et sociabilités des notables lyonnais au XIXe siècle (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1996). 8 Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution,” 389. 7 biographical overview of the Bergiers as well as an introduction to secondary personages as a point of reference. The chapters include further biographical information and appear in roughly chronological order. Joseph Bergier was born in 1800, the only child of Joseph Bergier, whom I designate as Joseph père, and Françoise Gabet. Joseph père was a liqueurist who eventually acquired enough wealth to purchase a small chateau outside Lyon in the town of Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or. Françoise suffered from a debilitating mental illness that became so severe she was a virtual prisoner at the country estate, later coming under the stewardship of Fanny. In due course Joseph was apprenticed to his father’s trade and later became a partner. After his father’s death in 1833 he sold the business to a friend and lived for the rest of his life on private income, supplemented by investments in real estate. Fanny Bergier, née Bertholon, was the daughter of a wealthy silk merchant. Born in 1799, there is very little information about her childhood or adolescence, other than that she had a close relationship with her brother César who was nine years her junior. César grew up to become a prominent republican politician, serving as Prefect of the Loire under Gambetta in the 1870s. Fanny had a governess whose name was Agathe Reynaud and who, in their adult lives, was a close friend for many years. Fanny and Joseph married in 1824 after three years of courtship. Their relationship had been stage-managed by their parents who actively promoted the match, but it was not an arranged marriage in the traditional sense. For the first several years of their married life they lived with Joseph’s family, migrating back and forth between a town residence and the estate. 8 The defining problem in their marriage was an inability to conceive children. Fanny sought professional help through spa treatments, which ultimately proved ineffectual. This pathology brought into the open a conflict over the meaning of family that in fertile marriages could be easily ignored. Joseph viewed children as being absolutely central to his vision of married life, which centered on his dynastic hopes and the importance of maintaining the upward mobility of the family. This economic view of marriage was in conflict with Fanny’s more sentimental perspective. While she seemingly desired children, she was willing to see life as a couple as constituting a family. Their gendered perception of the significance of children had wider resonance with shifts in population at a national level. The uncertain relationship between reproduction and companionability is the subject of the first chapter. In addition to struggling with biological impediments to an idealized family life, Joseph and Fanny confronted a problem common to couples of the nineteenth century. Like many men of his era, Joseph engaged in an adulterous affair, causing Fanny to wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and jealousy that she expressed in bitter recriminations. Adultery and its attendant complications are evident in the correspondence between Joseph and his mistress Agathe Reynaud, Fanny’s former governess, and in angry letters between Fanny and her husband. The second chapter deals with the competing definitions of companionate marriage that Joseph’s affair brought to the fore. Fanny, Joseph, and his mistress Agathe all had their own understanding of what companionability should mean, and they each struggled to define the parameters of their respective relationships according to their own vision. The 9 perspective of Agathe is particularly significant because it illustrates that the ideal of companionability applied to relationships other than conventional marriage. The third chapter deals with alternative forms of family creation. When confronted with infertility, the Bergiers actively sought new ways of imagining the boundaries of their family. The strict adoption laws of the time limited the options of infertile couples to form a family with children of their own. The Bergiers therefore sought to extend their family through philanthropic activity, which effectively provided an avenue for circumventing those laws. Joseph and Fanny founded and ran the Société de Patronage pour les enfants pauvres de la ville de Lyon, a bourgeois association dedicated to providing education and opportunities for individual poor children. Fanny, as a patroness, was partnered with a little girl named Marie Duclos, whom she helped to educate and raise. Though they shared no legal relationship, Fanny’s patronage of Marie provided a form of kinship that was a palliative to Fanny’s childlessness. The chapter also addresses the ways in which informal sociability among the bourgeoisie lent itself to pseudo-adoption. It also addresses the ways in which biological parents both facilitated and resisted the Bergiers’ attempts to collect their children into an adoptive relationship. The final chapter looks at the process of creating the diary itself as a vehicle and an expression of family life. Both Joseph and Fanny kept portions of the diary, but they did so for very different reasons that reflected their individual priorities. This chapter draws in particular from their record of the Revolution of 1848, which is the only segment of the diary treated by other historians. Though both partners kept the diary, each wrote for a different audience. The result was a record that both chronicled their 10 lived experience as a couple and pointed to their conflicting priorities and expectations within marriage. Throughout this dissertation, I will explore the ways in which gender was integral in informing roles within marriage. A secondary theme will be the function of class in determining family relationships and the coping a mechanism that infertile couples employed to confront childlessness. The case of the Bergiers illustrates the ways in which the development of companionate marriage was contested and uncertain ground, suggesting a wider pattern of pathology that had resonance for other couples in France. 11 CHAPTER II “TO BECOME A WOMAN LIKE ANY OTHER”: INFERTILITY AND THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE Two competing sets of values defined bourgeois marriage in the nineteenth century. The bourgeois value of property and continuity played an important role in family formation. As Adeline Daumard argued convincingly, the bourgeois elite envisioned themselves as the new nobility, an aristocracy of money and inheritance but also an aristocracy of work and responsibility. Unlike the old aristocracy, however, members of this elite were not protected from their own potentially rebellious progeny by the glory of a long pedigree. Rather, as Kempf and Aron have argued, the bourgeoisie was largely at the mercy of its filiation. Bourgeois families were dependent for their honor on their ability to produce heirs of sufficient ability and industry to take over the family business, becoming prisoners of their own fertility, or lack thereof. In other words, one way of distinguishing what it meant to be a bourgeois was the extent to which an individual was able to amass wealth and pass it on to the next generation, a characteristic that was central to male identity in particular.9 At the same time, the new emotional community of the family emerged, defined by expectations of affective ties and sentimental expressions. The shift to smaller families 9 Adeline Daumard, Les bourgeois de Paris au XIXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 166; Jean Paul Aron and Roger Kempf, La bourgeoisie le sexe et l’honneur (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1984), 167; Robert Nye, “Honor, Impotence, and Male Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century French Medicine,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989): 49. 12 encouraged parental investment, resulting in more concentrated love for each child.10 Though Adeline Daumard claimed that bourgeois marriages during this period and through the end of the century remained primarily economic arrangements, in fact beginning early in the century both couples and their families had an expectation of companionability in marriage. Mutual love was an essential component to what contemporaries considered a happy marriage to be.11 Infertility forced into prominence a tension between economics and emotion that was present in companionate marriages during this period. From one standpoint, families were primarily economic units. The ideal marriage would be based on financial compatibility and children were a crucial dynastic component in carrying forward the family’s accrued wealth. On the other hand, marriage could also be seen as primarily an affective institution, providing emotional fulfillment. In this version of marriage, children were important primarily for sentimental reasons. In fertile marriages these tensions could be less apparent. If a person fell in love with a partner who was also financially desirable, as the Bergiers did, the vying motives for matrimony became a moot point. Infertility brought the differences between economic and affective views of family life to the forefront of a relationship. If children were simply an added blessing to a union of love, the marriage could continue to be happy and satisfying without them. Children were not requisite for an affectionate couple to consider themselves a family. If, however, children were a necessary component for 10 Leslie Tuttle, Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8. 11 Adeline Daumard, “Affaire, amour, affection: le mariage dans la société bourgeoise au XIXe siècle,” Romantisme 20 (1990): 33-34; Denise Davidson, “‘Happy’ Marriages in Early Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Family History 37 (2012): 24. 13 the growth of business and a secure inheritance, it was not possible to be a family, happy or otherwise, without them. Infertility forced into the open conflicting views of marriage that could be disguised in relationships where reproduction came easily. The problem of infertility highlighted the wider reality that the values of the bourgeoisie were inherently contradictory, producing a marriage of incompatible ideals that could not readily find resolution. Infertility was central to the way the Bergiers experienced married life. Joseph wrote a chapter of his autobiography that detailed his wife Fanny’s 1828 trip to Mont Dore, a spa located about a hundred and fifty miles from Lyon in Auvergne. In his words “her goal in going to the Waters was to reestablish her health, to bring back the monthly flux of blood which alone would permit her to become a mother...no cost was too great to heal herself & to manage to become a woman like any other.”12 This quote is representative of the key issues surrounding infertility that will be discussed in this chapter. Joseph’s views reflected the contemporary understanding of infertility that presumed female responsibility. His idea that Fanny would “become a woman like any other” signaled a crucial divide between husband and wife. In Joseph’s vision, the spa would fundamentally change Fanny by making her a mother, thereby bringing her in line with social norms and filling his idea of what family meant. Fanny’s perspective on what her purpose in going to the spa was is not present in the account. Though Joseph implied 12 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” & de ma vie 2e volume” (unpublished autobiography, second volume, Joseph Bergier Papers, Fonds Justin Godart, Musée Gadagne Lyon) 117. All sources from the Musée Gadagne are in the collection Fonds Justin Godart and will hereafter only be noted by the abbreviation MG. 14 that his goal and hers were interchangeable, the wider body of evidence suggests her perspective was quite different.13 The study of infertility complicates the picture of demographic shift in nineteenth- century France. There is no question that France’s population stagnated over the course of the nineteenth century while other European nations continued to grow exponentially. Laws forbidding the distribution of obscene texts or printed matter limited the dissemination of contraceptive information through the printed page. As a result, methods of birth control were all but absent from French publications, due to the weight of Catholic tradition that made a taboo of sexual discussions, as well as the fear authors felt of the potential for legal action. In spite of cultural pressures to the contrary, the French were world leaders in innovating methods to limit family size.14 As a lived experience, the stagnation of the population differed greatly between regions, determined in part by the level of religious practice within a given area. The average family size dropped from five children per woman at the beginning of the century to around three and a half at the end, but that figure masked the fact that many couples continued to have large families, while others chose to have one child or none at all. This demographic change was remarkable and has engaged the attention of many 13 Laure Adler, Secrets d’alcôve: Histoire du couple de 1830 à 1930 (Poitiers: Hachette, 1983), 101. Adler treats the idea that woman is complete until she becomes a mother. 14 Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 138; Étienne Van de Walle and Virginia De Luca, “Birth Prevention in the American and French Fertility Transitions: Contrasts in Knowledge and Practice,” Population and Development Review 32 (2006): 541-542; Jacqueline Hecht, “From ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’ to Family Planning: The Enlightenment Transition,” Eighteenth Century Studies 32 (1999): 536-539; E. A. Wrigley, “The Fall of Marital Fertility in Nineteenth-Century France: Exemplar or Exception? (Part II),” European Journal of Population 1 (1985): 164. 15 historians. Couples like the Bergiers, who had no choice in the number of children they had, provide nuance to the story of family limitation.15 Most of the historiography about childlessness in the nineteenth century has centered on the intersection of politics and motherhood during the Third Republic. Elinor Accampo and Anne Cova have focused on how feminists deployed maternity for feminist causes, the former focusing particularly on the example of Nelly Roussel who advocated that women go on a “womb strike” in order to gain political rights.16 This tactic had the potential to be effective largely because of the extraordinary anxiety about depopulation manifested by politicians and those in power. Polemicists and prominent thinkers perceived depopulation as a threat to masculinity, as well as being evidence of national degeneracy. The language of crisis that pervaded public discourse toward the end of the 15 Van de Walle, and De Luca, “Birth Prevention,” 529, 537-542; Jean-Louis Ormières, “Natalité, fécondité et illégitimité en Anjou au XIXe siècle,” Histoire, économie et société 19 (2000): 235-236; Histoire de la population française, ed. Jacques Dupaquier, vol. 3, 1789 à 1914 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 388; Tuttle, Conceiving the Old Regime, 8. 16 Anne Cova, “French feminism and maternity: theories and policies, 1890-1918,” in Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of European Welfare States ed. Gisela Bock (New York: Routledge, 1991), 119-137; Elinor Accampo, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit: Nelly Roussel and the Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 55; Elinor Accampo, “Private Life, Public Image: Motherhood and Militancy in the Self- Construction of Nelly Roussel, 1900-1922,” in The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Jo Burr Margadant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 222; See also Francis Ronsin, La grève des ventres: propagande néo-malthusienne et baisse de la natalité française, XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980). 16 nineteenth century was, according to Judith Surkis, an expression of the precariousness of masculinity.17 None of these historians have addressed the problem of involuntary childlessness. Like the panicked pundits of the nineteenth century, the tendency has been to analyze the falling birthrate only from the position of those who could potentially have been more fecund. Only Robert Nye has addressed even tangentially the implications of sterility. His analysis focused on the meaning of fatherhood and reproduction for male honor and masculine identity.18 His work did not look at the impact of infertility on the family more broadly, nor did he assess the implications of childlessness for bourgeois identity or marriage relationships. My work addresses this lacuna in the historiography. The norm of marital control over reproduction put pressure both on fertile and infertile couples to meet an external standard of family composition. Contemporary debates about the falling birthrate worked from the assumption that family limitation was voluntary and that couples controlled their fertility.19 The example of the Bergiers challenged this stereotype, as infertile couples could not simply decide to have children regardless of social or political pressure to reproduce. The smaller family size did not reduce pressure on couples to reproduce. On the contrary, the emphasis on affective ties 17 Judith Surkis, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France 1870-1920, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) 12; Steven C. Hause and Anne Kenney, Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 17. 18 Nye, “Honor, Impotence,” 49. 19 See Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century (London: Methuen, 1984), 31-55. McLaren outlines the relationship between perception of control and fertility. 17 between parents and one or two children made fertility more, not less important. Ideally a couple would have fewer, but better and more beloved babies. The shift in marital conventions toward companionate marriage was tied to the new social expectation of a nuclear family. As husbands and wives increasingly aspired to have a love-based relationship, children likewise gained affective significance. Increasing intimacy between spouses accompanied more tight-knit kin relationships generally.20 Parents invested emotionally, economically and educationally to a greater degree than they had in past centuries. Though people had fewer children, they also put more energy into their upbringing, with a view toward upward mobility. At the same time maternity and paternity gained increasing social importance as children were no longer relegated to the nursery but spent more time with their parents and in public.21 Family Formation in the Bourgeois Restoration It is within this contested space, as the nineteenth-century model of family formation overtook the traditions of the preceding centuries that the Bergiers struggled with infertility. Joseph Bergier and Fanny Bertholon were married in 1824. Their parents had been raised under the Ancien Régime, but were married during the Revolution and raised their children during the first Empire and the Bourbon Restoration. Neither Joseph 20 Anne Martin-Fugier, “Bourgeois Rituals,” in A History of Private Life, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 199), 322; Anya Jabour, “‘No Fetters but Such as Love Shall Forge:’ Elizabeth and William Wirt and Marriage in the Early Republic,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 104 (1996): 218. Jabour analyzes similar themes in an American context. 21 Michelle Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” in A History of Private Life, ed. Michelle Perrot, vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 199), 196; Hecht, “Be Fruitful and Multiply,” 536-538. 18 nor Fanny remembered the Revolution, much less the patterns of life it disrupted. Nevertheless, the upheavals of the late eighteenth century as well as the social conditions of the early nineteenth century had a profound effect on their legal options and attitudes toward infertility. The difficulty for the Bergiers was that Fanny never became pregnant. All the documentation attests that the family assumed that she was to blame for the couple’s childlessness. This was partially a cultural predisposition, as men were generally only blamed for infertility if they were impotent.22 In these early years of their marriage, there was absolutely no evidence that Joseph had difficulty performing sexually. As added confirmation of the source of the problem, Fanny stopped menstruating in her late twenties, a key indicator to contemporaries of where the fault lay.23 In reality, Joseph’s peccadillos may have been at the root of the Bergiers’ inability to have children. He had a sexually transmitted disease and likely gave it to Fanny, which may have rendered her infertile. Prior to his marriage, Joseph had indulged in the sexual escapades common to his gender and class at the time. Along with his friend Pierre Pézieux he rented a room where he could have regular rendezvous with an unnamed grisette, a slang term for a working-class woman who made ends meet with part-time prostitution. This young woman “who had had my favors” lost them “because 22 Guillaume-René Le Fébure, Le manuel des femmes enceintes, de celles qui sont en couches et des mères qui veulent nourrir (Paris: Bastien, 1777), 4; McLaren, Impotence: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 75. McLaren addreses how the tendency to blame women was also present in the early modern period. 23 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 14 July 1830, Box 64.2, MG. 19 she gave me a very nasty present. Misery of Youth!!”24 When Joseph met Fanny, one of the first things that attracted him to her was “her appearance of brilliant health,” yet within a few short years she was chronically ill and infertile.25 In addition to stopping her period, she experienced “perte bl.” or excessive vaginal discharge, as well as a rash, both plausibly symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease.26 While it is impossible to say for certain, the evidence suggests that Joseph transmitted his “nasty present” to his wife, damaging her reproductive organs and making it difficult for her to conceive children. Ironically, Joseph may well have been to blame for his wife’s gynecological problems, though there is no evidence that he ever came to that conclusion himself. The question of blame aside, the precarious position of the new notables put families like the Bergiers under a great deal of pressure to have biological children, ideally sons. The bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century was at the mercy of its descendants. The aristocracy, under the Old Regime, could rely upon the mystique of noble bloodlines and the legal protection of entailed estates to ensure continuity of family honor and prestige, regardless of the vices of any particular generation. By contrast, the 24 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 61. 25 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 54. 26 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 30 May 1831, Box 64.2, MG; While Fanny did complain of these symptoms to Joseph, she never explicitly stated her suspicions of sexually transmitted disease. It was not considered appropriate for women to even know the existence of the disease, much less accuse their husbands. See Jill Harsin, “Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians: Medical Ethics and the Family in Late Nineteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1989): 73. 20 honor of the bourgeoisie was dependent on the willingness and ability of the next generation to ascend another rung up the social ladder.27 Joseph’s father had founded a successful liqueur concern that made him a wealthy man and opened opportunities for political and social advancement. When Joseph came of age, the business became known as Bergier et fils as he took his place as partner in a thriving enterprise.28 Unlike a noble estate, however, the only way for the firm to continue to bear the family name, bringing with it wealth and prestige, was to continue to have sons and raise them to become liqueurists. There were no collateral lines, nor was the weight of history sufficient to ensure the prominence of the Bergiers in Lyonnais society. Their only recourse was reproductive. It was therefore of paramount importance to engender sons, and to ensure that they joined and expanded the family business through their own industry.29 The Napoleonic Code enshrined in law policies that provided a strong incentive for bourgeois men like Joseph to put a high premium on fathering biological children within marriage. First promulgated in 1804, the new legal system permitted adoption only under very restricted circumstances. The adoptive parents had to be over fifty years of age and the adoptee at least twenty-five years old. Adoption for the sake of raising a child as one’s own was therefore not possible, serving only a last resort to allow childless 27 Aron and Kempf, Le sexe et l’honneur, 167. 28 Bergier et fils means Bergier and son. See Bergier and Bugand, “Product List”, 1820s, Box 49.2 Biographique MG; Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 75. 29 Bernadette Angleraud and Catherine Pellissier, Les dynasties lyonnaises: des Morins- Pons aux Mérieux du XIXe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 259-260; The importance of both an active family life and political participation to bourgeois lyonnais is discussed more fully Pierre-Yves Saunier, L’esprit lyonnais XIXe-XXe siècle: Genèse d’une représentation sociale (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1995), 19-21. 21 couples of advanced years to acquire an adult heir. The process of choosing a successor, however, was so complex as to make adoption all but impossible. The relationship between adoptive parent and the adult adoptee had to carry special significance; it was not enough to simply choose a willing party. One possible scenario involved prospective parents providing aid to the adoptee for at least six years during his or her minority, without a legal adoption yet taking place. Thus a sizeable financial investment was a precursor to even the possibility of naming a child one’s heir. The other contingency was still less probable; if the child saved the party adopting in a fight or by rescuing him from a fire or drowning, the government would approve the adoption.30 Thus one could adopt an adult only by providing for that person through childhood and finalizing the process after the child reached their majority, or if the adoptee saved the adopting party’s life through outstanding acts of bravery. Not surprisingly, adoption was rare in France. In addition to effectively eliminating adoption, the Napoleonic Code provided added incentive for biological reproduction by closing off the alternative of divorce. This was somewhat ironic, given Napoleon Bonaparte’s personal history. He married Joséphine de Beauharnais for love, but they were unable to have children together. Ultimately he divorced her and married Marie Louise of Austria, in order to have the son he so desired. His personal history closely tied divorce with reproduction, but his legacy in the legal code had the opposite effect.31 30 George Spence, trans. Code Napoléon (London: Benning, 1827) Title 8, §343-346. 31 Carolly Erickson, Josephine: A Life of the Empress (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 281. 22 Initially, Napoleon’s regime had permitted divorce in deference to its popularity during the Revolution, though the Code reversed some of the freedoms women had enjoyed during the earlier period. The Bourbon Restoration in 1815 brought with it a conservative reaction that resulted in the outlawing divorce. Thus a husband could not divorce a barren wife and seek a more fertile partner, nor could wives accuse their husbands of impotence and dissolve the marriage.32 By limiting the alternatives of adoption or divorce, the Napoleonic Code made biological reproduction the only means of family creation. Even as the Code gave greater importance to biological relationships, it paradoxically provided a powerful motive to limit family size. The law mandated that all children, male and female, inherit equally. The father could choose to divide his property into one more portion than he had children, for instance four portions among three children, in order give to one child a double portion. Beyond that, however, all children must be compensated in equal measure.33 This created a compelling inducement to limit family size in order to preserve family wealth. By having fewer children, couples reduced the number of portions into which their property must be divided. Having small families therefore became a key component of upward mobility across generations.34 32 See McLaren, Impotence, 37. This was in contrast to the early modern period in Europe, in which a divorce or judicial separation could be extended if two court- appointed physicians performed a medical examination and concluded that the man could not perform sexually. 33 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 1, §745; Title 2, §913. 34 See Cova, “French Feminism,” 120. Critics saw this as a selfish and predominantly male reason for the drop in population. 23 Dynastic Aspirations: The Inheritance-Driven Vision of Family The Bergiers were an excellent case study for the impact of the new legal system on families. The liqueur manufacturing business was only part of the economic and social capital that Joseph père had amassed.35 The success of the business allowed him to purchase a large estate in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or upriver of Lyon, providing greater social cachet as well as agricultural income. This in turn allowed him to have a political career as the mayor of Collonges. The wealth and prestige of Joseph’s family motivated him to continue the tradition, which he attempted to do through his own business endeavors and political machinations. Infertility interrupted the material cycle of goods by putting into question the line of inheritance. There was no way for Joseph to pass on his riches or sponsor a son in public affairs. He could not adopt a child to raise as a future partner in Bergier et fils liqueuristes. It was also not possible to divorce Fanny to try to have children with a younger, more fertile woman. Joseph’s options were severely limited by the legal system, thwarting his ability to continue the dynasty his father had founded. Nevertheless, his ambitions of pursuing upward mobility led him to harbor a view of family that made having children absolutely necessary. Advantageous marriage was a key component of social advancement for the bourgeoisie. Fanny had been particularly desirable as a marriage prospect because of her wealth and connections. Her father was head of a successful silk manufacturing concern and, like Joseph père, had risen from humble beginnings to a position of wealth and 35 I use the designation père, meaning father, to help the reader keep the members of the Bergier family straight. I refer to the main personage of this story, Fanny’s husband, as simply Joseph, and his father, also named Joseph Bergier, as Joseph père. As an added confusion, Joseph’s grandfather and his godson were also named Joseph Bergier. 24 prominence in society. As his only daughter, Fanny brought a sizable dowry to the marriage consisting of forty thousand francs in cash and a trousseau valued at two thousand francs.36 This personal fortune suggests that her family belonged to the ranks of the very wealthy, at least in terms of the provincial bourgeoisie. The interest from her dowry alone would have been sufficient to maintain a bourgeois lifestyle in Lyon. She was, therefore, a highly eligible marriage partner from an economic viewpoint, a fact that was not lost on Joseph’s father. Joseph père had masterminded the alliance between Joseph and Fanny, hoping to secure at the same time Fanny’s sizeable dowry and her presumably fertile womb to ensure the continuity of the Bergier name. For the older generation, companionate marriage was a subordinate consideration to economic eligibility. Joseph père was willing to promote a version of companionability, by allowing Joseph and Fanny to choose each other while severely limiting their opportunities to meet anyone else. When Joseph announced his intention to offer for Fanny, his father was pleased. In later years Joseph realized that the entire courtship had been orchestrated by his father, who “strongly desired this union and pushed me to it by all means” using his ingenuity to “multiply our interviews & frequently inviting the Bertholon family.”37 Marriage based on love and mutual esteem was desirable, but not a sufficient compensation should the marriage be a failure 36 Étude Jacques Chazal, Mariage Bergier Bertholon, 13 January 1824, 3 E 9285 Archives Départementales du Rhône (ADR); Florence Laroche-Gisserot, “Pratiques de la dot en France au XIXe siècle,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 43 (1988): 1443- 1445. 37 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 74. 25 economically. Happily enough, Fanny and Joseph obligingly fell in love with one another, sealing with affection a deal that was economically beneficial to their parents. Women of Fanny’s social class made important economic contributions to their families. Fanny worked for the family business behind the counter, helping to sell liqueurs while the men were engaged in production and maintaining customer relationships throughout the region.38 She kept records of the orders placed by customers as far as Colmar and Reims and forwarded the lists of buyers and quantities to Joseph while he was away on business trips.39 Over the course of the nineteenth century the transition toward companionate marriage happened in conjunction with the move toward separate spheres, with women playing a less direct role in business. In the early 1820s and early 1830s, the first years of the Bergiers’ marriage, these changes were not yet as widespread as they would later become. Fanny’s contribution to the family economy paired her sizeable dowry with her work in sales and customer relations.40 Like many bourgeois families, the Bergiers supplemented their income with agricultural products grown on property in the country. Fanny’s economic contributions to the family included her labor in running the estate in Collonges as well as overseeing household operations. Her récoltes diaries, a detailed record of harvests, plantings and 38 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 20-21 January 1834, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), 283. 39 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 13 November 1832, Box 64.2, MG. 40 See Beatrice Craig, “Lending Women, Borrowing Women: Middle-Class Women, Investments and Credit in Northern France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Women and Credit: Researching the Past, Refiguring the Future, ed. Beverly Lemire et al. (New York: Berg, 2002), 52-53. 26 servant labor, show she carried a heavy responsibility. Her oversight of the household included hiring and firing servants and seasonal laborers, preserving food, acting as hostess to frequent house parties and being the primary caregiver to her mother-in-law who was mentally unstable. In terms of agriculture she made the decisions about what to plant, where each crop would be placed, how much inventory to sell locally; she also oversaw the extensive pleasure gardens around the house. These responsibilities were demanding and time consuming. As Joseph indicated, Fanny hoped her housewifely prowess would compensate for her inability to produce an heir, but according to Joseph, Joseph Père was not satisfied.41 Valuable though Fanny’s labor was to the family’s commercial enterprises, her most important contribution would be to ensure the succession by producing a male heir who could become a partner in the firm as an adult. In failing to do so, she jeopardized the future of the family business and posed a serious threat to the accumulated family property. Her dowry had constituted a sizeable increase in the overall familial wealth, but if she died childless it could (and ultimately, did) revert to her family of origin.42 41 Fanny Bergier, récoltes diary, 1836 and 1837, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Chaline, Les bourgeois de Rouen, 208; Adams, Comfort and Status, 66. 42 Étude Claude Vachez, “Dépôt du testament olographe Mme Bergier,” 4 August 1854, 3 E 19845 ADR; For more on inheritance see Laroche-Gisserot, “Pratiques de la dot,” 1439, 1445; Pierre Louis Tissandier, Traité méthodique et complet sur la transmission des biens par successions, donations et testaments suivant les lois anciennes, intermédiaires et nouvelles (Paris: Didot, 1805), 209-210. 27 “The Injustice of Men is Fairly Great”: The Impact of Infertility on Family Life Fanny’s work for the family included the vital role of caregiver for her mentally ill mother-in-law. Françoise, Joseph’s mother, was a danger to herself and others. She had manic episodes on a regular basis, which began with an attempt in 1813 to drown Joseph in the Saône.43 Her outbursts began with “a growing exaltation, an incessant babble” which culminated in songs and cries. At this point the family secured her with a straightjacket to a chair “to prevent her from tearing at her limbs, or everything that would fall under her hand.” After the crisis subsided she would briefly be lucid, making inquiries after her family and manifesting her former personality. For about a month she would remain calm and her manner of speech and reasoning “made those who did not study her state more in depth believe that she was not in the least mad.”44 Unwilling to place her in an institution, Joseph père housed her in the countryside where she could not harm or embarrass her family. Before Fanny had joined the family an elderly maid had been her sole companion, but this arrangement had proved inadequate.45 Fanny became her caregiver and jailor, becoming isolated in her turn. 43 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie de Joseph Bergier 1800-1813,” (unpublished autobiography, first volume), Box Bergier Diary, MG, 116-117. The straightjacket appeared in the inventory of Collonges that was made after Joseph Père’s death. See Joseph Bergier, “Inventaire de Collonges déc. 1833 État des mobiliers de Collonges et de Lyon après le décès de M. Bergier Père,” 1833, Box 102 MG, 25. 44 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” 116. 45 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 4. During the foreign invasion at the end of Napoleon’s reign Françoise’s condition and isolation left her vulnerable to assault and rape: “Seule avec sa bonne, elle eût à souffrir de violences de la part de cette soldatesque. Elle n’avoit pas encore 40 ans, sa figure étoit jolie, sa taille bien prise, & son état maladif, ne lui permit probablement pas de se défendre.” 28 The living presence of Françoise put Fanny in the awkward position of being both the authority figure and the subordinate. In her lucid periods, Françoise contested her daughter-in-law’s preeminence in the household, asserting that the latter had no right to give orders or make decisions. Constantly separated from her husband, Fanny expressed her frustration in letters to Joseph. She wrote that Françoise claimed “she was in her home and in consequence she alone should give orders...she wanted to give invitations and invite many people that I [Fanny] do not know.”46 While part of the time Françoise was severely unstable and dangerous to herself, there were prolonged periods in which she was partially or completely rational and in a position to argue against what she perceived to be a usurpation of her position by a subordinate. Domestic tensions, present in many families, were exacerbated by infertility. The bourgeoisie of Lyon at the time were fairly mobile, moving apartments with surprising frequency, but their primary impetus to do so was a growing family.47 Joseph père’s property was spacious enough to accommodate everyone, so lacking children it was difficult for Joseph to give grounds for getting a separate residence. He ruefully recalled his thwarted desire for autonomy in his autobiography: “I desired to live alone with my dear wife, & and enjoy in my home an independence that is so dear to all, & which I did not enjoy until much later.”48 46 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 12 May 1834, Box 64.2, MG. 47 Catherine Pellissier, La vie privée des notables lyonnais au XIXème siècle (Lyon: Éditions Lyonnaises d’art et d’histoire, 1996), 23. 48 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 85. 29 Joseph’s desire for independence stemmed in large part from the tense family situation engendered by the hierarchy present in the multi-generational home. The defining relationship was vertical, rather than horizontal; both Fanny and Joseph were subject to the whims of his father and to a lesser extent his mother, and their happiness, relationship, and freedom were primarily defined by parental dictates. Joseph père was highly critical of Fanny; “In all that she did, he found nothing of good, & and was with her, though always very polite, of a discouraging coldness; also communal life became really difficult.”49 The easiest escape from the painful relationship the young couple had with his parents would have been to have children, justifying thereby a separate establishment and an independent life. Children were not forthcoming, and as a result the young Bergiers lived with his parents for many years. Traditional forms of male sociability in Lyon also presented obstacles to the formation of intimacy between spouses. In 1826, Joseph joined the masonic lodge Union and Confidence, which had just been organized. In his autobiography he recalled “Not only did I never miss a reunion, but every Monday I went faithfully to the council of this same lodge.” He recalled going to many other masonic activities “at least 3 evenings a week.” As a result, “in winter my poor wife was often deprived of her husband, and in the summer the exigencies of masonry often kept me from going to see her at Collonges, where she almost always was.”50 Fanny very much resented Joseph’s activity in the masonic lodges and made her disapproval known. In one letter Joseph wrote a meandering confession about dining 49 Ibid., 127. 50 Ibid. 100-101. 30 with his masonic brethren, knowing how much it annoyed his wife that he had done so. “Yesterday I ate shall I say it? . . . how to say it . . . quick a paraphrase . . . I ate . . . where . . . where you need white gloves & an apron.” He went on to entreat “Ah! I beg you, do not get angry, you weren’t here . . . so [my dining] could not have deprived you of me . . . & you know that you don’t have any other motive for hatred. . . towards this philosophical order.”51 While there is no direct evidence of Fanny’s dislike of masonry, reading backward from Joseph’s letter it is clear she begrudged the leisure time he devoted to the order instead of to her. Joseph enjoyed many other pursuits that left Fanny isolated at home. He recalled, “I loved to go to the Café, to [play] Billiards, Cards and Dominoes had for me many attractions and the few hours I could spend without hurting my work passed in a little café.” He acknowledged that he “abused” the opportunity “costing some tears to my poor Fanny, who did not find compensation in paternal affection.”52 Joseph’s actions were typical for men of his class and indeed were an important part of bourgeois identity.53 They had the effect, however, of weakening an already taxed emotional bond. Fanny tried to strengthen her marriage relationship by attempting to persuade her husband not to choose male sociability over life as a couple. In addition to the tears mentioned above, she “made a few observations on this subject” but she “never pushed to 51 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 13 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG. Ellipses original. 52 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 101. 53 Carol E. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth Century France: Gender, Sociability and the Uses of Emulation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 90- 99. 31 the point that I deprived myself absolutely of pleasure.”54 While she was away at the spa she tried again to persuade him through letters to use his time to form a close relationship with her. She “feared that on her return as before I would leave her too often, which left her still more unhappy.” Joseph admitted “her reproaches, her counsels were made with such affection that they touched me certainly, but did not bring a change in my conduct.” In his autobiography he admitted “I regret it now, but it is too late.”55 Fanny’s attitude reflected her view that the purpose of marriage was primarily to create affectionate relationships. She used what tools she had, including tears, reproaches and persuasion to try to change Joseph’s behavior. Given the toxicity of her home situation, it became all the more important to introduce an element of genuine love. Joseph’s admitted unwillingness to pour his emotional energy into his marriage can be ascribed both to youthful inexperience and to his fundamental belief that marriage was an economic institution. Whatever his deficiencies from a romantic or companionate perspective, he certainly was doing his part to ensure economic prosperity. For Joseph’s father, Fanny’s helpfulness as a housewife and shop assistant could not compensate for her failure to become a mother. His disappointment led him to engage in a pattern of abusive behavior toward her that increased the pressure on her to have children. Joseph recalled that she was “very often at Collonges, searching to give every satisfaction to my father, in overseeing the Household, the agriculture & the sale of 54 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG 101. 55 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 118. 32 the products of Collonges. Unfortunately she did not always succeed, & the little confidence that my father accorded her made her nearly depressed.”56 Joseph’s recollections attest to a consistent pattern of Fanny trying to oblige her father-in-law through diligence in housekeeping and hard work, and the latter refusing to be content. For the year 1825 Joseph recalled that in a letter “Fanny testifies of her profound affection for my father, she would be happy to be loved by him, & and desires but one thing, which is to inspire in him a little more confidence.”57 A few months later he noted that he told his family that, “my wife will only be happy when our family no longer holds unjust prejudices against her.”58 In summing up the year Joseph reflected that, “my dear Fanny was not very happy, as she was deprived of the confidence of my father.”59 The tension in Fanny’s home life is abundantly evident from these excerpts. In the eyes of her father-in-law, no service on her part could make amends for her failure to become pregnant. The stress on the family had a negative influence on Joseph’s work ethic. He wrote, “The Injustice of men is fairly great!! & should they have made this poor young woman suffer for a reason that on its own was causing her so many tears . . . I would never have complained of my work if they had made my poor wife happy, but they did no such thing.”60 Knowing that his father and mother were persecuting his wife made 56 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 100. 57 Ibid., 91. 58 Ibid., 92. 59 Ibid., 96. 60 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 97. 33 Joseph much less enthusiastic about leaving her alone with them in order to devote himself to the family business. The strained atmosphere at home threatened to have a ripple effect on the productivity of the firm. Infertility could interfere with bourgeois business networks. Fanny had been particularly desirable as a partner because of her father’s important position in the silk trade. Her inability to produce children led Joseph père to extend his criticism beyond her to include her family more broadly. Joseph noted, “what exasperated him was to see the sterility of my poor wife, & I often heard [him] say, that [her] parents were very wrong not to have warned us that her state of health would never permit her to have Children.”61 Evidently Joseph père reduced Fanny’s worth to her reproductive capacity. The clear implication was that had he been aware of Fanny’s precarious health, he never would have endorsed the marriage despite her wealth and connections. Joseph père bitterly implied that the Bertholons had a contractual obligation to provide full information about their offspring. He not only blamed Fanny, but also suggested that her parents were deliberately deceptive in promoting a marriage that turned out to be childless. The accusation was of course unfair, as the Bertholons were anxious to safeguard Fanny’s virginity and were therefore in no position to know anything about her fertility. The result, however, was an estrangement between two families that had formerly been united by the marriage. The dynastic aspirations of unifying two wealthy Lyonnais families were thwarted not only by the absence of joint grandchildren but also by the animosity that the problem of infertility occasioned. 61 Ibid., 97. 34 Making Fanny fertile came to be an important goal for both the Bergiers and the Bertholon families. No Cost Was Too Great to Heal Herself: Cure and Conflict Experts in the early nineteenth century considered amenorrhea to be both the primary symptom and principal cause of infertility. They posited that bringing about menstruation was a sure method of producing children. Inducing a woman to bleed could, of course, also have precisely the opposite significance; it could signal a successful abortion. Not having a period could either mean you were pregnant or infertile, two opposing conditions. Nevertheless, trying to make Fanny menstruate was the principal goal of her treatments.62 Advice manuals from the period warned that everyday actions by women could cause infertility. A woman might cease having her period due to “a fright, a fit of anger, a thwarted passion,” or could have abnormal flow from the vicissitudes of urban living, including “a too sedentary life, idleness or an excess of work, food that is too succulent or of a bad sort, the abuse of spicy or salty foods, stimulating and hot drinks.63 Other possible triggers included an ill-advised “bath in cold water, drinking ice water as a 62 Janet Farrell Brodie, “Menstrual Interventions in the Nineteenth Century United States,” in Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations, ed. Etienne Van de Walle et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 39. 63 Alexis François Aulagnier, Considérations sur l’âge critique qui amène la suppression absolue du flux périodique, faisant suite aux observations déjà publiées sur les maladies des femmes (Paris: Gabon, 18..), 2; Mombet, Traité des flueurs blanches, ou leucorrhées utéro-vaginales, considérées sous le rapport de leur éthiologie, ou causes de leur influence sur l’économie, et de leur traitement par l’extrait liquide de kina-loxa (Paris: Mombet, 1829), 27. 35 beverage” or sometimes “walking in the rain, or sitting a few moments on damp grass.”64 What is significant about these causes is that they could all be attributed to the actions of a woman. By making careless choices or overindulging her appetites, a woman could blight her chances for motherhood. This could be empowering from the perspective of a woman who wanted to prevent amenorrhea, offering a sense of control over the situation, but it also functioned as a source of blame to a woman who had stopped menstruating. The cures for amenorrhea were as varied as the causes. Since it was considered both a cause and a symptom of infertility, bringing about menses was the closest thing medical practitioners could accomplish when it came to curing it. Indeed, childlessness was seen as the result of amenorrhea, rather than both infertility and lack of period being symptoms of some other pathology. If a woman could be made to menstruate, then doctors had solved the principal problem. Ideally of course a woman would also conceive, but at the very least doctors aspired to bring about regularity. Doing so was visible proof of medical success. The treatments for amenorrhea fell within a wide range of stringency, varying from vapor baths to heroic measures. Some were fairly benign, including “vapor baths to the torso” composed of “aromatic substances,” or a more rigorous hydrotherapeutic course of “hot baths [and] ascending and descending showers.”65 A few doctors promoted more heroic measures, including the judicious application of leeches and the use of 64 Boyveau Laffecteur, Traité des maladies physiques et morales des femmes (Paris: Boyveau Laffecteur, 1819), 433. 65 Maurice Carcassonne, Notice sur les bains et douches de vapeurs établis à Perpignan (Perpignan: Alzine, 1827), 95; Boirot-Desserviers, Recherches et observations sur les eaux minérales de Néris, en Bourbonnais (Paris: Ballard, 1817), 81. 36 electricity.66 During her sojourn at the spa, Fanny underwent “hot baths up to 35 degrees, foot baths, drinks, sweating, long and tiring horseback rides” as well as frequent injections of Nymphea, mixed with milk.67 She likewise had “showers on the Kidneys, which was very unpleasant.”68 Other approaches explicitly recommended for women with gynecological problems included vapor baths directed at the middle of the body, leg baths morning and night with salt and vinegar, a shower from above directed at the spinal column and showers from below.69 Joseph’s letters to Fanny during her month-long trips to the spa betray a longing for some level of control over the physical realities of infertility. Believing, as many of his contemporaries did, that diet and weight could determine reproductive capacity, he earnestly sought all possible information from her about her eating habits. He asked, “Do you constantly have a good appetite? I will not ask you if you’re getting fatter; doubtless you’re staying reserved to allow me to be surprised.”70 He took her hunger to be a sign 66 Carcassonne, Notice sur les bains, 95; Vincent Mondat, De la stérilité de l’homme et de la femme et les moyens d’y remédier (Paris: Migneret et Gabon, 1823), 119. How precisely electricity would be employed was not specified. See also Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner, The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 25. 67 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 117; Joseph to Fanny, 30 May 1831, MG. Nymphea was possibly derived from water lilies that bear the same name. See also George Weisz, “Water Cures and Science: The French Academy of Medicine and Mineral Waters in the Nineteenth Century,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 404. 68 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 129. 69 Carcassonne, Notice sur les bains, 26; Antoine-Laurens-Hippolyte Saisset, Mémoire pratique sur les bains de la Malou (Montpellier, Picot: 1812), 60; Boirot-Desserviers, Recherches et observations, 77. 70 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 20 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG. 37 of returning good health and therefore improved chances for conception. He wrote happily “I see again that you have an appetite and that you are impatient to dine; Imagine all the pleasure that . . . it gives me; I like it better than 20 pages that could not bring me as good of news.”71 The reproductive system was to a degree mysterious and seemingly impossible to control. Eating, however, was easily regulated and the results of a good appetite could be read on Fanny’s body by anybody. In sending Fanny away to a spa Joseph had relinquished the ability to personally oversee her actions. He could not force her to follow the doctor’s prescriptions nor could he even know firsthand what the recommendations might be. In order to reassert some control he put emotional pressure on her in his letters. He urged her to be diligent in following the doctor’s orders, and to “think of the happiness of having an heir, otherwise you’re warned, I’m buying a steam machine.”72 The emotional juxtaposition in his letter is striking; she must be hopeful or optimistic or he would take control of the situation himself. Her happiness was not an end in itself; it was a means to achieve his reproductive goals. After all, her thwarted passions or depressive moods might be the source of their childlessness. If discouragement was not itself the cause, it could make a cure fruitless through a lax application of the doctor’s orders. Fanny should be happy and hopeful, but primarily because it would make her fertile, not because it was inherently desirable. 71 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 23 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG. 72 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 11 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG; Carcassonne, Notice sur les bains, 95. 38 A belief in the readability of the body gave the illusion of control. Joseph’s understanding of their childlessness stemming from amenorrhea resulted in a preoccupation with Fanny’s menstrual cycle. His references to her period in his letters were somewhat circuitous, asking her to explain what the doctor had said “on this subject in a little more detail, because that is what interests me above all. What did he have to say about you going 18 months without . . .”73 His sentence drifted into discreet silence, but contextually it is clear that he was referring to her period. This letter suggests Fanny had stopped menstruating at the age of twenty-eight, at an unusually young age, constituting a cause for alarm. Joseph asked “does [the doctor] hope that it will come back, does he seem convinced of it; does he say to what such an extraordinary delay should be attributed, & all the more as it made you ill; this my dear Fanny is what I desire to know.”74 Joseph tried to understand Fanny’s fertility by scouring her letters for symptoms she might inadvertently betray. Unsatisfied with the level of detail she provided, he attempted to diagnose her himself, based on details she might let slip. Often this led him to engage in wishful thinking, seeing signs of pregnancy at the slightest provocation. In one letter she seemingly indicated that she had trouble focusing. He responded, “Your ideas have shrunk, you say, where does that come from? Is some little blond boy occupying your thoughts?”75 Lacking Fanny’s original letter it is difficult to assess how justified Joseph’s conclusion was or what she meant by the remark. He acknowledged 73 Joseph to Fanny, 14 July 1830, MG. Ellipsis original. 74 Ibid.; See also Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 14 September 1831, Box 64.2 MG. 75 Joseph to Fanny, 14 July 1830, MG. 39 that her letter was pithy and brief, the only sign of “shrunken ideas” that he could see. He was satisfied that she had “brought [him] up to date on all that interested [him] & had forgotten nothing.” In other words, Fanny may simply have been apologizing for the brevity of her letter and her distraction while writing it. Yet Joseph concluded that Fanny was preoccupied either by pregnancy or anticipation of becoming pregnant. This conclusion spoke more of Joseph’s hopes than it did of Fanny’s reality, as she was definitely not pregnant nor did she become so. Joseph’s wishful thinking was evident in his tendency to read between the lines of her letters. Reading backwards, it seems that Fanny was waiting to communicate something until they were together again. The less intimate nature of letter writing led her to want to wait and express something personally. He responded with enthusiasm, which he emphasized through an abuse of punctuation. He wrote, “You’re saving something for when you come back & you tell me to think about it! . . . Ah if I think about it . . . is it too much?” He went on to say “We’ll have a good reunion . . .What do you say? God grant that your health permits you to hope for it!”76 His meandering response was somewhat vague, but again points to hopes of pregnancy. He was overcome when thinking about what her secret might be, and concluded that it was reproductive. The “good reunion” he looked forward to so enthusiastically clearly involved sex, as it was explicitly linked to a hope that her health would enable their reunion to result in pregnancy. It is possible that Fanny meant to imply exactly what Joseph concluded. Lacking her letter and given Joseph’s meandering response it is 76 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 27 July 1830, Box 64.2 MG. 40 difficult to tell what she intended. What is clear is that she had something to say to him in person, and he leapt to the conclusion that her news was related to her fertility. The vision that Joseph had of Fanny was both erotic and inescapably generative. His letters expressed longing for her and pleasure in her company, but coupled this desire specifically with their reproductive potential. He missed her as a person, and missed their intimacy. He bemoaned that he was “a widower in my bedroom,” with letters providing the means by which he “chat with [her] as if she were there.”77 The absence was painful to him and is a witness to their mutual devotion and intimate relationship. He longed for her return, thinking of “all the pleasure that I would have had in embracing you” had she returned early. His only consolation was that her “health ameliorates, & that you must be doing better in having a great deal of exercise.”78 His longing for her led him to write moving letters that reflected his affection for her. He still, however, linked their reunion to parenthood. He urged her to “get well, & be in good health & above all return quickly to get a big boy.”79 His desire and affection was always tempered by a clearly stated reproductive component. Joseph’s inability to be satisfied with a childless relationship stemmed from the economic pressures acting on him. Companionate marriage signified a partnership between two loving people. The main difference between Fanny and Joseph was that for Fanny, this spousal relationship was enough. When children did not come, she still saw them as a family. Joseph, however, could not separate companionability from 77 Joseph to Fanny, 11 July 1829, MG. 78 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 30 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG. 79 Joseph to Fanny, 20 July 1829, MG. 41 reproduction. The economic issues involved meant that he could not ignore the problem of inheritance. Even if emotionally speaking Fanny met his needs, from his perspective as a bourgeois owner of a business, a couple would never be a family. Fanny’s body became the battleground for the conflict between emotion and economics in the Bergier marriage. Though the purpose of the treatment at the spa was to “reestablish her health,” in reality the regimen made Fanny sicker.80 The fact that Joseph urged her to persist in spite of this indicates that for him, the need to have an heir overrode Fanny’s need to be happy or healthy for her own sake. She had had health problems to begin with, but the harsh treatments exacerbated her complaints. She became “very sick...from a bath that was too cold.”81 She complained of weaknesses and was plagued by constant headaches, becoming so ill at one point that she was obliged to suspend her treatment.82 For Joseph, health was a stand-in term for fertile. Ostensibly the trips to the spa were intended to heal Fanny, putting her health and physical needs as a priority ahead of her labor in the home and at the shop. Joseph had claimed that, “her goal in going to the waters was to reestablish her health, to bring back the monthly flux of blood . . . no cost was too great.” 83 If this were entirely true, then the project should have been abandoned when it became clear that Fanny was becoming weaker as a result of the treatment. The cost in question was not the financial outlay, but 80 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 117. 81 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 17 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG. 82 Joseph to Fanny, 30 July 1829, MG; Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 27 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG; Joseph to Fanny, 20 July 1829, MG; Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 15 July 1829, Box 64.2 MG; Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 130. 83 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 117. 42 the price that Fanny herself had to pay in trying to embody the ideal that the men in her family demanded of her. The real object of going to the spa was to make Fanny fertile regardless of the toll on her health. In one instance Fanny wrote that she was feeling well, to which Joseph responded that he hoped “that state would not endure, but would ameliorate so much that you constantly enjoy a health that is good and Regular.”84 In other words, wellness was not an adequate result of the water cure. Truly good health would be accompanied by regular menstruation, which was the actual goal of her treatment. Childlessness affected women differently than men. Both men and women might experience feelings of disappointment, anxiety, loss or failure. Both might long for a child to hold in their arms. The example of Fanny demonstrates, however, that childless women were subject to emotional and physical pressures that their husbands were not. Fanny bore the burden of blame that her husband escaped. Fanny also experienced infertility physically in ways that Joseph avoided, undergoing years of grueling treatments that left her exhausted and frail. These twin burdens would have been common to many French women in her situation, as the pressures brought to bear on Fanny were by no means unique to her or her family. Fanny resisted Joseph’s tendency to view her as a vehicle for his ambition and a vessel for his children. Instead, she pushed him to see in her the family he wanted, and to view her as being enough to compensate for their childlessness. In her understanding of companionate marriage, marital love was enough to constitute a happy family life, even if children never came. Her letters to Joseph during her sojourn at Mont Dore and 84 Joseph to Fanny, 14 September 1831, MG. The word Joseph used is réglée, which in context refers unambiguously to menstruation. Emphasis original. 43 Plombières no longer exist, but by reading backwards from Joseph’s responses it is possible to glean her perspective on her experience of infertility and her expectations of marriage. Fanny reminded Joseph of the value of their relationship as a couple by soliciting affection. In his letters Joseph tended to fixate on the treatments and the probability of their efficacy, rather than on Fanny as a woman. Fanny must have questioned his feelings for her, because he responded, “Do you still love me you say to me? Ah! Can I do otherwise? Am I the master? My heart is yours, I cannot take it back.”85 In questioning his devotion Fanny reframed their correspondence to center around their relationship rather than her fertility. She pushed him to articulate his feelings using what William Reddy calls emotives or words that are both influenced by and alter what they refer to. By pressuring him to express his feelings for her as an individual, she helped foster the companionate love she hoped for in their relationship. At least temporarily, Joseph abandoned his fixation on her reproductive capacity and instead reflected on his love for her as a person.86 The impact of Joseph’s desire for children on Fanny’s spirits is particularly evident in an exchange from 1830, the third year of her treatment. By this point neither one of them seemed blithely optimistic about the efficacy of treatment. Joseph grew more and more desperate, while Fanny was increasingly resigned. He moped that he was “bored, overworked & far from his friend from his comforter, from his second self.” 85 Joseph to Fanny, 11 July 1829, MG. 86 Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 104-105. 44 Writing in the third person, he averred that his only consolation in having her gone was “the hope that the Waters will completely heal you this year, & that that restored health will allow him the hope to see himself in his child.” For good measure, he concluded that the child was, “desired, the constant object of all his wishes, & the privation of which causes him a great deal of pain.”87 His claim of pain was not unique or a sudden change in his style, but had been part of a larger pattern. An earlier letter, for instance, expressed his anguish over their separation and his lack of news thusly: “The more I write, the heavier my heart . . . in this moment I suffer cruelly.”88 Historian Kay Torney Souter characterized the experience of pain as a shared, rather than isolated experience. Souter set up a binary between the physician-diagnosed disease that moves along the trajectory from diagnosis to cure, and the patient- experienced illness that focuses on the experience of the condition.89 She argued that no disease is lived and experienced in one body, but that all illnesses exist in the realm of the interpersonal. Citing a literary example from Simone de Beauvoir as well as a medical history case she demonstrates how the family of a sick person are themselves physically participating in the illness through suffering and painful symptoms. Joseph’s assertion that he suffered greatly because of Fanny’s infertility would seem to support Souter’s conclusion. 87 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 12 July 1830, Box 64.2 MG. 88 Joseph to Fanny, 17 July 1829, MG. 89 Kay Torney Souter, “Narrating the Body: Disease as Interpersonal Event,” Health and History 1 (1998): 36-37. 45 In fact a subtle distinction puts in doubt the applicability of Souter’s theory. The difference lies in the expressed reason for suffering. Joseph did not express sympathetic pain for Fanny’s suffering at the hands of doctors at the spa, nor was he concerned by the pain that the symptoms of her various maladies produced. The source of his distress was not the pain his wife experienced, but the “privation” of “the hope of seeing himself in his child.”90 Infertility as a malady carried a specific social significance that produced conflicted emotional responses. Fanny’s infertility affected Joseph in a different way than virtually any other malady would. It caused Joseph pain not primarily out of affective empathy for his wife, but because this particular sickness carried with it economic and social implications. He could attempt to frame it as an expression of love, but Fanny was not fooled. His wailing about how much infertility was hurting him was in her view yet another pressure tactic, identical in purpose if not expression to the abusive behavior of Joseph père. Fanny resisted the implication that she was somehow responsible for their childless state. Joseph responded to this assertion by agreeing: “You were right in feeling that I could not reasonably complain of a fact entirely independent of your will; all the more as you are, I am sure, perhaps even more upset than I.”91 He again urged her to “chase from your imagination all the sorrows, all the dark ideas that a moment of expansion in my letter could have caused you, and remain convinced that I cherish you, 90 Joseph to Fanny, 12 July 1830, MG. 91 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 19 July 1830, Box 64.2 MG. 46 that I love you as much & even more than myself.”92 After several years of struggling with treatments and verbal abuse from her father-in-law Fanny rejected blame for their situation and urged Joseph to recognize that she was innocent, and also more hurt by the situation than he was. Fanny wanted above all to be assured of her lovability in spite of not having children. Joseph’s worldview that motherhood would allow her “to become a woman like any other” equated womanhood with motherhood. Fanny challenged that, and wanted to be loved and valued regardless of her reproductive capability. Fanny repeatedly sought reassurance from Joseph, but she should not be seen only as a supplicant. She was not powerless, despite the fact that she was unable to change the workings of her body, and her in-laws put enormous pressure on her, making her home life difficult. She alone consulted with the doctor and was in a position to know the prognosis. Only she knew whether or not she had obeyed the prescriptions and she was the sole witness to the changes in her own body. Joseph was far away and entirely dependent on her letters for information on the subject that preoccupied him above all others. The distance between Lyon and Mont Dore produced a shift in communication between Bergiers. Fanny controlled the cure experience. She could not guarantee that it would work, but she decided how to respond to the doctor’s recommendations. Joseph, separated by over a hundred miles, was reduced to the position of pleading and persuading. He urged her to be diligent in seeking a cure by following the doctor’s orders with exactitude. He wrote, “Give me a great pleasure, and follow [the treatment] in 92 Ibid. 47 every point. Do not rush, put in the time, & do it well.”93 There is no evidence that Fanny was willful in this respect, or that she neglected her treatment out of pique or spite. However, his entreaties point to a mutual awareness of the shift in who dominated their relationship. While she might be subordinate and abused at home, at the spa she was in control, and Joseph lacked the leverage to force her to act as he wanted. Fanny held her privileged access to medical information over Joseph’s head. Reading backward from Joseph’s frequent pleas for information it is clear that Fanny deliberately omitted precisely the information that Joseph most craved. He wrote “does [Doctor Bertrand] find, based on what you doubtless told him, that the Waters did you good & does he give much hope for this 2nd year, you never tell me about this, yet you know that every time I open a letter it is what I would like to know.”94 A few days later, after receiving another chatty but uninformative letter he wrote “I would really like to know what M. Bertrand hopes for your treatment, but of all the things you’ll tell me, it will without a doubt be the last thing I learn.” He urged her to tell him about her treatment, not about her day. He begged her to “tell me then, & repeat less often your walks that all resemble each other, what does M. Bertrand say. How does he find you? That is what interests me, that is what I want to know.” He concluded dejectedly “I nearly cry when I think that I will not know for several days.”95 In these letters his frustration with Fanny is evident, and his anxiety to know her prognosis overwhelmed him entirely. 93 Joseph to Fanny, 11 July 1829, MG. 94 Joseph to Fanny, 13 July 1829, MG. 95 Joseph to Fanny, 15 July 1829, MG; Dr. Bertrand was a famous physician associated with the spa at Mont Dore, see Paul Gerbod, “Les ‘fièvres thermales’ en France au XIXe siècle,” Revue Historique 277 (1987): 321. 48 Joseph’s vexation underlines the point that his desire for children often led him to overlook Fanny as a person. He wanted to know if she would be healed and what the doctor recommended so badly that he entirely dismissed the information that Fanny was sending, about her experience, her walks, her visits. To him the only relevant news was whether or not she was becoming fertile, signaling his propensity to dismiss her as an individual and see her as a vehicle for his reproductive hopes. Fanny, on the other hand, experienced spa culture as both an exhausting cure and a social and vacation experience. She wrote about her long walks and card playing because they were an integral part of the healing process there. She was both a patient and a tourist, and the spa was both a medical and a leisure institution.96 The ultimate frustration for Joseph was when he stopped receiving letters from Fanny altogether, which sent Joseph into a panic: “I’ve lost my head . . . yesterday Thursday I did not receive a letter . . . today I am in the same situation.” He implored her “write to me, write to me every day I am begging you with tears in my eyes: even if you only sign it write to me, write to me.” 97 Joseph’s desperation in this context was unmistakable. He no longer quibbled about whether she wrote boring accounts of her long walks, or did not tell him enough about her prognosis. His fear over her silence forced the issue and reminded him of how important she was as a person. Part of the problem in this instance was that Fanny had sent a letter that never arrived, though that alone does not account for the gap in communication that Joseph experienced. It is clear, however, that she withheld some information and that the result was Joseph’s 96 Mackaman, Leisure Settings, 4-8. 97 Joseph to Fanny, 17 July 1829, MG. Ellipses original. 49 desperation.98 Eventually he obtained his desired information not from Fanny, but from her father who had accompanied her to the resort and who wrote him a letter. Fanny’s choice to withhold information was an assertion of strength that was effective in its limited scope. Conclusion The Bergiers’ relationship exemplified the unstable definition of companionate marriage. Joseph, informed by business concerns and gender expectations, harbored a dynastic vision that made reproduction imperative. In contrast, Fanny sought affirmation that she was desirable in herself regardless of her fertility. She seemingly desired children as well, but was quicker to recognize their biological limitations and reimagine their family as consisting of only the couple. Their competing definitions of family speak to the experience of other infertile couples, but they also demonstrate that the meaning of companionate marriage was by no means obvious or clearly defined. Infertility brought into the open a question that most French families of the nineteenth century considered, whether consciously or unconsciously. The significance of children in the definition of a modern family pointed to a widespread uncertainty that went beyond the case of the Bergiers. The decline in the birth rate indicates that couples throughout France were grappling with doubt as to whether children were necessary for marital happiness. The demographic changes were linked to the growing importance of companionability in marriage and widespread uncertainty as to the meaning of modern marriage. 98 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 130. 50 Childlessness proved to be the defining problem of the Bergiers’ marriage, coloring every other aspect of their lives. Ultimately unable to have biological children, they turned to alternative means of family creation, including surrogate parenthood of their peers’ children, philanthropic involvement in the lives of the poor and self- documentation as a means of preserving their names for future generations, topics that receive more in-depth treatment in the final chapters. Reproduction was not the only site of negotiation as couples sought consensus on the meaning of modern marriage. The expectation of fidelity when couples married for love represented a significant shift from earlier models of married life. The legal system and a culture of permissiveness contributed to existing tensions between husband and wife over the place of adultery in companionate marriage. When husband and wife married for love, what excuse for infidelity could there be? In spite of the growing numbers of couples choosing their spouses, nineteenth-century France could be described as the golden age for male adultery. This contradiction, and the complex negotiations between spouses that it occasioned, is the subject of the next chapter. 51 CHAPTER III ADULTERY AND EXCLUSIVITY: DEFINING THE PARAMETERS OF COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE The Musée Gadagne houses a letter to Joseph Bergier, written in 1835, which reads, “You are happily, sir, in a position that renders you very independent: you go, come, you can at will shake off everything; and I, prisoner, and I shut up in a fortress, my will is as if enchained.”99 The author of this missive, a woman, characterized the public sphere that Joseph occupied as a source of opportunities and liberation, while comparing the private sphere to incarceration. One might expect the author to be Fanny, expressing frustration at their frequent separations, but this was not the case. Rather, the author was Agathe Reynaud, one of Fanny’s closest friends and, unbeknownst to her at the time, Joseph’s mistress. Agathe’s frustration spoke to the ways in which her gender role stood in conflict with her romantic desires. According to her letters, she experienced her place in the home not as a protection but as a form of imprisonment. She emphasized not only Joseph’s freedom to move around physically, but also his ability to satisfy his whims and desires, contrasting his liberty with her own limited opportunities. In her characterization, the gender roles prescribed by French society were not complementary but were instead a barrier to true unity between men and women. 99 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 25 October 1835, Correspondence addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. 52 In this chapter I argue that adulterous lovers participated in the construction of companionate marriage in two ways. Adultery was not, as Agnes Walch has argued, a practice that was in opposition to or destructive of unions.100 Rather, adultery was a defining element in the creation of modern marriage. In one sense, adultery played a role in defining companionability because some lovers conceived of their own relationship as being marriage-like. The first section of this chapter examines adultery from this perspective. Agathe pushed for Joseph to see their liaison as a marital tie, while Joseph resisted her vision of how relationships ought to work. Adultery was a site of debate over the meaning of companionability every bit as much as the conjugal home. Adultery also played a role in defining the relationships of married couples. The second half of this chapter deals with the ways in which the Bergiers’ marriage was challenged and changed by Joseph’s decision to commit adultery. Adultery brought into the open disagreements between spouses over the meaning of companionability. Was sexual exclusivity a key part of the new marriage model? When couples married for love rather than convenience, the excuse for infidelity evaporated but the practice did not, creating a tension that needed to be resolved for loving marriages to flourish. Letters between Fanny and Joseph after his affair illustrate how they, and couples like them, shared the ideal of a companionate marriage as a couple, but having a meaning that was profoundly different for them as individuals. The argument in this chapter builds on Anya Jabour’s analysis of companionability in the early republican period of the history of the United States. She posited that 100 Agnes Walch, Histoire de l’adultère XVIe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2009), 290, 292; Agnes Walch, Histoire du couple en France de la Renaissance à nos jours (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 2003), 159. 53 fundamental inequality between men and women as expressed through gender roles and political influence undermined the ability of American couples to have companionate marriages.101 In France, these issues were played out in a very different political environment. Successive revolutions had changed both the nature of government and the level of political participation permitted to men. The carefully guarded sanctity of private life was in tension with the public nature of the laws and institutions put in place by the Revolution. In spite of these distinctions, the early nineteenth century was a time of growing opportunities for men in the public sphere on either side of the Atlantic, a change that happened in tandem with the growing popularity of companionate marriage as an ideal.102 One of the key differences that set France apart from other nations, including the United States, was the power of the Napoleonic Code to define marriage relationships. In contrast to the republican virtue of the early United States, the Code enshrined in law a culture of promiscuity that positively encouraged male adultery. While Jabour’s analysis of the Wirt family scarcely touched the possibility of infidelity, the place of extramarital affairs in a companionate relationship was absolutely central to the definition of French marriages.103 101 Anya Jabour, Marriage in the Early Republic: Elizabeth and William Wirt and the Companionate Ideal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 3. 102 William M. Reddy, “Marriage, Honor and the Public Sphere in Postrevolutionary France: Séparations de Corps, 1815-1848,” The Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 437; Anne Verjus, Le bon mari: Une histoire politique des hommes et des femmes à l’époque révolutionnaire (France: Fayard, 2010), 201-215. Verjus discusses how thinkers grappled with the tension between the authority of the state and paternal power. 103 Jabour, Early Republic, 92-93. Jabour provides a brief treatment of a rumored adultery. 54 France of the nineteenth century was a golden age for male adultery. The Civil Code, which ostensibly put in place a system that held all people equal before the law, created an ethos of permissiveness for male adulterers while penalizing women. The Code was designed to strengthen families by reinforcing paternal power, mandating equal inheritance for legitimate heirs, and preventing the introduction of illegitimate children into the family home. Under the original Code, adultery was grounds for divorce but the restoration of the Bourbons in 1816 brought with it a conservative Catholic reaction.104 The new regime outlawed divorce, replacing it with separation of persons. The Civil Code put an end to the notion of divorce by mutual consent and replaced it with the concept of divorce, or later by separation of persons, as a sanction; to obtain these, the courts had to find one party guilty of a transgression.105 This created an awkward situation in which adultery was a criminal offense but not grounds for spouses to terminate their union. A husband might therefore be simultaneously prosecuting his wife for the criminal offense of adultery and arguing in court that he loved her too much to be separated, an outcome that could potentially cause him to lose access to her dowry.106 The laws on adultery for men in France reflected the unwritten attitude that, while philandering might be socially acceptable, flaunting infidelity in front of one’s wife was not. Male adultery was only a crime if committed in the family home. A man would be 104 Lenard Berlanstein, “Review Essay: The French in Love and Lust,” French Historical Studies 27 (2004): 467. 105 Theresa McBride, “Public Authority and Private Lives: Divorce after the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 17 (1992): 750. 106 Patricia Mainardi, Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 19, 37. The Cairon case of Rouen in the 1820s perfectly exemplified this strange contradiction. 55 liable for prosecution only when “he shall have brought his concubine into their common residence.”107 This privileged men in two ways. If the couple were already separated, the wife had to remain celibate until her estranged husband died, whereas the husband could take a lover with impunity, as the couple no longer had a common residence. It likewise favored husbands who continued to live with their wives, as men had ample opportunity to pursue affairs outside the home and had little inducement to take a mistress back to the conjugal bed.108 Under the Napoleonic Code, female adultery was a serious crime. A woman who was put away for cause of adultery could be confined to a house of correction for a minimum of three months and a maximum of two years, while there was no comparable consequence for male adultery.109 This was an improvement for women from the lettres de cachet, which under the old regime allowed husbands to imprison their wives indefinitely without due process. The new approach was, however, an affirmation of masculine power that unfairly punished women while absolving men of responsibility. Finally, a husband who murdered either his wife or her lover, if he found them in flagrante delicto [in blazing offense] was excused of having committed a crime, though the reverse was not true. Thus the law firmly established the puissance maritale, allowing 107 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 6 § 229-230. 108 Anne-Marie Sohn, “The Golden Age of Male Adultery: The Third Republic,” Journal of Social History 28 (1995): 469-490. Provides a detailed discussion of the ramifications of the adultery laws. 109 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 6 § 308. 56 a husband to execute his wife without due process or personal consequences. In some cases, then, a woman’s adultery could be a capital offense.110 Unjust though these laws were, they made sense in the larger context of the Napoleonic Code. All children born to a married woman were by default legitimate, obligating her husband to split the inheritance equally among them, regardless of whether they were biologically his own. It was therefore imperative, from a male point of view, to ensure that wives bore only their husband’s children so as not to pass familial wealth to another man’s progeny. This benefitted married women in that the paternity of their children could not be questioned, though unmarried women who conceived children enjoyed no such benefits.111 The framers of the Napoleonic Code tailored it to contain potential adulteresses, but the effect of the laws was to make adultery easy for men. A wife could not seek a divorce. A husband could not be penalized in court for infidelity, and if he fathered children outside of wedlock his lover could not sue for paternal acknowledgement or support.112 This strict legal system, in conjunction with changing gender roles, created the framework within which Fanny, Joseph and Agathe negotiated the meaning of marriage in their modern world. 110 Butterworth, ed. French Penal Code (London: Butterworth, 1819) Title 2 § 324; Mainardi, Husbands, Wives and Lovers, 23, 17. 111 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 7 § 312; Rachel Fuchs, “Seduction, Paternity and the Law in Fin-de-Siècle France,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 953; Rachel Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1984), 21; Mainardi, Husbands, Wives and Lovers, 24. 112 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 7 §335, 340, 342; Walch, Histoire de l’adultère, 281. 57 Adultery as an Alternative Site of Companionability: Agathe and Joseph The source material for this chapter includes letters as well as obliquely worded diary entries. Joseph saved Agathe’s letters as well as a few drafts of his missives to her, which provided the necessary key to unlocking the story of their adultery. Joseph also recorded their affair in his diary, but did so in coded language that without the letters would be meaningless. He referred to his assignations with the underlined phrase I ran an errand, the significance of which only became apparent when compared with the dates mentioned in Agathe’s letters. Examples of these encrypted entries include: “I went to eat breakfast at Café Neptune, then ran an errand,” and a few days later “Ran an errand & returned to be shaved and have my hair curled.”113 Another entry records “I went to do 2 Errands in the neighborhood of Perrache, then returned to get M. Gastine & Gillet who came with me to the Play at the Gymnase.”114 Later he wrote, “I went for a walk around my apartments in the Brotteaux neighborhood, then I went to run an errand, which kept me until 6, then I came to dine at the Grange restaurant.”115 The concordance between Agathe’s explicit letters and Joseph’s vague entries made it possible to see that the errands Joseph was running were not innocuous.116 113 Joseph Bergier, diary, 4 January 1836, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 16 January 1836, MG. 114 Joseph Bergier, diary, 18 November 1835, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 115 Joseph Bergier, diary, 9 February 1836, MG. 116 René Favier, Pierre-Philippe Candy Orgueil et narcissisme: Journal d’un notaire dauphinois au XVIIIe siècle (Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2006), 26; Jean Vassort and Philippe Lejeune, “Lectures croisées du journal de Pierre-Philippe Candy,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 55 (2008): 169. The use of coded language to discuss sex in men’s diaries has been the subject of extensive recent scholarship. See also Colette Cosnier, Le silence des filles: de l’aiguille à la plume 58 In order to fully understand the implications of adultery in the case study of the Bergiers and Agathe, it is necessary to provide some background information on the latter. Agathe was no interloper in the Bergiers’ domestic circle; she had been closely involved with the couple from the moment they met. In 1821 Joseph’s father had orchestrated a dinner with the Bertholon family at the Bergier estate in Collonges.117 He sent Joseph to meet the guests on the road and “it was in the middle of the path that I saw for the 1st time, Mlle. Fanny Christine Bertholon; she was with her mother, and one of her good friends and former teacher, Mlle. Agathe Reynaud.”118 Thus Joseph met his future wife and his future mistress at precisely the same moment. Hindsight may have tempted Joseph to edit Agathe out of his autobiography, but his scrupulous, not to say compulsive, approach to self-documentation led him to acknowledge her ongoing presence in their lives. She was a guest at the Bergiers’ marriage ceremony in 1824, and she composed a song for the occasion.119 Joseph’s letters to Fanny during her treatment at the spa show regular sociable contact between Agathe and her family, on one hand, and the extended circle of the Bergier and Bertholon families, on the other. Joseph wrote on one occasion “yesterday your mother dined with the Dlles. Reynaud.”120 In another letter he included their regards, that they “tell you a (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 189; Martin Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 169. Provides a discussion of sexual symbols in private diaries. 117 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 53. 118 Ibid., 54. 119 Ibid., 81-83. 120 Joseph to Fanny, 13 July 1829, MG. 59 thousand things.”121 In short, the intimacy and trust that had existed between Fanny and her friend before the wedding continued afterwards as well. Fanny’s letters to her family during her honeymoon in 1825 show the delicate position that Agathe and her sisters occupied in the family circle. Fanny was anxious to police the boundaries of her family. She inquired after Agathe’s health and sent news from a mutual acquaintance.122 She drew the line, however, at allowing the Reynaud sisters to borrow her letters. Fanny wrote irately to her father “We both find this very bad of them for having asked and of you to have given them. That you read [the letters] to them when they come to visit nothing more correct I would attribute it only to the interest that they have in me and their curiosity but taking [the letters] home is a bit much.”123 To absolutely ensure that her point was clear she likewise wrote to her brother on the same subject. “I understand that given the friendship and interest that they have in me and that I strongly share, you would read to them or tell them stories when they came to the house or you would go to their house, but I did not mean that they could take the letters home.”124 Fanny was anxious to police the borders of familial intimacy; Agathe was a close friend, but she was not family. Fanny recognized that the Reynaud sisters were emotionally invested in her and were entitled to receive her news. As her former teacher, Agathe occupied a special place of interest that entitled her to know many of the details 121 Joseph to Fanny, 20 July 1829, MG. 122 Fanny Bergier to César Bertholon, 23 April 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 123 Fanny Bergier to Jean-François Bertholon, 2 May 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 124 Fanny Bergier to César Bertholon, 11 May 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 60 of Fanny’s personal life that she shared with her family. She should be included in the communal reading of letters.125 She was entitled to information, but not to the letter itself. The idea of her correspondence passing beyond the limits of Fanny’s control and leaving the family enraged both her and Joseph, who did what they could to recall the letters. Thus Agathe was part of the family circle, and yet decidedly outside it. Agathe’s professional life as a teacher is, for the most part, poorly documented. Fanny’s letters from this period provide the only solid information available about Agathe and her sister Hélène’s careers. Fanny was particularly upset that the Reynaud sisters had made off with her letters because “they are reading them to the class” which displeased her because, as she put it, “I do not write for all the world I write for my parents for my friends and for me otherwise I would not put my letters in the mail but in the Gazette.”126 Agathe was evidently, then, still teaching for she had made use of her grown pupil’s letters as a pedagogical tool for her class. Fanny’s travel diary may have been utilized as an exercise in geography, history or as an example of good writing, though she was routinely lax about punctuation.127 This suggests that Agathe was not a governess working for a particular family, but rather employed in some sort of school for girls, presumably from wealthy bourgeois families.128 125 Lyons, Reading Culture, 172; Martyn Lyons, “Love Letters and Writing Practices: On Écritures Intimes in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 24 (1999): 234. Lyons provides further details on letter reading as both a communal and personal experience. 126 Fanny to Jean-François, 2 May 1825, MG. 127 Cosnier, Le silence des filles, 181. 128 See Robert Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom: Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-Century France (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 61 Agathe’s own letters showed her to have been an educated and well-read woman. Her letters revealed that she was proficient in the art of literary allusion, as she referred on one occasion to Joseph as “the knight of the woeful countenance.”129 She wrote one letter entirely in verse and interspersed others with phrases in English, calling Joseph “my friend” and closing another with “receive, my kindness, and with that; I embrace you of all my heart.”130 Though her employment put her at a lower social level than her pupils, her own intellectual talents put her well above the realm of working class girls. It has been difficult to find any record of Agathe in the parish registers in or around Lyon, so it has not been possible to pinpoint her economic or social background with any greater degree of precision. Taking into account her education and the fact that she was welcome, if inferior, in the Bergiers’ social circle, it seems likely that she was born into the bourgeoisie but was compelled along with her sisters to support herself. The lack of birth record makes it difficult to ascertain Agathe’s age. Her affair with Joseph began in 1835, when Joseph would have been thirty-five and Fanny thirty-six. Agathe must have been older than Fanny to be her teacher, but close enough in age to 2005); Christina Bellaigue, Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France 1800-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sarah Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling, and Society in Nineteenth-Century France (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000). Rogers and Bellaigue provide valuable studies of women educators in this period, while Curtis’ work gives greater detail to the history of education in Lyon. 129 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 4 November 1835, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG; See Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quichotte de la Manche trans. Louis Viardot (Paris: Dubochet, 1836), 247. 130 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 18 March 1836, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG; Agathe to Joseph, 25 October 1835, MG; Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 28 October 1835, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. English in the original for both excerpts. 62 remain her friend, and to be a likely sexual partner for Joseph. It seems reasonable to surmise that she would have been in her early forties during the affair, a conclusion that is supported by the degree of autonomy she enjoyed in slipping out alone to the post and to meet Joseph. Joseph and Agathe’s relationship fit into broader patterns of adultery in nineteenth century France. According to Anne-Marie Sohn, comparatively few married women were adulterous (contrary to popular depictions) and still fewer belonged to the middle class.131 Sohn and Walch have both argued that during the nineteenth century French adulterers had a tendency to seek partners outside their own social class, but not far outside. Walch underlined the tendency for husbands to be drawn to the young educated women who might be entering the home as governesses, drawing teachers and other professions.132 While upper-class men still exploited poor and working class women as prostitutes, in terms of long-term arrangements the increasing tendency for bourgeois philanderers was to be attracted toward the lower margins of the bourgeoisie.133 Agathe and Joseph fit this profile perfectly. Joseph was well-to-do and married, Agathe belonged to his social class but only marginally so and had been drawn into the circle of the Bergiers through her talents as an instructor. Agathe was unmarried, making her an 131 Anne-Marie Sohn, Chrysalides: Femmes dans la vie privée (XIXe-XXe siècles), Vol. 1 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996), 929; Michèle Plott, “The Rules of the Game: Respectability, Sexuality and the Femme Mondaine in Late-Nineteenth Century Paris,” French Historical Studies 25 (2002): 549. 132 Walch, Histoire de l’adultère, 290. 133 Sohn, Chrysalides, 935; Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966) 243-244. The prevalence of prostitution in Restoration France may seem at odds with its image as the epoch of family virtue. Bertier de Sauvigny discusses this contradiction in greater detail. 63 ideal candidate, as she would have no husband to press criminal charges.134 The model of adultery discussed here may be less applicable to social classes other than the bourgeoisie, but the commonalities that Joseph and Agathe had with other couples of their own social stratum make their experience a relevant source of comparison for other adulterous relationships. Class and education were important factors that contributed to the conflation of adultery with companionability. Proximity on the social scale made it easier to imagine a liaison as a socially acceptable tie. In terms of education and breeding, Agathe was Fanny’s social equal. They were invited to many of the same parties and shared the same friends. Seemingly the only distinction between a mistress and a wife was the marital status of the man in question. A shared social milieu was an important element in producing relationships that were both adulterous and companionate. The affair between Joseph and Agathe was without question adulterous and had no legal standing. Why then should their liaison be analyzed as if it were an example of companionate marriage? Their relationship closely mimicked bourgeois courtship patterns. Sociability, as determined by class expectations, was a fertile ground for both companionate marriages and adulterous affairs. Agathe cultivated these parallels by consciously presenting herself as a virginal girl hesitating on the brink of a marriage-like commitment. Her behavior during their courtship phase showed that she was framing her affair as a marriage, a perspective that she carried into their actual liaison with her expectation of complete fidelity on Joseph’s part. 134 Mainardi, Husbands, Wives and Lovers, 25; Sohn, “Golden Age,” 473. 64 Bourgeois sociability created opportunities for intimacy to grow between men and women. Traditions such as house parties on weekends and the custom of paying calls during the week made the establishment of companionate marriages possible. Sociability brought together the right sort of people and allowed love to blossom in appropriate ways, without overt parental influence.135 House parties at Collonges had been the mechanism for bringing Fanny and Joseph together in their youth, but the same circumstances also worked to bring Joseph on intimate terms with Agathe.136 Joseph’s pursuit of Agathe bore a close resemblance to his much earlier wooing of Fanny. The Bergiers’ courtship had centered on family gatherings in Collonges; “every Sunday we gathered to dine . . . my heart was taken more and more with the young Fanny, near whom I was always placed at the table & who shared all my pleasures of Sunday.”137 The bucolic delights of Collonges and the prolonged contact that weekend parties allowed provided an ideal situation for fostering affectionate ties. Fourteen years later the story repeated itself as Agathe came to stay at Collonges. Joseph wrote, “I talked & read with Mlle. Agathe until breakfast; after breakfast we walked around the grounds, Mlle. Agathe & I; for Fanny was so occupied with the inventory of Mde Delpy & gathering her apples that she did the honors [of being hostess] 135 Daumard, “Affaire, amour,” 36; Angleraud and Pellissier, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 343-345. 136 See Christopher Johnson, “Siblinghood and the Emotional Dimensions of the New Kinship System, 1800-1850: A French Example” in Sibling Relations and the Transformations of European Kinship 1300-1900 ed. Christopher Johnson and David Warren Sabean (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 208. Johnson provides a comparative example of bourgeois sociability centered on familial estates. 137 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 54. 65 rather poorly.”138 Occupied as she was with her household duties, Fanny inadvertently opened the door to a flirtation right beneath her nose. In both cases, the key factor was bourgeois sociability, which multiplied contacts between men and women in socially acceptable ways. In addition to the circumstantial resemblance between the two courtships, Agathe consciously mirrored the behavior of a virtuous maiden. Withholding sex was an important tool in setting the parameters of the relationship for women. Recalling his courtship of Fanny, Joseph wrote of her firm resistance to seduction: “it would not have been possible for me, for my future wife already had a force of judgment & reason that sheltered her from a danger which was made possible by the extreme liberty that my father & her parents left us.” Joseph noted that they were given such latitude in large part because “the Bertholon parents [counted] on the resolute character of their daughter, the strength of her judgment, & the rigidity of her principles.”139 Fanny had been a stalwart defender of her own virtue and so could be trusted to form her own attachment with some freedom. As Fanny’s governess and companion, Agathe would have been witness to these interactions and been well aware of Fanny’s successful strategy.140 Agathe encouraged Joseph’s attentions while seeking to ascertain Joseph’s intentions. She wrote to Joseph, “I am not indifferent to so much attentiveness” but hesitated to offer more. She argued that “[I] must not abandon myself blindly to the 138 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 October 1835, MG. 139 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 54-55. 140 See Susan Foley, Women in France since 1789: The Meanings of Difference (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 43. The importance of sexual innocence for unmarried French women during this period has been well documented. 66 surprises and caprices of a love, that, one day, might well change?” She continued “You will permit me therefore, Monsieur, to be still as severe, to not cede to your insistence for the project that you have formed. I consent very willingly to see you; to encounter you here and there and always by surprise.” She concluded that she felt great affection and that she would try to meet him but there must be “no force, no violence all in good friendship.”141 Recognizing that her sexuality was her primary source of power in the relationship, she delayed consummation on the basis of the possibility that he would not be constant to her. This pattern closely resembled bourgeois marriage practices that prized virginity in women.142 Wary of the precariousness of an illicit union, Agathe withheld consent for consummation as she assessed Joseph’s objectives. Agathe’s early letters, including the excerpts above, returned repeatedly to two key elements of companionability. She was flattered by “so much attentiveness.”143 In her letters she dwelled on her appreciation of his affection: “I believe of your tenderness and your attachment for me all that you could hope that I would think: this persuasion is the happiness of my life.”144 Affectionate 141 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 17 October 1835, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. Emphasis original; See also Marie-Claire Grassi, “Friends and Lovers (or the Codification of Intimacy),” trans. Neil Gordon Yale French Studies 71 (1986): 78. Grassi provides a detailed analysis of the word friendship in French love letters. 142 Sohn, Chrysalides, 568-569; Colin Heywood, “Innocence and Experience: Sexuality among Young People in Modern France, c. 1750-1950,” French History 21 (2007): 52. 143 Agathe to Joseph, 17 October 1835, MG. 144 Agathe to Joseph, 25 October 1835, MG. 67 behavior, love and tenderness were very important to her.145 Yet these alone were not enough in the face of possible inconstancy. Her fearfulness that Joseph might be capricious and might change suggests that fidelity was as important to her in a companionate relationship as affection. Agathe was well aware that there was and always would be another woman in Joseph’s life, yet fidelity was centrally important to her construction of their pseudo- marriage. Her letters were replete with threats of abandonment if Joseph violated her terms of the relationship. She warned him that if in his heart “there was some division” or his inclinations pulled him elsewhere, “forget me!!!!” She made him swear “that you have no particular attachment; that your heart is entirely free.” She pointed out the evils of prostitution, women who “laugh at the dupes they make, by turns” leaving only the “scorn due to a love played, ridiculed.” She openly expressed doubt that she could truly be his first mistress, as he seemingly had told her, and warned him that “I will have the vigilant eye and the ear that hears; finally, as I told you, I will attempt everything to know the truth.”146 Agathe’s aggressive stance on disloyalty showed that she expected complete fidelity as a central component of their relationship. For her, their relationship was companionate in that they shared affection and freely chose their union, but those very conditions also meant that he should have no excuse for seeking companionship elsewhere. 145 William Reddy, The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1814-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 111. Reddy makes the case that women in this period preferred sentiment and emotional fulfillment even if it came at the expense of appearances or honor. 146 Agathe to Joseph, 14 November 1835, MG. Emphasis original. 68 An affair, framed as a maidenly courtship, was a concept that stood in conflict with the inherently transgressive and sexual nature of adultery. Agathe’s desire to be seen as and pursued like a young maiden being courted was in tension with the sort of relationship Joseph proposed. She recognized to some degree the risks involved as Joseph pushed for greater physical intimacy. Most of his letters from this period have been destroyed, but he evidently suggested a rendezvous at a discreet location. Agathe resisted: “I would like to, and would not like to I would dare and I fear!” In her resistance, she worked to augment her own emotion, savoring her own ambivalence and inviting Joseph to do likewise. She went on to hint that such a step would make her seem like a prostitute: “It would look too much! You know? . . . I do not want to become like such beings.” She concluded that the conventions must be observed: “I would see you always with pleasure in your home or in mine; but not elsewhere.”147 Agathe did not want to become a casualty of male sexual adventuring; she recognized the risks and held out in a bid for exclusivity. Agathe chose to see her budding relationship as leading to a type of marital relationship, albeit not sanctioned by law; Joseph did not. Her preoccupation with sentiment prevented her either from seeing herself as others would perceive her, or from accurately judging Joseph’s intentions.148 Her deliberate approach to entering into a sexual relationship belied the popular narrative of seduction-dominated accounts of 147 Agathe to Joseph, 25 October 1835, MG. Emphasis original. 148 Martha Tomhave Blauvelt, Work of the Heart: Young Women and Emotion, 1780- 1830 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 91. 69 unmarried female sexual activity.149 She chose to begin an adulterous relationship, but she also decided to ignore the realities of that situation in favor of imagining herself to be in a companionate relationship. The case of Agathe and Joseph suggests that adultery could be a parallel and alternative vision of marriage. Adultery in this period should not be seen simply as a hedonistic diversion or a form of cross-class exploitation. The early contacts of Agathe and Joseph followed the same pattern of courtship rituals through sociability that in other cases led to marriage. The theme of resistance and surrender was not simply a means to heighten sexual tension but was a calculated move to secure a relationship that was as marriage-like as possible. Agathe wanted security and constancy as the price of yielding her virtue in a pattern that closely followed courtship and marriage rituals. Joseph must have soothed her fears, because eventually they did embark on a sexual relationship. The culture of nineteenth century France encouraged male infidelity, but both Fanny’s and Agathe’s letters illustrate that women were neither ignorant nor accepting of it. In this regard the mistress’ position was paradoxically more powerful than the wife’s in determining the boundaries of a relationship. The former could threaten to leave if her demands were not met, whereas the banning of divorce deprived wives of that power. Agathe’s vision of her adulterous relationship as a monogamous marriage-like arrangement had implications for the Bergiers’ marriage. By using her leverage of abandonment, she could ensure that Joseph did not take other mistresses or visit prostitutes, limiting his sexual agency in a way that Fanny could not. Agathe successfully defined the boundaries of the Bergiers’ relationship, but she included herself 149 Fuchs, “Paternity and the Law,” 946. 70 in the picture. Ultimately she created a situation in which Joseph was polygamous, rather than promiscuous. Thus the boundaries of companionate marriage were not simply created by a social ideal, or by the contesting visions within the couple, but by three people: the mistress the husband and the wife. Companionate marriage brought together two types of sexual behavior that French society had previously characterized as divergent. Conjugal relations existed primarily for procreation, because until the nineteenth century such unions were generally arranged and therefore mutual attraction was by no means guaranteed. By contrast, extra- marital sex was supposedly based on passion and pleasure. Although Agathe characterized herself as a wife, she saw no inconsistency in demanding sexual fulfillment. In nineteenth century France, the two types of sexual regimes merged as the institution of marriage began to be eroticized. In addition to friendship, couples expected emotional intimacy and sexual satisfaction from marriage.150 Agathe’s letters give a sense of how important passion was to her as a component of their relationship. This was for her the first time she had been in love and almost certainly her first sexual encounter. She wrote “I truly do not know who has more affection, more tenderness of attachment, than she, who knew for the first time the true happiness of loving . . .you, my dear.”151 That Joseph was her first lover did not deter her from asserting her own needs or making demands on him. She expected passion and 150 Jean Fauconney, Physiologie secrète de l’homme et de la femme (Paris: Denans, 1908), 109-110; Heywood, “Innocence and Experience,” 60; Foley, Women in France, 43. The transition toward the eroticization of marriage could be a source of anxiety. 151 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 22 November 1835, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. 71 sexual fulfillment from the affair, which ought not to be surprising given the nature of adultery, but did not share Joseph’s view of how relationships should work. Sex was a point of contestation in the definition of a companionate marriage. Five months into the affair Joseph failed to meet Agathe’s sexual expectations, and she refused to see him. The gaps in the epistolary record make it impossible to tell if this was the first such problematic encounter or if it had been a recurrent problem. In her own letter she referred to the issue obliquely. “The insipid coldness with which you received me last Friday chills me still . . . The memory, still fresh, of your air of constraint and irritation with me, causes me to spill tears continuously!” She was, she claimed “the too unhappy victim of your caprices” and informed him that she “had more need, in this moment, of you staying away than your presence.”152 Agathe’s circuitous phrasing made her meaning ambiguous, but subsequent correspondence made clear that Joseph had failed to perform sexually. Having a fulfilling sex life was important enough to Agathe’s vision of their relationship that she was willing to threaten him with separation to obtain her point.153 Agathe’s insistence on sexual satisfaction was an example of a larger shift in the function of sexuality in marriage or marriage-like relationships in France. Robert Nye has argued that a man’s personal honor was tied to his sexual prowess in new ways in the nineteenth century. While in earlier eras sex was closely tied to reproduction, in the nineteenth century fertility was increasingly separated from sexual fulfillment. In this 152 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 12 February 1836, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. Ellipses original. 153 See Peter Gay, The Education of the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 71-90. Gay discusses the sexual assertiveness and libido of middle class women during this period. The case of Mabel Loomis Todd provides an interesting comparison. 72 new framework men were expected to provide sexual pleasure to their wives. Aspersions on sexual prowess had wider resonance as the simultaneously became criticisms of a man’s honor as a husband.154 Agathe’s tactic of withdrawal was immediately effective in that it elicited a passionate reaction from Joseph. He responded to her accusation of insipid coldness with the claim that “my heart was not cold, it cannot and could not be so . . . yes, cruel woman, rejoice in all your triumph . . . I love you even more than ever & nothing can compare to all that I suffer since Thursday.”155 She was able in part to extract the response she hoped for, which was reassurance of his love and devotion and a demonstration of her power in their relationship. His response did not, however, resolve the underlying issue of sexual incompatibility that Joseph then addressed far more explicitly than Agathe had done. Joseph countered Agathe’s frustration using a different definition of companionate marriage. He suggested that her dissatisfaction stemmed from a wrong understanding of what a true relationship should be. Outraged by the aspersion on his sexual prowess, Joseph implied that real love was not sensual, and that her expectation or disappointment was a reflection of her weakness, rather than his. Joseph scrawled an angry draft on the back of an invitation to an event at his masonic lodge. He wrote “If [your] allegation were sincere, love for you would therefore be entirely sensual, & you only measure the violence of a love by the number of orgasms that it can procure you!”156 154 Nye, “Honor, Impotence,” 52-53. 155 Joseph Bergier to Agathe Reynaud, 14 February 1836, Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. Second elipses original to document. 156 Joseph Bergier on the reverse side of Guichard, Undated Invitation, Loge Réguliere d’Union et Confiance O. de Lyon, Lettres Gastine, Box 102 MG. Crossing out original. 73 In another, dated, draft he wrote then crossed out that “you are right to abandon me if you measure my love by the number of physical pleasures it can procure you!”157 Joseph linked his impotence to Agathe’s heartless sensuality, a connection that resonated with widely held beliefs about sexuality at the time. Joseph was already defensive about his masculinity, having failed to sire children, which in the popular imagination was linked to impotence. Contemporary doctors blamed women’s sexual appetites for destroying men’s virility.158 Joseph deflected the critique of his manhood implicit in Agathe’s letters by putting the blame on her, implying she was oversexed and lacking in natural affection. He wrote to her that, though passion might be satisfying in the short term, “soon one is astonished to find the heart empty one blushes to have called such saturnalia love, of having profaned the most beautiful sentiment which providence has given us.”159 According to Joseph, real women experiencing real love did not make sexual demands on their partners. He attempted to put her in her place as a power move from his position of anxious manhood. The importance of gaining ascendance in the power to define the relationship is particularly evident in the dramatic tactics Joseph used to assert his dominance. He emphasized the pain that she caused him with her recriminations, warning of a future of unhappiness for them both if she persisted in her critical attitude. He wrote, “I did not understand suicide before, I mocked it, I laughed about it, I would not today. I have experienced all the anguishes of a true love unrequited.” After hinting his willingness to 157 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. Original crossed through. 158 Angus McLaren, Impotence, 107-108. 159 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. 74 end it all, he threatened that one day she would rue her dissatisfaction with what he had to offer: “you will regret one day a heart like mine; you have never been & and will never be loved as I love you.”160 Joseph used another power tactic to constrain Agathe to repent of her insistence on her own needs. He made her critical attitude the source of his misery and potential suicide, providing a strong inducement for her to back down and acquiesce to his vision of what their relationship should be. He further asserted that what he had to offer was the greatest and only love she could ever hope to receive, making it imprudent for her to persist in her demands on him. Instead of a relationship based on sexual gratification, Joseph presented an idealized relationship based on mutual friendship. He pled with her to see reason and to resolve his doubt “that you could prefer a lover to a true friend.”161 The evidence suggests that, if Agathe did not prefer a lover to friendship, she certainly was not willing to have the latter as a replacement for the former. She valued their friendship, but she expected her lover to perform as such.162 Joseph contrasted physical chemistry with mature love, arguing that his age justified a retreat from an energetic sexual life. He wrote “at 15,16 & 20 years old passions are in all their force” at which period “one wants at any price to satisfy one’s passions, one becomes drunk with pleasures, [had you found me] your lover, how much 160 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. 161 Ibid. 162 The tension between sexuality and friendship in companionate marriages was also evident in Effie and John Ruskin’s failed marriage, providing a useful point of comparison. See Jennifer M. Lloyd, “Conflicting Expectations in Nineteenth-Century British Matrimony: The Failed Companionate Marriage of Effie and John Ruskin,” Journal of Women’s History 11 (1999): 87. 75 you would have counted on my love!”163 According to him, her sexual needs were not realistic, given his age. He wrote “I pity you the more because you have not known true sentiment, but no, no, it cannot be thus except at 15, 16, & 20 years old.”164 In his construction, her demands were a sign that she did not understand what true love was, only adolescent passion. Love, according to Joseph, was not measured by the frequency of sexual encounters or pleasure in them, but by true companionship. “What a difference at my age, & how love is envisaged in a different manner, when time has calmed the violence of passions.” At his age “one no longer feels the need to have Mistresses, but one feels all the value of a friend! One is happy by a woman . . . who unites the graces to [her] Spirit, when her education, her position in the world correspond with one’s own.” He further elaborated his criteria for romantic happiness, that “in leaving her arms one can talk with her, when disgust is not what follows an orgasm, when at last the soul alone is drunk with an inexhaustible happiness . . .That, too adored lady, is how one loves at my age!” 165 In other words, he contrasted her “violent passion” with the quiet rationality of shared conversation. He framed the difference as being one of age, treating his aging process as representative of normal development for women as well as men.166 Yet considering that Agathe was in all likelihood older than he, the real difference he wished to underline was 163 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. 164 Joseph Bergier on Guichard, Undated Invitation, MG. 165 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. “How love” through “passions” crossed out in the original. 166 Hilda Smith, “‘Aging’: A Problematic Concept for Women,” Journal of Women’s History 12 no. 4 (2001): 78. 76 between the sexes. His implication was that he, as a man, acted rationally whereas she was overwhelmed by her feelings and therefore mistook the real value of relationships.167 Taken as a whole, Joseph’s definition of companionability seems strange when one considers he was addressing his mistress and not his wife. After pressuring Agathe to have sex for months, he claimed that sexual gratification was not important. He wrote, “One no longer feels the need to have Mistresses” in a letter designed to persuade his mistress to stay.168 The character traits he outlined as being of supreme importance, including education and social position, were qualities that Fanny embodied, yet he looked elsewhere to find them. Why did he need Agathe when he was already married to an intelligent and cultured woman of elevated social standing? Joseph’s actions contradicted his written definition of a companionate relationship. What then can we conclude about Joseph’s definition of companionability? Joseph’s indignation at Agathe’s critique revealed not so much his views on sexuality as his position on what the relationship between men and women ought to be. Joseph’s characterization of Agathe as emotional and fundamentally misled by sentiment was an expression of republican masculinity. The male public sphere in early nineteenth century France based its legitimacy on the claim that women, like children, were irrational and therefore should be excluded.169 On a more private level, companionability to Joseph did not mean that both partners had an equal right to set the parameters of the relationship. To him 167 Reddy, Invisible Code, xiii. Reddy discusses the contrast between honor and sentiment in adulterous relationships. 168 Joseph to Agathe, 14 February 1836, MG. 169 Reddy, Invisible Code, xiii. 77 companionability meant an agreeable and pliant partner who was available when he needed companionship but undemanding otherwise. He articulated this more clearly in letters to Fanny as will be seen subsequently. As expressed in his desire for a lover who was also a friend, Joseph appreciated the aspects of companionability that produced a partner who was interesting and compatible, but he was not interested in having to accommodate or sacrifice his own interests for the sake of the relationship. Joseph’s goals for his affair with Agathe were in some respects similar to his idealized vision of what his marriage should look like. He wanted intimacy and affection, but only on his own terms. The divergence of Agathe and Joseph’s views on what a companionate relationship ought to be pointed to wider gender-based differences in French society. The growing political and economic opportunities of French men contributed to the establishment of separate spheres. Home, whether with a mistress or a wife, was for men a place of refuge. Companionability need not signify proximity.170 Agathe’s letters, in contrast, emphasized her need for both physical and emotional closeness. Life within the home was, in her characterization, a prison that kept her from freely being with him as frequently as she desired. Consistent expressions of affection, including physical contact, were crucial elements of companionability. Happy relationships were not only based on common interests, but were centered on expressions of love. Agathe’s willingness to fight for her position was fundamentally at odds with Joseph’s belief that his preferences should define their interactions. The end of the affair between Agathe and Joseph pushed into the open the conflicting expectations of marriage that all three concerned parties had harbored. 170 Jabour, Early Republic, 7. 78 Agathe’s reaction was a final, dramatic articulation of her view of companionate marriage. Her wrath centered on accusations of adultery; she did not characterize her own relationship that way, but instead excoriated Joseph for playing her false. She wrote “your prompt determination to cease between us all relation out of consideration for your wife is but a pretext. I could certainly but praise you if you became more faithful to her, if you only wanted to love her exclusively; but I am not the dupe of your evasive conduct.” She added a sarcastic rejoinder to his letter which was evidently rude and accusatory: “I thank you for your choice and distinguished expressions that are enclosed in your letter; they are in relation to the nobility of your sentiments, the fairness of your conscience and the goodness of your heart.”171 These words may seem like simple bitterness, but the sources of her anger were significant. Her two principal criticisms of Joseph were that he was unfaithful to her and that his behavior was cruel and ungallant. He had failed to fulfill her two central expectations of companionate marriage. The Aftermath of Adultery: Exclusivity and Companionability Joseph and Agathe’s affair ended in a public conflagration that could not be ignored by even the most forbearing of wives. Prior to the affair with Agathe, Fanny had implored “all that I ask is that you hide yourself well and I promise that I will never search to surprise your secret the whole thing is painful enough for my heart certainty would crush me.”172 Even Fanny’s willful ignorance could not weather the scandal. When Joseph attempted to end the affair, Agathe reacted in rage by writing several 171 Agathe Reynaud to Joseph Bergier, 2 February 1837, Correspondance adressée à Bergier, Box 102 MG. 172 Fanny to Joseph, 12 May 1834, MG. 79 anonymous letters accusing Joséphine Vachez, Fanny’s closest friend, of having an affair with Joseph. Who received these letters is unclear, though at the very least Fanny and the Vachez family would have been on the list. Joseph responded by commissioning his man of business Christôt to confront Agathe. Christôt wrote, “She begins to understand all the infamy of the role she played.” Having taken her to task for attempting to ruin Joséphine’s reputation, he concluded, “she is a very wicked woman, I think that you are now rid of her God willing for a long time.”173 Agathe was completely ruined and ostracized from society. It was, however, impossible for Fanny to pretend not to see reality, as the scandal had gone well beyond the boundaries of their own home. Her reactions provide valuable material for evaluating what companionate marriage meant to her. Adultery was both an alternative site of negotiating the meaning of companionate marriages, and a force acting on legal unions. Some aspects of marital relationships can only be understood when couples are studied in the context of a larger group.174 Should companionability mean complete sexual fidelity, or was discretion enough? Fanny entered marriage hoping, rather than assuming, that her husband would be faithful to her. If Joseph had married her for love, then he lacked the excuse that arranged marriages in 173 Christôt to Joseph Bergier, 5 February 1837, Correspondance addressé à Bergier en 1834, Box 102 MG. 174 Ted L. Huston, “The Social Ecology of Marriage and Other Intimate Unions,” Journal of Marriage and Family 62 (2000): 300. 80 previous centuries had provided.175 The legal framework and cultural circumstances were exceedingly permissive, as we have seen. Joseph openly abandoned the practices imparted by his Catholic upbringing, so it was unlikely that religious strictures would have any weight. Furthermore, she was well aware of the checkered history of her male family members that pointed to a sense of entitlement and freedom when it came to sexual indulgence. At the age of twenty, Fanny’s brother César had run away with a “third rate actress,” and Joseph was obliged to chase the couple all over the Midi, first to Puy, then Clermont, and ultimately Bordeaux.176 Joseph himself had had an affair with a grisette in his youth, though it seems likely Fanny would not have known about it, and he hinted in his autobiography that his father was engaged in similar pursuits.177 Virtually every man in Fanny’s life had pre-marital or extra-marital affairs, and though her awareness of the facts may have varied, she was certainly not ignorant in every case. Changes in the work relationship between men and women contributed to conflicts over adultery. In the 1820s, during the first years of their marriage, there were a few hints that Fanny feared Joseph was unfaithful. Fanny frequently worked in the shop at the counter as an active participant in the family business.178 In the early 1830s, Joseph began to travel a great deal for business, giving him opportunities for adulterous behavior and giving Fanny reason to fear that such behavior actually occurred. She spent 175 Régine Beauthier, La répression de l’adultère en France du XVIème au XVIIIème siècle (Brussels: Story-Scientia, 1990), 27. 176 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 114-116. 177 Ibid., 56. 178 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 12 March 1834, MG; Fanny to Joseph, 13 November 1832, MG. 81 one sleepless night thinking that if “Bergier were here he would read to me which would doubtless help me to sleep and make me forget my pain vain desire he was 15 or 18 leagues from my pillow and was doubtless not thinking of me at all.” Instead, she insinuated, he was dallying with “pretty Lemonade sellers,” then exclaimed “Ah you rascal I have some idea that you’re up to your tricks while I am working hard.”179 As the family business model became less dependent on a wife’s personal participation, opportunities for dalliance increased. In this respect adultery was a bourgeois characteristic, particularly for men. The occupations of husbands provided the necessary discretion and also diversified the contacts making adultery both easy and appealing.180 The growth of separate spheres put couples in conflict over how love within marriage should be expressed, and what the boundaries of behavior were. Fanny’s contrast between Joseph’s “tricks” and her “working hard” articulated the two elements that were integral to her vision of companionability. She expected both sexual and economic exclusivity. For women, the stakes for ensuring male fidelity were high. One bleak letter from Fanny during the 1830s referred to the personal danger infidelity could pose. Joseph had written a letter, now lost, in which he promised to bring her a funny surprise back from his trip. She replied that “this phrase seems more like a threat than a promise, well as long as this something that is so funny isn’t contagious, if it were even an infidelity it would only half surprise me, plenty of women more pretty and loveable than I have cried 179 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 4 March 1834, Box 64.2 MG. 180 Sohn, “Golden Age,” 472. 82 over it I must resign myself!”181 Evidence discussed in the first chapter suggests that Joseph had already transmitted a sexually transmitted disease to his wife, contributing to her infertility and ill health. In addition to emotional pain, the culture of male adultery could be physically dangerous to wives.182 The changes in the Bergiers’ business arrangements during the 1830s mirrored wider transformations in French society that increasingly shut women out of business affairs.183 Having sold the family liqueur business in 1834 Joseph’s principal commercial activity became the construction and rental of luxury apartments in the newly fashionable quartier of Brotteaux.184 The neighborhood provided an elegant and modern alternative to the traditional bourgeois district of Ainay, which was located at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône.185 Living on private income, the Bergiers no longer had any need of Fanny’s work at the counter or abilities with customer relations. In 1839 Joseph went on a trip to Paris, leaving Fanny behind. The purpose of his trip to Paris was to attend the World’s Fair, specifically with an eye to outfitting the new apartments. He commissioned Fanny to have Christôt, his secretary, send him all the necessary measurements so he could buy the “locks, hinges, buttons [and] door plates 181 Fanny to Joseph, 12 May 1834, MG. 182 Harsin, “Syphilis, Wives, and Physicians,” 73, 75; Kevin P. Siena, “The ‘Foul Disease’ and Privacy: The Effects of Venereal Disease and Patient Demand on the Medical Marketplace in Early Modern London,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (2001): 215. 183 Hause and Kenney, Women’s Suffrage, 17. 184 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 20 April 1834, Box 64.2, MG. 185 Jean Dufourt, Calixte ou l’introduction à la vie lyonnaise (Paris: Nelson, 1936), 30; Kleinclausz, A., Lyon des origines à nos jours la formation de la cité (Lyon: Pierre Masson, 1980), 313-332. 83 that I might need; in a word that he tell me everything that is required.”186 Though part of his trip was for tourism, his principal purpose was business. The shift away from economic partnership between husband and wife was not immediate or complete. Though Fanny no longer had a place behind the counter or keeping the books, she was still involved in the real estate investment, acting as the agent in Joseph’s absence. She successfully rented an apartment, an action that Joseph approved. He wrote “The price that you established for the 5th [story] are enough in line with what I wanted” adding “you did very well to rent it, today it is a finished affair, so much the better!”187 He warned her, however, that he would be upset if they had to divide the apartments into smaller units to get tenants. Fanny was authorized to act in his name, and had his trust as long as she acted within the parameters he set. This was in line with his vision of companionate marriage, that he wanted partnership that served his needs but did not exceed the limits he established. The gender roles of the Bergiers may seem confusing, as they were simultaneously separated yet working together, diverging yet converging in different ways. Their case shows why the bourgeoisie in Lyon in particular are interesting subjects for the study of gender roles within marriage. The idea of separate spheres applies unevenly to the French context. Joan Landes has argued that the collapse of the patriarchal order of the Ancien Régime gave way to a pervasive gendering of the public sphere. Bonnie Smith, in her landmark study Ladies of the Leisure Class, made the case 186 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 6 May 1839, Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier, Box 102 MG. 187 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 17 May 1839, Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier, Box 102 MG. 84 that in the Nord the transition to separate spheres for women of the middle class was complete by the end of the century. While early in the nineteenth century women were well represented in business, by the dawn of the Third Republic these women were completely devoted to a domestic life defined by religion. In Lyon, by contrast, the boundaries between public and private were far more permeable. Lyonnais couples often took a more collaborative approach both in family life and in social and professional spheres. While broadly speaking the notion of separate spheres is applicable to nineteenth-century France, particularly in relationship to political representation, regional variations provide examples that make a more nuanced approach possible. The incompleteness of the separation of spheres in Lyon provided room for contestation over the way family life ought to be lived and what the place of women in business and society should be.188 Joseph limited the level of reciprocity in his business dealings with Fanny, by asserting his prerogative to restrict his wife’s power in their relationship. While he expected her to support his interests by acting according to his dictates, he denied her the same privilege. One of Fanny’s primary agricultural concerns at the time was the state of her apiary. So preoccupied was she with this activity that when Joseph ultimately returned from his trip she was reluctant to leave the bees to see her husband: “I was obliged to leave as I expect Bergier tomorrow . . . I leave my bees with fear I recommended to everyone. Papa promised me to come tomorrow to care for them, it 188 Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 2; Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 13-14; Pellissier, La vie privée, 173-174. 85 soothed my worry. I would not like to lose them.”189 While he was in Paris, Fanny had requested new supplies for the apiary. Reading backward from Joseph’s reply, it is evident that she asked him to search out high quality hives at the fair and bring them back to her. He responded “No, my dear, I will not buy hives in spite of all the desire I have to give you pleasure, I could not commit to spending 30 on something that is worth at most 12 or 15 francs.”190 Though Joseph’s expenditures for his business ventures dwarfed this sum, he decided her request was unreasonable and denied it. His refusal was couched in romantic language, further demarcating the boundaries of their relationship. The reason he even considered buying the hive was her pleasure and his affection, rather than Fanny’s business acumen. By labeling her request a whim he differentiated between his spending and hers and asserted that she did not have the final say. To Joseph, a mutual business association was not a component of marital bliss. For Fanny, the central difficulty with Joseph’s business trip was that she felt excluded when she believed she ought to have played a role. Although he wrote to her asking for her help, she was dissatisfied that he left her behind in the first place. She felt the exclusion was deliberate and that he had not truly discussed it with her, to which Joseph responded “For this voyage, you tell me that I never spoke of it except in front of a third person. Well! I assure you you are mistaken.” Joseph went on to assert that Fanny had had full knowledge and that his abrupt departure without her should neither have come as a neither surprise nor a blow. His peremptory assertion that she was wrong is 189 Fanny Bergier, récoltes diary, 22 May 1839, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 190 Joseph to Fanny, 17 May 1839, MG. 86 further evidence of his belief that his opinions and preferences constituted the final word concerning the boundaries of their relationship. By claiming that Joseph would only discuss the trip with a third party around, Fanny complained that he had not truly taken her into his confidence and had not discussed business privately with her, nor allowed her to voice her opinion. Worst of all, he had left her behind. He replied “I swear on my honor I never thought this trip would upset you . . . if you had said to me with frankness: this trip pains me, I really want to come with you, do not refuse me, I swear I would not have left or you would have come with me.”191 Joseph put the onus on Fanny, claiming her exclusion was her own fault for not pleading with him. From Fanny’s point of view, there should never have been any question of her needing to plead. He ought to have discussed it fully and privately with her, and he should have assumed she would be included in his travel plans and business deals. In spite of Joseph’s often controlling and dismissive attitude, he did consider husbands to have obligations in regards to maintaining affectionate ties within marriage. While he rejected the idea that he should curtail his absences in order to spend more time with his wife, his letters were full of effusions of love. He wrote, “Remain very sure that I love you as much as it is possible to love. That I have only you on the earth to whom I can confide my most secret thoughts. That you replace in my heart, father, mother, brother & children. That isolated in this world, my wife is everything for me.”192 Joseph assured Fanny of his unswerving devotion and claimed that his relationship with her 191 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 4 May 1839, Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier, Box 102 MG. 192 Ibid. 87 provided him with such complete emotional fulfillment that it compensated for his lack of family. Joseph’s letters reflected his sentimentality, though his actions did not necessarily follow the same pattern. In his letters, Joseph made explicit his expectations for his return home by providing his recipe for conjugal felicity. When Fanny complained of unhappiness at his departure he replied “If you want, my dear good friend, to be happy + to make me happy, you need to chase far from you the dark ideas that fatigue you [about infidelity], be always good, loving + nothing will be lacking from our happiness . . . let us forget as well the wrongs that we will have to reproach one another.”193 For Joseph, the key to marital bliss was an obliging wife who was cheerful company, forgiving of his past adultery and unsuspicious of his current behavior. In his characterization of the problems in their marriage, the main issue was Fanny’s attitude and moods rather than any actions on his part that may have contributed to her bad humor. For him, a good marriage meant having a cheerful home that he could return to without fearing a reproachful and despondent wife. It was not dependent on external factors such as a reciprocal economic partnership or physical proximity as Fanny suggested. Love was more about verbal expressions of affection and trust than about their lifestyle taken as a whole. Joseph’s effusions of love did not always read as sincere to Fanny. Though her letters are lost, she seemingly contested his claims that he loved her. He wrote, “As you are, you please me & very much . . . Cease telling me all the time that you fear that I don’t love you, when you know very well to the contrary, wicked woman, it is to annoy 193 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 8 May 1839, Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier, Box 102 MG. 88 me that you use such language.”194 Joseph’s frustration in this instance was clear, but his words suggest that Fanny had felt equally upset. Both Fanny and Joseph seem to have maintained that as individuals they were living up to the cultural expectation of conjugal love, but that their spouse was not adequately doing so. Joseph believed affectionate letters should be amply fulfilling and was irritated when Fanny did not take him at his word. In her turn, Fanny, who expected physical closeness and inclusion, did not read his words of love as being consistent with the actions that were to her destructive of marital happiness. Joseph and Fanny’s letters during their separation in 1839 revealed confusion over how love within marriage should find expression. Both of them evidently felt a strong desire to be part of a loving relationship that was emotionally fulfilling. Their expectations of how that love should be expressed diverged significantly, and those differences were in part dictated by the wider social context of gender expectations. Conclusion The problems in one marriage had roots in larger social and political structures. The infantilization of women by the legal code created a culture of permissiveness for men. Legally husbands and wives were not equals in any respect. The law code explicitly stated that, “the wife [owes] obedience to her husband.”195 This justified Joseph’s position that it was wrong for women to challenge him. Certainly neither Fanny nor Agathe had any leverage where Joseph was concerned other than persuasion. The 194 Joseph to Fanny, 6 May 1839, MG. 195 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon, Title 5 § 213. 89 disempowerment of women in regards to family relationships was true for women throughout France. The pressures acting on the Bergiers were present for bourgeois families elsewhere and, in different ways, on families of other social classes. Companionate marriage grew in popularity in nineteenth century France, but was in conflict with other legal and cultural changes at the time. The emergence of separate spheres was a cultural shift that appeared to be compatible with companionability, but was in fact in constant tension with it. If companionability signified proximity and shared experiences, then the legal and social limitations put on women by changing gender roles made true companionability impossible. Similarly, the Napoleonic Code was specifically designed to strengthen the institution of marriage by outlawing divorce and affirming paternal power. Yet taken as a whole, the laws tacitly encouraged male adultery while severely limiting the power of women to retaliate. If companionability meant complete sexual fidelity, the culture created by the new legal system was a constant force undermining a loving marriage. Husbands and wives engaged in the work of defining companionate marriage, but they were not the only active parties. Adultery was both an alternative site of negotiation and a form of pressure acting upon spousal relationships. Extramarital liaisons allowed men and women to experiment with romantic roles without the weight of legal limitations and social expectations. Yet adultery also put pressure on couples within marriage to reach a compromise on the meaning of companionability. The question of sexual fidelity as a component of companionate marriage became a source of contestation precisely because adultery acted as an external defining force for the boundaries of the conjugal tie. 90 The consistent thread implicit in all the negotiations over companionability was the question of equality. Both Fanny and Agathe assumed that participation in a companionate relationship gave them the right to make demands on Joseph and to define the relationship as partners. On both fronts he resisted this. He wanted love and friendship, but did not want to be challenged or to cede any of his privileges. Though none of the parties involved made explicit claims of rights for women or framed their discussion in the context of France’s republican experiments, the ideology behind republicanism was ever present. The push for empowerment within marriage was, however muted, a claim to equality and a rejection of the legal and social trappings that left women imprisoned. 91 CHAPTER IV “ALMOST OUR ADOPTED DAUGHTER”: PHILANTHROPY AND SURROGACY AS FAMILY CREATION The Bergiers were unable to have biological children and struggled to find a model for family life that met their individual expectations of companionability. Joseph’s adultery had only served to underline the ways in which their identity as a couple was under stress, while at the same time highlighting their incompatible visions of what a companionate marriage should look like. By the 1840s, Joseph had abandoned his philandering and as a couple they once again sought a family life. Having long since given up hope of having their own children, the Bergiers sought to meet their need for offspring through other means. Sociability was the primary avenue that the Bergiers used to address their childlessness. Associational activity was an important part of everyday life for the bourgeoisie of Lyon. The Lyonnais elite in this period multiplied the number of clubs and societies to which they belonged, founding charitable institutions to address the needs of the poor and to provide an opportunity for benevolence and public display of wealth. Philanthropy played an important role in the Bergier story, not only as a means of helping the poor, but also as a path for alternative family creation and surrogate parenthood. This chapter focuses on sociability, both formal and informal, as a means of creating family-like relationships. Yet even as the Bergiers made family-like ties with children outside their kin, these bonds reinforced rather than erased existing hierarchies. 92 Gendered perceptions of the significance of children played a role in determining how sociable networks would be deployed. The first chapter demonstrated that men like Joseph viewed children as part of a dynastic imperative, making it difficult to imagine family life without them. The case of the Bergiers shows that some women saw family life as primarily an affective group, united by bonds of love and quality time. As a consequence, what an infertile woman often missed most about not having children were the personal ties with the next generation. Men like Joseph also valued personal relationships, but children additionally represented dynastic possibilities. Having no children meant having no heirs to inherit property, carry on the family name, or pay proper respects to the dead. This gendered understanding of why reproduction was important had wider resonance in the meaning of modern marriage. While having a small number of carefully tended children was very important in France, why they were important was open to debate. Childlessness hurt both men and women, but the pain came from different sources and necessitated a different response. The case of the Bergiers indicates the existence of a previously unexplored form of adoption, which I call sociable surrogacy. With avenues for legal adoption in the modern sense largely closed to French couples, some families, including the Bergiers, sought alternative means of family creation.196 Existing forms of sociability such as associational activity and informal networks provided opportunities for childless couples to form parental relationships with children from a variety of class backgrounds. These ties had the advantage of easily circumventing legal prescriptions against adoption, but lacked the protection a state-sanctioned connection would afford. Viewing these 196 Jean-Pierre Gutton, Histoire de l’adoption en France (Paris: Publisud, 1993), 138. 93 interactions as an avenue for surrogacy changes the significance of sociability in the context of the bourgeois family. There are four sections in this chapter, beginning with an introduction to the institution of patronage and its class implications. The next two sections look at how Fanny and Joseph used the Société de Patronage des Enfants Pauvres de la Ville de Lyon, a charity Joseph founded, to fill their differing needs to become parents. Both class and gender informed how the Bergiers employed associational activity as an avenue for alternative family formation. The final section addresses informal bourgeois sociability, which, for the Bergiers, centered on substitute parenting of their peers’ children in the face of their inability to have their own. Patronage as an Instrument of Social Control The Société de Patronage is a good example of the intersection between formal and informal sociability in Lyonnais society. In 1840 Joseph, along with Fanny’s brother César and their friend Claude Vachez, set up a charity called the Société de Patronage des Enfants Pauvres de la Ville de Lyon.197 The three founders were tied by familial and sociable links. Joseph and César were related by marriage and had shared a close relationship for fifteen years. Claude was one of Joseph’s dearest friends and spent a great deal of his leisure time with the Bergiers and the Bertholons. Thus the three men were linked primarily by familial and informal sociable connections. They drank 197 Undated newspaper clipping, 3 C 319 Archives Municipales de Lyon (AML). 94 together, their wives called on each other, and they spent nearly every weekend in good weather at the Bergiers’ estate in Collonges, hunting and playing boules.198 It seems likely that they discussed and planned the founding of the Société de Patronage during these many informal meetings that afforded ample opportunity for conversation. On April 30, 1840 Joseph wrote that he and Vachez went “to the meeting of the Société de Patronage, where 40 subscribers came to vote. Even though there were only 12 administrators to name, this operation lasted until 10 o’clock.”199 Evidently, then, the men had recruited subscribers before calling a meeting, and had already decided that a council of administrators would run it. In his old age, Joseph added an index to the back of his diaries, noting for the above date that “thus the Société de Patronage was founded.”200 The fact that the first meeting was well attended suggests that the organization had been planned and members invited on an informal basis before its official inception. The Société de Patronage was also the product of formal sociability, because all three men and virtually all of the initial subscribers were members of Masonic lodges. The leaders did not officially limit participation to Masons and their wives, nor do the statutes or reports suggest just how extensive the masonic involvement was. However, the list of male subscribers corresponds to membership in masonic lodges, and publications by those lodges indicate that in fact masonry and philanthropy were closely 198 There are many examples in the diaries of these sociable interactions. Some examples include Joseph Bergier, diary, 6 March 1838, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 January 1840, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 8 February 1840, MG. 199 Joseph Bergier, diary, 30 April 1840, MG. 200 Joseph Bergier, diary, index 1840, MG. 95 tied. Joseph’s involvement in the Société de Patronage can therefore be understood as part of a larger context of sociability.201 Patronage as a type of formal sociability provided opportunities for surrogate parenthood in ways that other associational activity did not. Popular throughout France in the mid-nineteenth century, patronage put wealthy philanthropists directly in contact with the poor they sought to serve. Typically it involved assigning a volunteer from the elite classes to a poor child or adolescent, charging the former with the moral and professional formation of the less fortunate patronné. By pairing a patron with each poor child, patronage created a pseudo family from the outset, setting the stage for surrogate parenthood should the patron feel so inclined. Patronage was also popular among the provincial bourgeoisie because it was a means to inculcate desirable qualities in the poor while avoiding more coercive measures of social control.202 Controlling the poor was of particular importance in Lyon, where disruptive class struggles had threatened the status quo during the 1830s. The economy of the city was largely dependent on the silk weaving industry, which in turn was subject to fluctuations in the market for luxury goods.203 Public assistance provided a safety net for out of work 201 Léon Boitel, ed. Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la ville de Lyon et de ses faubourgs: Compte-rendu de 1844 (Lyon: Leon Boitel, 1845), 29-30; Andre Combes, “La Franc-Maçonnerie lyonnaise au XIXe siècle,” in Lyon Carrefour Européen de la Franc-Maçonnerie, ed. Michel Chomarat (Roanne: SRI Edition, 2003): 67; Une réalisation de la maçonnerie lyonnaise, La Société de Patronage pour les enfants de la Ville de Lyon: La mémoire du cent-cinquantenaire 1840-1990 (Lyon: Auguste Cretin, 1990), 13. 202 Lee Shai Weissbach, “Oeuvre Industrielle, Oeuvre Morale: The Sociétés de Patronage of Nineteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 15 (1987): 106. 203 Jeremy Popkin, Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 193-194; Ludovic Frobert, 96 canuts, keeping them from migrating to other cities or from rising in revolt.204 The Société de Patronage, as well as a host of other similar organizations, primarily served the economic needs of the bourgeoisie, albeit indirectly. By investing in the working classes they protected their business interests from a volatile work force and their property from riots and revolution. The organizers of the Société de Patronage framed their interventions as a mission of rescue, saving poor children from the ill effects of poverty while simultaneously inculcating a desirable work ethic. According to the statutes of the organization, their mission was to save poor children from “vagabondage and other dire consequences of abandon in which most of them find themselves.” The association also sought to “facilitate their future in inspiring the principles and habits of an upright and moral life” and to supply moral and physical education. To achieve these aims, the organization would place children “under the special patronage of one of the members of the Society.”205 The statutes charged patrons with visiting the homes of the child to counsel Les canuts ou la démocratie turbulente: Lyon 1831-1834 (Paris: Tallandier, 2009), 16-17; Robert Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 36; Mary Lynn McDougall, “Consciousness and Community: The Workers of Lyon, 1830-1850,” Journal of Social History 12 (1978): 129. 204 Timothy B. Smith, “Public Assistance and Labor Supply in Nineteenth-Century Lyon,” The Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 2; George J. Sheridan, Jr, "The Political Economy of Artisan Industry: Government and the People in the Silk Trade of Lyon, 1830-1870," French Historical Studies XI (Fall 1979): 215-38. 205 “Société de Patronage Pour Les Enfants Pauvres de La Ville de Lyon et de Ses Faubourgs: Statuts,” n.d., AML, 305.997, 1. 97 the parents and provide moral oversight. The implicit threat in these friendly visits was the possibility that aid would be withheld if the poor failed to reform.206 One of the main purposes of this intrusion by the middle class into the private sphere of the poor was to reform and educate the working classes, inculcating bourgeois values. What constituted bourgeois values has been the subject of some historical debate. In one sense the term signifies the set of cultural practices that made membership in the middle class universally available to those willing to perform properly; family life and civic duty were the two criteria in this case. While theoretically universally available, in reality class as culture tended to be socially specific. In the context of patronage, bourgeois values meant those qualities that both reflected well on the bourgeoisie and would create peaceful corporate society such as thrift, sobriety and diligence. Accordingly, moral education was an important component to this form of philanthropy.207 In terms of the bourgeoisie of Lyon specifically, the class prided itself on possessing “esprit de famille” or domestic virtues aplenty, to be honest in business and above all active and hard working in business.208 Reforming the working classes was a means of reinforcing bourgeois male solidarity. By attempting to outdo one another in generosity, they showed that competition both in industry and in sociability was not inherently self-serving or 206 Catherine Duprat, Usage et pratiques de la philanthropie: pauvreté, action sociale et lien social, à Paris, au cours du premier XIXe siècle (Paris: Comité d’histoire de la sécurité sociale, 1996) 2:675-676; Rachel Fuchs, Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth- Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 198-200. 207 Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution,” 388; Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, 125; Weissbach, “Oeuvre Industrielle,” 108, 118. 208 Saunier, L’esprit lyonnais, 19-20. 98 destructive. Their way of life was not causing the social problems of an industrializing society; it was the means of healing them. By the same token, if the elite could induce the working classes and the poor to emulate them it would validate the view bourgeois men held of themselves. Bourgeois virtues of frugality, temperance and industry, if practiced by the poor, would confirm the broad applicability and viability of the bourgeois model.209 The theme of class submission disguised as filial piety was present in many of the official documents of the Société de Patronage. The statutes decreed that, “children admitted to patronage owe respect and submission to their Patrons.” The organization demanded comparable compliance from all members of the family: “If the parents of children obstinately refuse to submit to the opinion of the Council, this latter can withdraw the patronage of the Society from their children.”210 The first passage suggests dutiful submission to paternal authority along similar lines as the Napoleonic Code.211 It is significant, however, that Société de Patronage required the biological fathers of the children in question to demonstrate a similarly submissive attitude, deferring their parental authority to the patrons on pain of losing financial aid. Adult men of the working classes were infantilized and stripped of paternal power, which the bourgeois patrons arrogated to themselves. The underpinnings of social control colored the pseudo-parental relationships that the Société de Patronage fostered. Joseph, in a speech given at the annual subscriber’s 209 Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, 123-125, 222; Dufourt, Calixte, 90-91. 210 “Société de Patronage: Statuts," 5. 211 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon Title 9, §371-373. 99 meeting in 1845, justified the policy of paternal replacement by members serving as patrons. He explained that, “many fathers of families, themselves deprived of instruction, and not understanding the cost, have neglected to send their children to schools.” The result of this was that many children grew up “corrupted in the schools of drink on our quays.” As a result these men who “properly directed could have become useful citizens, vegetated miserably in misconduct and ignorance.” Given this deplorable situation in which incompetent parenting led to drink, sloth and criminality, the Société de Patronage was a real boon to the poor. Working class parents “were happy to divest themselves in favor of [the patrons] the rights that nature had conferred.” The children were accustomed to viewing patrons “as second fathers, and were respectful and grateful toward them.” All of this gave Joseph ample reason to hope that one day these children “would become excellent workers, and good fathers of families.”212 These passages make explicit the element of social control that was always present in similar benevolent works in Lyon. Couched in familial language and presented as paternalism in the friendliest sense, it was nevertheless apparent that producing a law-abiding and submissive working class was one of the primary aims of the organization. While the statutes of the Société de Patronage reinforced the hierarchies between the classes, they also conflated philanthropy and adoption by using familial language. This foundational document obscured the line between biological parenthood and the authority of the patron. For example, the stated responsibility of the patron was “to serve as a second father to the child admitted to the Patronage, to care for him and oversee his 212 Joseph Bergier, “Assemblée générale des souscripteurs,” in Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la ville de Lyon et de ses faubourgs: Compte-rendu de 1844, ed. Leon Boitel (Lyon, Leon Boitel, 1845) Fonds Ancien. Fonds Coste 352852, Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon (BML), 7-8. 100 education.”213 The maternal possibilities of patronage were absent from the documents of the organization, which were after all created by men. However, the implication of surrogate parenthood applied equally well to women who volunteered. While the governing council did not claim to replace biological parents entirely, they left ideological space for the patrons and patronesses to imagine themselves as proxy parents and to see their interference in that light. From the point of view of the members of the Société de Patronage, parents who were unable or unwilling to inculcate values such as industry or thrift in their children should be supplanted by more worthy surrogate parents, who would provide the necessary moral compass. Unlike many charitable organizations, the Société de Patronage kept children in the family groups, but attempted moral reform and support in order to preserve them from “vagabondage and the other dire consequences of abandonment” that would be their likely lot if raised by their parents without some outside intervention. The organization would bring children a brighter future by teaching them the “habits of an upstanding and hardworking life” and by supplying “their moral and physical education” that their parents could not provide “either from lack of means or negligence.”214 Patronage programs allowed bourgeois men to set poor children on the road to success, much as they would their own children; it set the foundation of moral rectitude and put children on the most financially rewarding path.215 213 “Société de Patronage: Statuts,” 7. 214 “Société de Patronage: Statuts," 1. 215 Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen, 165. 101 In order to be admitted to the program, children had to meet a set of criteria that in reaffirmed subordinate status. They needed to be between the ages of three and seven; young enough to benefit from early childhood intervention and schooling, but old enough to not need constant supervision. Their parents must be poor, but living. The Société did not remove children to an orphanage or other institution, so the mother or father must still be able to provide a home. The condition of impoverishment was subjective and poorly defined, but there was no lack of applicants. In order to participate, parents had to provide a written application to the governing council along with a birth certificate and proof of good health and vaccination.216 Patronage as an Avenue of Pseudo-Adoption It is within this broader context of social control, the perpetuation of certain values, and the ambiguous definition of family that Fanny’s use of the Société de Patronage must be read. In contrast to charitable institutions of northern France in the nineteenth century, patronage was male-dominated.217 Fanny could have no administrative or leadership role in defining the function or scope of the organization, but she was among the eight founding patrons and dames patronesses in the first year of the Société de Patronage’s existence.218 Female involvement in philanthropy highlighted 216 “Société de Patronage: Statuts," 5; Roger Price, People and Politics in France 1848- 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 53. 217 Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 136-137. 218 Boitel, Compte-rendu de 1844, 19; Maçonnerie lyonnaise, La Société de Patronage, 17. 102 maternal nurture as key to both charity and ultimately, citizenship.219 As a pioneer who set the standard for patronage, there were no precedents to dictate how the woman patron should relate to her patronnée. The larger context of class relationships, as well as Fanny’s personal experience of childlessness informed the ways in which she interacted with Marie Duclos, the girl she took on as patronnée. Wealth and social cachet empowered Fanny to disregard the official guidelines of the Société de Patronage in order to make patronage a form of surrogate parenthood. At four years old, Marie Duclos was the youngest of the pupils in the Société de Patronage. Her father was a day laborer and her prospects were grim.220 The precariousness of her family’s position gave them a strong incentive to cooperate with anyone offering aid, as well as little real power of resistance if the conditions of that aid changed. In accordance with the statutes of the organization, Marie at least officially continued to live at home.221 Fanny decided, however, to keep her for long stretches of time at the estate in Collonges. Instead of simply visiting Marie in the confines of the girl’s residence, Fanny removed her from her parents’ influence and took her to the countryside. Marie’s vulnerable position as a poor girl allowed Fanny to ignore class distinctions by removing the child from her parents to care for her personally. 219 Christine Adams, “Maternal Societies in France: Private Charity before the Welfare State,” Journal of Women’s History (2005): 89. 220 Léon Boitel, Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la ville de Lyon et de ses faubourgs: Compte-rendu de 1848-1849 (Lyon: Leon Boitel, 1850) Fonds Ancien, Fonds Coste 352853, BML, 41; Étude Vachez, “Dépôt du testament,” ADR; Maçonnerie lyonnaise, La Société de Patronage, 17. 221 Fuzier-Perrin, Historique de la Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la Ville de Lyon 1840-1890: Publiée en l’honneur de son Cinquantenaire (Lyon: Rey, 1891), BML, Silo Moderne 116479, 22. 103 Providing hands-on care for Marie served to simultaneously cement and circumvent class barriers. The fact that Fanny could arbitrarily take a girl from her home spoke to the power her wealth and position afforded, reaffirming the dominance of elites over the lives of the poor. At the same time, however, her care for Marie in her home obscured class boundaries. By bringing the girl into her own social circle she effaced to a degree the barriers between the opportunities of wealthy children and those of the poor. Fanny transplanted Marie into her own social sphere, allowing the former to interact as a mother with other women of her class, thereby creating an alternate form of family. She devised amusements for children, including Marie, the daughters of her friend Joséphine Vachez and the children of her cousins the Pellissiers. The children ate at a smaller table during her dinner parties and played together on the estate. She also brought them to the Vachez home, as Joseph wrote in his diary about “the 2 little Pellissiers & the little Marie Duclaux [sic], the young patronée girl of my wife, who after breakfast took them all to spend the day at Madame Vachez’s house.”222 Instead of being an outside observer to the parenting of her cousin Émilie Pellissier and friend Joséphine, she was a participant in their mothering group. Like them, she oversaw the children, took them calling on others their own age and generally participated in the social aspects of motherhood. Fanny was personally responsible for Marie’s care, at least while they were in the country, allowing her to participate fully with other mothers. Patronage offered a non-biological means of becoming a mother, but it was a form of motherhood with limited responsibility and sacrifice, and the relationship was greatly influenced by class privilege. Fanny’s position of power over the Duclos family, 222 Joseph Bergier, diary, 26 January 1843, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 1 September 1844, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 104 as well as her personal resources meant that she could be a caregiver on her own terms. Parenthood through patronage made it possible to avoid many of the laborious, not to say dangerous, aspects of becoming a mother. Unlike Joséphine Vachez, who lost multiple children to miscarriage and death in infancy, Fanny became a mother without endangering her body or experiencing childbirth. She was also at liberty to stop her role as caregiver at any point. The statutes of the Société de Patronage in no way obligated her (or even encouraged her) to take her patronnée home and treat her like a daughter. If the thrill palled, she could very easily have servants care for Marie, or she could simply return the girl to her parents. Marie had no legal right to demand anything that Fanny saw fit to withhold. Both Joseph and Fanny took an active part in meeting Marie’s needs, imbuing patronage with emotion and a semblance of familial organization. While Marie did spend stretches of her childhood in Fanny’s custody, much of the care that the Bergiers offered came under the usual terms of patronage. The Bergiers saw to it that the girl obtained an education at charity schools for the poor. Joseph wrote to Fanny, “I have given Marie her paper, & the note of the money that I counted for her. At this moment she is eating breakfast, & later the farmer’s wife will take her to the charity.”223 As Marie got older, they continued to visit her at her school to follow her progress. Joseph wrote, “We went first to see the girls school in Rue Buisson to see the little Marie for whom Fanny is the patroness. [We] learned that for several days they have been happier with her, & and 223 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, undated 1844 letter, Biographique Correspondance Bergier 1839-1848, Box 49.2, MG. 105 they gave us hope that she will end up by doing something.”224 Joseph’s involvement with Marie is evident in these excerpts. Theoretically, patronage was a relationship between a wealthy individual and a poor child, and to a lesser degree the family of the child. Joseph’s participation in Marie’s upbringing demonstrates that patronage was in some cases a more family-based affair than the statutes of the Société de Patronage would indicate. Despite the care the Bergiers lavished on Marie as a child, as she reached adulthood they distanced themselves. Given that they very much wanted to have children, how can their rejection of this opportunity be understood? Though no direct evidence in Marie’s hand exists, even the sources filtered through the Bergiers’ lens suggest that she was willing, perhaps wanting to be collected into their fictive family. The poverty of the Duclos family and her parents’ acquiescent attitude signal that from their perspective adoption was tolerable, even desirable. The real obstacle to pseudo-adoption came from the Bergiers themselves. Class prevented patronage from being a fully effective form of sociable surrogacy. The principal barrier to coopting a poor child into a wealthy childless marriage was the deep-seated prejudices of the bourgeoisie. An inability to read emotional performance signaled the depth of the social divide between wealthy and poor. After one visit to check in on Marie, Joseph wrote to Fanny: “She cried in embracing me; I thought she had done something naughty, but her aunt told me that it was pleasure & emotion, because she loves us very much, & and she is impatient to see you. I congratulated her heartily, engaged her to work hard, to be good, 224 Joseph Bergier, diary, 11 May 1846, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 106 affirming to her that it was the best means of repaying what you do for her.”225 Joseph and Marie’s family understood her emotional work very differently. He assumed that her tears signaled guilt for being “naughty,” as he stood in judgment of her. Her aunt construed the tears and embrace quite differently, acting as interpreter for Joseph. She read the performance as expressions of love and longing.226 Joseph was familiar with tears and embracing as emotional performances within the bourgeoisie. On one occasion when he went to Paris leaving Fanny behind, he read her tears as signs of missing him: “I see my good friend, you are sad & very much so . . . did I not see a tear leave a mark on the paper [of her letter]!”227 He also read embracing as a sign of missing someone and a happy reunion. He returned from a trip at four-thirty in the morning, and Fanny had waited up all night for him: “After the first embraces & the first chatter we had some soup.”228 Within his own class and his family, Joseph easily read both tears and embracing as signs of affection and missing a loved one.229 Yet when it came to understanding the same performance by a member of the lower classes he read it quite differently. 225 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 30 September 1848, Biographique Correspondance Bergier 1839-1848, Box 49.2, MG. 226 Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion,” History and Theory 51 (2012): 206; Nicole Eustace et al., “AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions,” The American Historical Review 117 (2012): 1497. 227 Joseph to Fanny, 4 May 1839, MG. 228 Joseph Bergier, diary, 7 December 1842, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 229 Anne Vincent-Buffault, A History of Tears: Sensibility and Sentimentality in France (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 20-23. 107 The relationship between Marie and the Bergiers often seemed family-like, but ultimately Joseph at least could not see the girl as being anything other than a representative member of the lower classes and therefore not truly a daughter. He did not read emotional performances as he would those of a bourgeois daughter displaying sensibility. Class was not just about property or prosperity; it was also about performing feelings. 230 The Bergiers could think of Marie as a child when it suited them, but when Marie attempted to exert some emotional power in return, pushing for a closer relationship, Joseph characterized their relationship as transactional. Fanny should not be “paid” in affection, implying that Marie had some right to emotional closeness. Instead Marie could repay Fanny’s generosity by working hard and being good. In other words, she could become an exemplary member of the working classes through her docility and industry. Elevated socio-economic status allowed the Bergiers to have their cake and eat it too – they could claim Marie as a daughter and emotional outlet when it suited their needs, but could also distance themselves when they felt class boundaries were under threat. Family formation through patronage both reinforced existing social stratification and was limited by social restrictions. For several years Marie Duclos disappeared from the Bergiers’ diaries and letters. The records of the Société de Patronage indicate that she became a laundress and used the dowry provided by the organization to get married.231 In this respect she was one of the early success stories of the organization. She had been 230 Blauvelt, Work of the Heart, 12. 231 Maçonnerie lyonnaise, La Société de Patronage, 25, 37-38. 108 saved from “vagabondage and other dire consequences of abandon” and was a productive member of the working classes.232 Joseph’s diaries from 1862 contain one final reference to Marie, then an adult in her late twenties. Less than a month before Fanny died, when her health was rapidly deteriorating, Marie paid a call. According to Joseph, they “had not seen [each other] for 3 or 4 years; they both cried.”233 Now, at the end of Fanny’s life, Joseph read the tears of both women as signs of shared joy at reunion and sorrow at what would be a final parting. He did not require an interpreter to explain Marie’s emotions to him, perhaps because he was himself given to frequent weeping at that time.234 In any case, the chance of Marie becoming more than an object of charity was long past. One is left to wonder what effect the complex relationship between wealthy and poor, between family and charity had on Marie. In some respects she clearly benefitted from the arrangement. She had educational opportunities that might have been unavailable otherwise, she was apprenticed to a trade and she had a large enough dowry to make a class-appropriate marriage.235 Her association with the Bergiers improved her material life. Yet she was largely powerless in the relationship. Though she lived with the Bergiers for part of her childhood, as an adult she was unfit to be a member of their social circle. Meddling with class boundaries served the Bergiers’ interests in pretending to be parents, but it may well have been a disservice to Marie who was first pampered, then 232 “Société de Patronage: Statuts," 1. 233 Joseph Bergier, diary, 8 October 1862, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 234 Joseph Bergier, diary, 19, 23-24 October 1862, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 235 Maçonnerie lyonnaise, La Société de Patronage, 37. 109 ignored. As Marie seemingly left no records of her own, it is impossible to know her perspective on her pseudo-adoption. Fanny’s use of associational activity suggests that there was a gender component in the way she sought access to children. She was able to use her wealth and social position to gain full access to a girl with whom she could play and interact as well as educate, filling her need to have a maternal relationship with an individual child. The fact that Fanny did not continue her relationship with Marie into the latter’s adulthood suggests that what Fanny desired as a mother was to play with and care for a small child while her contemporaries were in a similar phase of life. Her dismissal of Marie shows that she was not thinking of family in primarily dynastic terms, nor was she preoccupied with finding an heir to the family name and fortune. Creating an Heir: The Dynastic Potential of Philanthropy Like Fanny, Joseph used associational activity as an instrument of family creation, but the differences between their approaches highlight how gender informed their respective reproductive priorities. While Fanny looked primarily for personal relationships in her fictive kin ties, Joseph was preoccupied with dynasty and inheritance. He left almost his entire fortune, including his house and lands in Saint Genis, to create an institution called the “Institution Bergier Asile Agricole et École Élémentaire de la Société de Patronage des Enfants Pauvres de Lyon [sic].” 236 In his testament he stated that this property must be used to create a residential home and rural rehabilitation 236 See Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR 3 E 19933, Lyon. Hereafter the name will be shortened to Asile or Asile Bergier. All official publications and memoranda using the full title included the words “Pauvres de la Ville de Lyon.” 110 program for children taken on by the organization whose parents subsequently passed away. This plan was a non-biological form of family creation, but it was also productive of existing hierarchies. He created a form of family for his own ends, but in the process reinforced gender and class structures. Joseph framed the Asile as a solution to the persistent problem of children who lost their parents after being taken on as a patronné. The great flaw of the Société de Patronage, according to Joseph, was that it was powerless to help children whose parents died after the organization had begun to sponsor them.237 These orphans therefore not only lost their parents, but also the valuable patronage that would guarantee their education and professional formation. Joseph characterized this problem as being orphaned twice over; in his view patrons were for the entire family, “a Protector, a Consoler, a Benefactor,” becoming “the friend, the Support of the family.”238 Under the usual proceedings of the Société de Patronage, however, patrons only offered aid to children who still lived with their family, and the organization had no infrastructure in place to cope with orphans. As a result, the patrons struck newly orphaned patronnés from their rosters just when “our intervention is more necessary than ever.”239 Joseph presented the Asile as a solution to this recurring problem. Providing guidelines so that the Asile would function similarly to biological kin, Joseph explicitly characterized his project as a form of family creation. The Asile would be directed by a couple “blessed with the qualities that distinguish the good father, the 237 Ibid. 238 Ibid. 239 Ibid. 111 tender wife, such that family life be established in all its richness and that there be unity of action and Direction.”240 In theory, emotional ties would break down class barriers still further by bringing the poor permanently into Joseph’s home to live an idealized domestic life. By characterizing these caretakers not as employees, or even as patrons but as father and mother, Joseph was explicitly framing his project as the creation of a family. Joseph’s vision was to design a family that was better than what nature had provided. The Asile was not simply an orphanage, for its possible inhabitants also included those whose parents the council of the Société de Patronage judged to be unfit. Children whose progenitors “had such conduct that the cohabitation of the pupil . . . presents a manifest danger for the Morality, and consequently the future of the Pupil” were also eligible for admittance. Minors who from “lack of supervision or severity of the parents” were likely to slip into vagabondage or truancy, and who therefore should be removed from the iniquitous influence of the city, were also suitable for the program. Finally, pupils who wanted to grow up to work in agriculture could voluntarily come to the Asile as apprentices.241 In his initial proposal, Joseph framed this project as a solution for orphans who would lose the benefit of patronage. On closer scrutiny, however, the Asile reads as another instrument of control, as a variety of conditions might justify removing a child from living parents into the sole charge of the Société de Patronage. Of course the organization had no legal right to claim custody, but the threat of removing valuable 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid. 112 financial aid and apprenticeship opportunities could prove persuasive. In his view, many poor parents ought not to have any influence at all over their children, and his fictive family would be an improvement over the biological parents. The Asile would function as an immersion program in gender roles and an idealized work ethic. Joseph romanticized family life in the Asile, outlining in his will a small world governed by gender roles, paternal authority and bourgeois values. The man in charge of the Asile should be “already of an advanced age, a good teacher able to run [the] school and provide all that concerns elementary instruction.” His wife should be “good and honest, [a] housekeeper, able to cook for all the inhabitants of the Asile, oversee and keep in good condition the clothing of the pupils” in which tasks she would be helped by the female students.242 These perfect parents, who would also serve as instructors and estate managers, would replace the biological family of a patronné. This was in stark contrast to the usual function of the Société de Patronage, in which patrons visited children only occasionally. The Asile Bergier reaffirmed both class and gender hierarchies. The Asile functioned as a surrogate child for Joseph on several levels. In most senses, the Napoleonic Code had hampered his ability to create a family, but in this final act he was liberated. Not having any biological issue or close relatives at all, he was at liberty to dispose of his fortune in a way that few French men were.243 He wrote: “the Heavens having refused me children, the free disposition of my goods is mine entirely, 242 Ibid. 243 Étude Claude Vachez, “Notoriété Bergier,” 31 May 1878, 3 E 19933 ADR. 113 and I use this liberty . . . to give satisfaction to all the sentiments that animate me.”244 He willed a few objects of sentimental value to distant relatives and left respectable but comparatively small legacies to each of his living family members. Then he bequeathed the overwhelming bulk of his fortune the Société de Patronage in order that they might create the Asile. This massive donation included not just his money, but also his apartment in town, his country home, his clothing, his furniture and most of the contents of his houses. The Société de Patronage and more specifically the Asile solved Joseph’s problem of having no heir. He justified leaving virtually everything to the organization by saying that, “it could not seem astonishing to anyone that after having consecrated my life to this Society of Good Works, I would want to assure its existence after me in consecrating to it the largest part of a [my] fortune.”245 Rather than being dispersed among many distant relations, the money remained in a large sum in the hands of a single entity. Furthermore, his home and the objects within it would remain together in the control and care of his chosen inheritor. The Asile filled the role of heir by carrying on the Bergier family name when there were no biological children to do so. Joseph made a point of attaching his moniker to the Asile he hoped to create. He specified that it must be called the “Institution Bergier Agricultural Asylum and Elementary School of the Société de Patronage.”246 The key part of this somewhat lengthy title is the word Bergier. By naming it after himself he fit 244 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid. 114 in with a larger pattern of philanthropic giving in France, particularly among those who had no children who could legally make a claim to the property. Those who left their houses and estates to charity, in order to turn them into orphanages, hospices or homes for the disabled, often insisted that the institution be named for the donor. This practice was a means of assuring the survival of the benefactor in the minds of the legatees. Making a bequest of personal possessions and insisting on attaching one’s name to the gift was a simple means of insuring that one’s memory would live on beyond death.247 Joseph had made the Asile his heir both by giving it his property and by naming it after himself, just as he would a human child. Finally, Joseph used his wealth to induce the inhabitants of the Asile and the patronné children to perform the emotional work of mourning him that under other circumstances would fall to biological children. Though he had devoted a great deal of energy to the administration of the Société de Patronage, he had not developed personal relationships with the patronnés as Fanny had. He could not count on the beneficiaries of his largesse to feel a personal sense of loss at his passing, or to shed tears as Marie had done for his wife. Though he may have seen the Société de Patronage as an adoptive child, he could not be certain that the young patronnés would see him as a father and mourn him accordingly.248 Recognizing that there was no guarantee of spontaneous mass grief at his death, Joseph used his wealth to ensure there would be an outward semblance of bereavement. 247 Jean-Luc Marais, Histoire du don en France de 1800 à 1839: Dons et legs charitables, pieux et philanthropiques (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999), 324-327. 248 Joseph was not alone in planning his funeral to the last detail. See Pellissier, La vie privée, 201. 115 In his will, he expressed that his dearest wish “would be to be accompanied to my final resting place by the largest possible number of pupils from the Société de Patronage.”249 To guarantee that this desire was carried out he offered money to every mourner from the organization who came to his funeral. He set aside from his estate 1500 francs for this purpose so that each pupil “of either sex who will have come to my funeral” would receive “a sum of ten francs which will be given to them on their return from the interment.”250 The promise of financial remuneration provided an incentive for a large number of patronné children to appear grieved at Joseph’s inhumation. “In the numerous cortège that accompanied the defunct to the cemetery of Loyasse, one noticed a group of 150 children, pupils of the Société de Patronage.”251 It is worth noting that one hundred and fifty was the precise number of people who could receive ten francs from his bequest. It is unclear whether the Société de Patronage took a hand in inviting the official mourners, but it scarcely seems coincidental that the numbers should match so perfectly. The services began at a church on the peninsula and concluded at the graveside. Thirty-four of the patronnés attended his funeral service at St. Pothin but were too young to make the climb up the hill to Loyasse.252 The other one hundred and twenty two climbed to the cemetery and were treated to a homily by Claude Vachez, who was the 249 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. 250 Ibid. 251 Undated clipping from Le Salut Publique in Joseph Bergier, diary, 13 May 1878, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 252 The cemetery of Loyasse is located atop a butte that dominates the skyline of Lyon. The climb to the top is quite steep. Nicolas Ducarré in Joseph Bergier, diary, 13 May 1878, MG. 116 logical choice both as Joseph’s “intimate friend” and because of his leadership role in the Société de Patronage.253 He enjoined them to “keep the memory of this day, and when you return to this funerary field, you could say in showing this tomb: Here lies a good man, he was among the first rank of the founders...who helped our parents take the first steps, always so difficult, in life.”254 Upon leaving the cemetery officials from the Société de Patronage gave the seemingly bereaved children their ten francs.255 Joseph’s funeral shows both the strengths and the weaknesses of using philanthropy as a means of family creation. On one hand, Joseph was able to use his wealth even in death to pressure those in need to act like a family to him. Paying mourners was not all that unusual in Lyon, as wealthy families would pay old men residing at the Charité to augment the cortège and make for a more impressive processional.256 In Joseph’s case, however, the paid mourners ostensibly owed Joseph some gratitude and personal connection. In addition, they were not supplementing an already large group of bereaved kin; they constituted almost the entire procession. Paying for mourners was an assertion, conscious or otherwise, of the differences of class that separated Joseph from the beneficiaries of the Société de Patronage. Joseph divided his mourners into at least two different emotional communities. One group was made up of fellow members of the bourgeoisie: his brothers from the Masonic lodge, 253 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR; Pellissier, Loisirs et sociabilités, 21. 254 Undated clipping from Le Salut Publique in Joseph Bergier, diary, 13 May 1878, MG. 255 Ducarré in Joseph Bergier, diary, 13 May 1878, MG; Pellissier, La vie privée, 204. 256 Madeleine Lassère, “Les pauvres et la mort en milieu urbain dans la France du XIXe siècle: funérailles et cimetières,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 42 (1995): 119. 117 fellow Patrons, friends and kin. The other group was extremely poor. His associations with the former led him to make assumptions about the nature of the affective bonds between people and the socially approved modes of emotional expression; he did not have to tell the bourgeoisie how to mourn, nor did he offer to pay them to conform to his expectations. In contrast, he had no expectation that the poor would grieve appropriately even after forty years of work in a service organization. Instead he offered to pay them to act grieved in the manner of the bourgeoisie. Even as he invited the patronné children to conduct themselves as if they were his family, he reasserted that they were separate and subservient by paying them.257 In addition to regulating his funeral, Joseph made provisions for the children of the Asile to maintain his grave. While ordinarily regular visits to the cemetery and the decoration of the tomb would be the obligation of children and family members, Joseph could not guarantee his remains would receive the traditional respect. Accordingly, he ordered that two thousand francs be invested and that the interest be “entirely consecrated to the maintenance, cleanliness and upkeep” of his plot in Loyasse as well as to care for the “Mausoleums, urns and gardens” that were found there.258 Joseph’s provisions for his tomb fit in to a larger pattern among childless people in France.259 257 Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” The American Historical Review 107 (2002): 842; Eustace et al., “Historical Study of Emotions,” 1497. 258 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. This investment was prudent, as even today his tomb is remarkably well kept. It is now better known for the quality and interest of the headstone than the fame of the occupant, and is part of a walking tour of Loyasse. See Ville de Lyon, “Le cimetière de Loyasse: Des pierres qui parlent,” accessed February 3, 2014, http://www.lyon.fr/lieu/culte-et-cimetieres/cimetiere-de-loyasse- ancien.html. 118 Sociable surrogacy involved values of both gender and class. Gender played a role in determining what made children important to the family. For Fanny, having children was primarily about emotional bonds and shared activities so she used the Société de Patronage to gain access to a child for that purpose. To Joseph, the primary purpose of having children was dynastic. He saw associational activity as a means of creating an heir and a legacy. Although the Bergiers approached surrogacy differently, in part informed by the gender expectations of their culture, their values as determined by social position united them. Wealth and social power determined the ability of the bourgeoisie to gain access to poor children in order to become surrogate parents to them. At the same time, philanthropy as pseudo-parenthood reinforced class distinctions in a variety of ways. Sociable surrogacy was both contingent on and productive of other hierarchies. Contested Surrogacy: Family Creation and Informal Sociability Thus far I have looked at formal sociability through associational activity, but I now turn to informal social networks as a form of family creation. Property ownership was central to definitions of family, because it determined the subtle hierarchy at play in the production of familial ties. This was dramatically evident for patrons, whose wealth encouraged the poor to be cooperative, as poverty made resistance exceedingly difficult for the patronné. Yet wealth also played a role in defining sociable surrogacy within 259 Donors employed a variety of strategies to ensure proper upkeep of their graves. One offered a financial prize for in a contest for best wife, the winner of which would have to leave a wreath on the tomb of the donor. Another philanthropist gave a large donation to an orphanage, with the proviso that the orphans go to her tomb on the anniversary of her death each year to leave a bouquet. See Marais, Histoire du don, 323. 119 class boundaries in ways that were less obvious but still significant. Distinctions of wealth within the bourgeoisie had an impact on whether a family with children would find it desirable to be “adopted” by another couple or not. While intraclass ties might seem to be horizontal, existing among social equals, in fact fine divisions emerged based on property ownership. Informal sociability for the bourgeoisie of provincial France was gendered, and the seclusion that women experienced fostered family-like groupings. As was the case in other regional capitals, the bourgeoisie of Lyon typically fled the urban setting in summer time, settling instead in luxurious homes in outlying villages. Men would commute into the city for business while women and children stayed full time in the countryside.260 This pattern was consistent for most members of the bourgeoisie of Lyon; the Bergier archive is replete with references to visits to various familial estates as well as the weekly house parties they hosted themselves.261 Possession of a country estate conferred patriarchal power, as less fortunate members of the bourgeoisie converged on the homes of those who did. In the 1830s and 1840s young families filled the estate at Collonges to capacity on the weekends, enjoying the bucolic pleasures it offered. The relationship was fairly one-sided; the Bergiers were virtually always hosts, not guests, and most of their visitors were dependent on them to keep up the lifestyle of visiting the country. 260 Angleraud and Pellissier, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 340; See also Chaline, Les bourgeois de Rouen, 208; Adams, Comfort and Status, 66. 261 Joseph Bergier, diary, 17 May 1835, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 23 July 1843, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 22 June 1845, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 120 The subordinate social and financial position that the Vachez family occupied relative to the Bergiers made them ideal candidates for fictive kinship. Claude and Joséphine Vachez found themselves unable to live up to the migratory lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Claude was several years younger than Joseph, situating him at a lower rung on the social ladder in terms of accumulated wealth. During the 1840s, Claude’s parents were still living, meaning that unlike Joseph he was not the beneficiary of a substantial inheritance that included an estate. While his profession as a notary allowed them to live a comfortable lifestyle, it was not equal to maintaining two separate households.262 Between house parties, the estate at Collonges was a female-dominated space. Joséphine and her daughters stayed for extended periods with Fanny at Collonges, while Claude and Joseph came on weekends to play boules, walk or to hunt with large house parties.263 The women therefore spent most of their time in a female-dominated rural sphere, at least through summer and much of autumn. This domestic arrangement created an intimate setting that lent itself to the Bergiers’ alternate form of family creation. The relative social status of the Bergier and Vachez families was subject to seasonal variations. In winter, when both families lived in smaller urban dwellings, the families met on equal footing at society gatherings. In the summer, however, the fact that the Bergiers owned an estate and the Vachez family did not tipped the social balance in favor of the Bergiers. The friendship and mutual affection between the families obscured 262 Fuzier-Perrin, Historique, 65. 263 Joseph Bergier, diary, 4-10 September 1842, MG. 121 this hierarchy, but it was nevertheless present and played a role in Fanny’s surrogate family creation. The constant contact that living on the same estate provided gave Fanny ample opportunities to develop a mother-like relationship with Joséphine’s daughters. Joseph’s diaries give a sense of the family life the two women and the girls shared. Gathered around the fire, Joseph read while “Fanny worked on my purse, Mde Vachez embroidered some slippers, Cécile mended something, & the two little Vachez [girls] as sweet as can be strung pearls. My reading was frequently interrupted by the conversations of these ladies, but since I was only reading newspapers it didn’t make much difference.”264 This domestic scene would have repeated itself daily as the women lived and worked together. On occasion, Joséphine left her children at Collonges in the care of Fanny and the servants. The prolonged contact between the Bergiers and the Vachez family led the former to think of the little girls as family. Joseph explicitly referred to Fanny Vachez, his wife’s goddaughter, in these terms. He wrote of one occasion when the little girl was too shy to speak: “Their little Fanny, having become almost our adopted daughter as we kept her nearly 6 months at Collonges, did not want to talk to us.”265 In this excerpt, Joseph made clear that he saw their relationship with the Vachez girls as being pseudo-adoptive. While he knew there was no legal tie, the long periods of intimacy and care in Collonges justified in his mind characterizing the girls as his and Fanny’s daughters. 264 Joseph Bergier, diary, 18 November 1842, MG. 265 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 December 1844, MG. 122 Sociable surrogacy required work. Having permanent houseguests multiplied Fanny’s domestic obligations. The guests could be a distraction or an impediment to her routine as chatelaine. By forming close bonds with Joséphine and especially her daughters, Fanny was committing to both physical and emotional work. Yet Fanny was willing to expend this extra effort, seeing it as a form of parenthood and the best means of creating a maternal relationship. A childhood illness of the eldest Vachez daughter, Cécile, illustrated the interplay of emotion, household labor, and gender. Joseph recorded the episode in his diary, and his account is striking in the way he distanced himself from responsibility. After visiting her ailing grandmother, five-year-old Cécile became very sick. Joseph noted “we think that it is Measles, if indeed it is not smallpox.”266 Dr. Potton, the family physician, thought it was an acute case of scarlet fever, but Joseph scoffed that he always exaggerated the severity of an illness, as “an adroit way of making your reputation, since everyone says; he healed this or that person from a very serious illness.” Joseph concluded that, since Potton thought it was serious, it must not be much cause for worry.267 He disassociated himself from the crisis and took no active role in its resolution. This does not mean he was indifferent to Cécile or that he did not see himself as part of her family, as subsequent events illustrate. Rather, he was twice removed from the laborious aspect of parenthood. His relationship to the little girl was not biological, and he was male rather than female. In contrast to Joseph, Fanny was intimately involved in the crisis. 266 Joseph Bergier, diary, 30 October 1842, MG. 267 Joseph Bergier, diary, 31 October 1842, MG. 123 Fanny’s care for Cécile involved a great deal of physical labor. She played an active role in nursing Cécile back to health. Joseph noted that “Fanny & Mde Vachez have practically not left the side of the little Cécile.”268 Fanny recorded in her récoltes book “It is by the bedside of the patient, by whom I am spending the night that I write this journal, from which I am frequently disturbed by the plaintive cries of this child.”269 She did not record the details of caring for the little girl, though soothing her in moments of distress was part the work. She likely also labored to soothe the fever and facilitated various bodily functions.270 The work of caring for the sick interfered with Fanny’s own responsibilities to the estate. She wrote in her récoltes accounts “As for me, despite the desire that I have to devote myself to my garden bed of Roses and Current bushes I am kept from it either by Bergier who constantly Consults me for information or by Mme. Vachez, little Cécile has scarlet fever and she suffers a great deal and the poor mother is worn out.”271 Caring for the little girl necessitated sacrifice on Fanny’s part and the neglect of her own duties and responsibilities. The medium Fanny chose to document her care of Cécile is significant. She wrote about it in her récoltes notebook, a diary that was almost exclusively devoted to detailing her household work, the management of the estate, agriculture and her accounts. She virtually never wrote about her feelings, family or noted personal reflections in it. 268 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 November 1842, MG. 269 Fanny Bergier, récoltes diary, 2 November 1842, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 270 Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 56. 271 Fanny Bergier, récoltes diary, 2 November 1842, MG. 124 The fact that she recorded her care in this way suggests that she recognized the effort she expended as being a form of work. Caring for Cécile was for Fanny like the unpaid labor she performed running the farm and selling agricultural products. It was real work that should be accounted for in her chronicle of the effort she expended on behalf of the family. The crisis situation demanded emotional work, particularly from the women involved. Joséphine was “extremely tormented because her daughter was constantly tired & she feared that her illness was going to the brain. Vachez himself seemed worried & tired.”272 Joséphine’s “extreme torment” was culturally appropriate in the context of sensibility as a norm for women. Yet self-control was also what both the situation and the cult of sensibility expected of its practitioners: a mother should feel suffering deeply, but not so much as to interfere with other aspects of gender performance.273 Giving way to despair would prevent her from offering the physical care her daughter required. Joséphine succeeded in producing appropriate emotions, but not in controlling them.274 In contrast, Fanny performed the important emotional work of self-control. While Joséphine was in torment, Fanny stayed up all night nursing Cécile. She noted in her private records that, although Cécile frequently uttered “plaintive cries,” the girl was otherwise “as reasonable as a big person.”275 She praised the girl’s ability, even in extreme illness, to school her feelings and act responsibly and appropriately. 272 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 November 1842, MG. 273 Blauvelt, Work of the Heart, 34; Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 108. 274 Rosenwein “Worrying about Emotions,” 837. 275 Fanny Bergier, récoltes diary, 2 November 1842, MG. 125 Bourgeois sociability created opportunities for surrogacy that the legal system denied to childless couples. The cultural practice of estival migration to estates provided opportunities for female networks to become family-like groupings. Long before the crisis of scarlet fever, Fanny and Joséphine had both been in maternal roles with the little girls. In the moment of calamity, however, Fanny proved to be better able to do both the emotional and the physical work of being a mother. These interactions led her to see Joséphine’s daughters as her own, thereby creating a fictive family that fulfilled her desire for children. The relative positions of the Vachez and Bergier families in the early 1840s disguised the fact that the former still controlled the boundaries of their family. Fanny was able to act as a surrogate mother to their girls because it was advantageous to the Vachez family to allow it. The social importance of property ownership made Collonges an attractive destination, and Fanny took on some of the labor of childrearing. It was convenient to the Vachez family that Fanny be permitted the latitude to act as and consider herself to be a mother. In this respect Cécile and Marie had a good deal in common; Fanny could be a mother to them as small girls because for both families it was expedient that she do so, albeit for different reasons. By the time Cécile reached adulthood in the 1860s, the delicate hierarchy between the Vachez and Bergier families had shifted dramatically. The Bergiers had suffered a significant financial loss that led them to sell their mansion in Collonges in 1859, though Joseph later purchased a much smaller summer home in the village of Saint-Genis- 126 Laval.276 Meanwhile, Claude Vachez had inherited his family’s estate at Irigny and so was no longer dependent on the Bergiers for pastoral pleasures.277 Changes in wealth and property meant that the position of the two families in the social hierarchy had reversed. Much of the time, the friendly relationship of the two families obscured this reality. The care needs of the two families had also changed by the early 1860s. Joséphine was no longer the mother to small children and so no longer needed help in tending her brood. Fanny was nearly blind and had begun to suffer from the series of illnesses that ended in her death at the end of 1862. She could no longer serve as a hostess and was herself in need of companionship and attention.278 The age difference between the two couples had begun to work against the Bergiers, as Claude and Joséphine were eight and eleven years younger, respectively.279 As a result, they found themselves at the center of the social whirl with marriageable daughters while the Bergiers were increasingly past their prime. The friendship between the two families remained, but the Bergiers no longer had the upper hand and were more likely to be the subject of munificence than the dispensers thereof. Cécile’s marriage to a wealthy merchant in 1860 was the moment that forced the Bergiers to see their own exclusion from the Vachez family circle. Joseph’s diary made 276 Étude Claude Vachez, “Vente Bergier Chonier,” 25 May 1859, 3 E 19824, ADR; Joseph Bergier, diary, 22 November 1862, MG. Joseph certainly owned the property in Saint Genis at the time of Fanny’s death. 277 Several letters from 1848 suggest that Claude Vachez had begun to use his family’s estate at Irigny regularly. Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 27 September 1848, 30 September 1848, 3 October 1848, 7 October 1848, Correspondance Bergier 1839-1848, Box 49.2, MG. 278 Joseph Bergier, diary, 20 December 1859, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 279 Marriage record Vachez Duviard, 22 January 1834, 2 E 1582 Record 13, AML. 127 the conflicting expectations of the two families clear. He wrote “It is today that Cécile Vachez marries at the hotel de ville M. Léopold Frinzine, & if something astonishes me, it is definitely to not have been one of the witnesses of this ceremony, to which I was not invited.”280 The invited guests included the groom’s father and brother, the bride’s parents and uncle and two other men whose relationship to the family is uncertain.281 Joseph’s entry made it plain that he assumed he would be a witness at the civil ceremony and was shocked when he learned otherwise. His exclusion was a reflection of the way Claude Vachez chose to define the boundaries of his family. In addition to the shared history that made Joseph feel entitled to be a witness, his inclusion in other parts of the marriage preparations may have led him to believe he would be part of the actual ceremony. Fanny and Joseph had been invited to be present when Cécile and Léopold signed their marriage contract, a separate ceremony from the wedding itself. In French society, couples typically drafted a contract a week or so before the actual wedding. The main purpose was to outline the financial and legal obligations of the two families. The document defined the groom’s wealth and specified the exact contents of the bride’s dowry. The contract also typically stated what marriage regime the couple had chosen, whether their property would be communal or if her dowry would be kept separate as a private source of wealth to be passed on to her 280 Joseph Bergier, diary, 15 November 1860, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 281 Mariage record Frinzine Vachez, 15 November 1860, 2 E 1157 Record 352, AML. 128 children. It was an important social event that most considered to be as binding as marriage itself, to which family members and close friends were typically witnesses.282 Joseph and Fanny were also invited to view the corbeille, a key element of Cécile’s transition to married life and an important ritual of bourgeois belonging. Joseph wrote: “they showed us the corbeille which is very beautiful, very rich & and in good taste.”283 The corbeille was a trunk full of gifts and luxury items that the groom was supposed to offer the bride in exchange for her dowry, often including underclothes, jewels, expensive shawls and other fashion items that a jeune fille was forbidden to wear. Generally valued at between five and ten percent of the bride’s dowry, it was a status symbol and a means of signaling both the wealth of the groom and the virtue of the bride that made such gifts worthwhile. The presentation and unpacking of the corbeille was an important ceremony that usually took place immediately before the signing of marriage contracts. It embodied a young woman’s transition to adult life as she acquired the accoutrements of a married lady. Joseph’s inclusion in this momentous occasion was another signal of intimacy.284 The signing of Cécile’s marriage contract was a festive occasion. There were “about twenty people. From the side of M. Frinzine, his father, two of his brothers & his sister; from the Vachez side, the Duviard family, Schmitt, Mde Girard from Paris, M 282 Laroche-Gisserot, “Pratiques de la dot,” 1443; Angleraud and Pellissier, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 371; The social endogamy of the bourgeoisie in Lyon has been well documented. See Foley, Women in France, 38. 283 Joseph Bergier, diary, 5 November 1860, MG. 284 Susan Hiner, Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth- Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 49-52; Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud vol. 2, The Tender Passion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 102-103. 129 Dugueyt & Ducruet & us.”285 On this occasion, the Bergiers were included as part of the family. The Duviard and Schmitt families were Cécile’s maternal relations. How Mde Girard fit in is ambiguous, but Dugueyt and Ducruet were notaries.286 They may have also been friends, given that Claude was himself a notary, but they were most likely present in a professional capacity to draft and witness the contract. On this occasion, then, Joseph and Fanny were included in what was otherwise a family gathering. Joseph’s exclusion from being a witness was therefore all the more surprising to him, as he likely read his invitation to the signing of the marriage contract as an affirmation of his status as family. The Vachezes further delineated the boundaries of their family by excluding the Bergiers from other parts of the wedding celebrations. Joseph was shocked when he learned that he and Fanny were not invited to the wedding feast. He wrote “I was equally very surprised yesterday in learning from Mde Vachez that I am not invited to the dinner either, but only to the ball like everybody.”287 There is absolutely no evidence of conflict between the Vachez and Bergier families that would suggest the latter were left out due to discord between them. The weddings of the younger Vachez girls in later years followed a similar pattern.288 The omission of the 285 Joseph Bergier, diary, 5 November 1860, MG. 286 L’abbé Vachet, Nos lyonnais d’hier 1831-1910 (Saint-Étienne: Imprimerie des Sourds-Muets, n.d.), 129; Étude Stéphane Dugueyt, “Mariage Bertholon Thevenet,” 2 March 1835, 3 E 12248 ADR; Étude Ducruet, “Mariage Bergier Koch,” 14 October 1851, 3 E 12312 Record 511 ADR. 287 Joseph Bergier, diary, 5 November 1860, MG. 288 Joseph Bergier, diary, 16 April 1868, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Joseph Bergier, diary, 28 April 1869, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 130 Bergiers from the guest list to certain parts of the wedding was therefore not the result of animosity or contention. The Bergiers’ exclusion was an assertion of patriarchal authority on the part of Claude Vachez. His decision to exclude Joseph was a manifestation of his own right to determine the boundaries of his family, an act that was facilitated by the fact that the Vachez family no longer occupied a subordinate position relative to the Bergiers.289 Joseph’s diary entries on the subject reflect his sense of entitlement and the inclusion that he felt should be his by right: “I admit that the friendship that unites me to Vachez made me hope to be seen as a member of the family & and this cruelly wounded me. Also, it made me sad & dazed.” This is explicit evidence that Joseph felt his friendship was enough to make him family, particularly in light of the care that the Bergiers had given Cécile over the years. While Claude left no written record of his motives, his actions communicated that he was asserting his own rights as a father. Joseph framed the exclusion as a violation of friendship and family, characterizing his experience as an affront to sentiment. Emotion obscured what was in fact a contest of patriarchal authority. Joseph’s entries seethed with disappointment, hurt, shock and sadness. Beneath these emotions however, was a contest between the man who had once dominated a fictive family composed of both Vachez and Bergier branches, and a man determined to assert the primacy of biological fatherhood.290 289 See Anne Verjus, Le bon mari, 201-202. 290 While it would be invaluable to have Fanny’s perspective on this exclusion, by 1860 she was almost completely blind and was no longer in a position to leave written records. 131 Claude Vachez defined his family’s relationship with the Bergiers through existing cultural conventions. He did not snub Joseph, despite the latter’s blustering diary entries. Claude invited the Bergiers to see the contract signing and to view the corbeille, both signs of the intimacy of friendship and recognition of the closeness between the two families. He signaled to the Bergiers that they were dear to him, but asserted the right to define just how intimate the relationship truly was. By including them in some respects and excluding in others he defined the boundaries of his family, with the Bergiers firmly outside the circle in the realm of friendship. The Code Napoléon protected patriarchy, conferring privileges as well as responsibilities on fathers. Though the Bergiers had invested a great deal in their surrogate daughters, they had no legal claim on them.291 The Vachezes were happy enough to allow the Bergiers to participate in the laborious aspect of childrearing, but balked when the latter demanded the privileges that went with parenthood. The Bergiers could not demand or force their way into the family circle, and they no longer had the leverage property and labor had provided when they were younger. Conclusion The Bergiers used existing sociable links to try to cobble together a family. Philanthropy offered one avenue to get around the legal proscription on adoption, but ultimately this form of adoption was limited by class prejudices. Sociability presented a There are therefore no diary entries or letters from her perspective, and Joseph rarely recorded her words or views in his own entries. 291 Spence, trans. Code Napoléon Title 9, §371-375; Title 5 §213. 132 more promising avenue for fictive adoption, but the problem of patriarchal supremacy led other families to resist the Bergiers’ attempts to collect them. Toward the end of his life, left a widower without children, Joseph sadly reflected on the failure of their attempts at family creation: “Alas! What draws me to Lyon, except a few good friends, but friends are not a family.”292 Over the long term, the Bergiers’ efforts to create a family were not very successful. The power to define one’s family was contingent on and productive of other social hierarchies. The gulf between the bourgeoisie and the working poor meant that pseudo-adoption through philanthropy was simultaneously limited by and reproductive of class distinctions. Although affluent philanthropists prided themselves on instilling bourgeois values of thrift and hard work, their goal was not to erase the divisions of class and instead reinforced hierarchical power relationships, even in cases that mimicked adoption. Although informal sociability was seemingly defined by horizontal relationships, it was in fact subtly hierarchical as well. Paternal power and property ownership were grounds of contest in the formation of family. In spite of the ultimate failure of the Bergiers’ family creation, their efforts were revealing about their wider social context, and the meaning of family in nineteenth century France. Although historians have made use of the records of philanthropic institutions, the sources should be reexamined. Certainly charity as a bourgeois activity was telling about the relations between classes. Beneath that bigger institutional picture, however, the individual relationships can tell us a great deal. Fanny modified the function of an organization to meet her own emotional needs. Patronage was a 292 Joseph Bergier, diary, 26 May 1871, MG. Emphasis mine. 133 widespread model for philanthropy in nineteenth-century France, and was designed with the aim of fostering personal relationships. The stories of those personal relationships have a great deal of significance to the history of the family and the history of emotions that has remained unexamined. The jockeying for position between the Joseph and Claude shows that there were extremely fine gradations within the hierarchy of the bourgeoisie itself. In broad terms, the two families seemed equal, in terms of wealth, social standing and rank in associations. Yet even within this single strata, already fairly narrow, the hierarchy remained fluid. Claude’s use of the rituals surrounding marriage to assert patriarchal authority begs a reexamination of notary records from a new perspective. The signatures, and more significantly their absence in marriage contracts and parish registers tell a great deal about the definitions of family and the assertion of paternal power as an expression of social standing. The need to exclude and the hunger for inclusion suggests that within the ranks of the Lyonnais bourgeoisie there was a great deal of uneasiness about what it meant to be bourgeois, a topic that will be addressed in the next chapter. 134 CHAPTER V BETWEEN CONFIDENCE AND SECRECY: DIARY WRITING AS FAMILY FORMATION Joseph and Fanny both participated in creating a joint archive that spanned nearly eighty years. Though both wrote extensively, their purposes in doing so were distinctly different. Joseph envisioned his writing as a means of obtaining immortality, ensuring that his name would not die with him. He acknowledged, “it is assuredly a very bizarre idea to transmit to who knows whom the existence of a man, & to make known day by day his impressions, his works, his travels.” He argued, however, that the practice of writing a diary daily was not only laudable for him personally but should become a mandatory nation-wide custom, concluding “who knows but this system would have over time a great civilizing and moral impact.”293 In contrast, Fanny had no interest in renown, pressing Joseph to adopt her point of view that “the less one holds a place in the world, the happier one is.”294 Instead, she used diary writing as a means of nurturing companionate marriage, fostering intimacy and communication between them as a couple. The tensions within French marriages over the meaning of companionability become legible in the Bergiers’ shared writings as they negotiated the relative importance of spousal intimacy and the creation of a legacy. 293 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 1-2. 294 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 28 April 1848, Biographique, Box 49.2, MG. 135 This chapter focuses on the function of diary writing in the creation and nurturing of companionate marriages. The first two sections of this chapter look at Fanny and Joseph’s authorship separately. Fanny pioneered the Bergiers’ self-writing project and used her writing to communicate with Joseph and to build intimacy. In contrast, Joseph employed the diary as a tool to come to terms with his own inadequacies and to build a legacy that would last beyond his death, replacing the child he never had. This conflict between a view of family that centered on the couple and one that was primarily dynastic is a central theme throughout both the dissertation and this chapter. The final section focuses on the diary that Fanny kept during the revolution of 1848, which provides a point at which their two visions of family and their separate ideas about self-writing came into direct conflict. This chapter examines écrits du for privé as a means of both strengthening and regulating family relationships. The term écrits du for privé, coined by Madeleine Foisil, encompasses a variety of self-writing forms including memoirs, autobiographies and intimate diaries. Scholars have since expanded the term to mean personal correspondence as well.295 This type of evidence has proven to be very useful to historians of private life seeking to understand the inner world of family relationships. The Bergiers’ journals are useful not only for their content, but for what the act and style of writing can tell us about priorities between two spouses. 295 Madelaine Foisil, “L’Écriture du for privé,” in Histoire de la vie privée: De la Renaissance aux Lumières ed. Roger Chartier (Paris: Seuil, 1986), 330; Mireille Bossis, “La place nécessaire de l’épistolaire dans les écrits du for privé,” in Au plus près du secret des coeurs: nouvelles lectures historiques des écrits du for privé en Europe du XVIe au XVII siècle eds. Jean-Pierre Bardet and François-Joseph Ruggiu (Paris: Presses de l’université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2005), 73. 136 Defining the Archive The composition of the Bergiers’ diaries, sometimes as individuals, sometimes as a couple, was revelatory both of their individuality and the gender differences inherent in that, and their identity as a couple. This section provides an overview of the evolution of the diary project in terms of authorship, format and style. The first journal-like text that either of the Bergiers produced was a travel account that they wrote of their honeymoon through the Midi in 1825. This document was their first shift away from letter writing toward ego writing, though it still retained an epistolary format.296 Fanny wrote a series of letters addressed to her brother César, but with the intent that they would be read more broadly by the rest of the family. Though epistolary in structure, the letters also worked as a diary, as she wrote multiple dated entries in each installment and she intended that the letters be kept together as a single unit. The merging of genres was not unique to the Bergiers, as other diarists flirted with the line between diary and letter writing.297 Joseph contributed to what was essentially Fanny’s project, writing several of the entries. Fanny recommenced diary writing in 1830 when she went on her first trip to Paris. This was the first bound volume journal used by either of the Bergiers, and she employed it primarily as a means of keeping her accounts. The entries list the sights she saw but provide no introspection and little description. Joseph did not contribute to the entries.298 Fanny’s first two ego documents were travel diaries, works that were both 296 Fanny Bergier to César Bertholon, 18 April to 16 May 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 297 See Lyons, “Love Letters,” 233; Lyons, Reading Culture, 168; Philippe Lejeune, On Diary, ed. Jeremy Popkin and Julie Rak, trans. Katherine Durnin (Manoa: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 86. 298 Fanny Bergier, Travel Diary, 1830, Box 64.2 MG. 137 chronologically and thematically limited. Travel inspired writing because it lent itself to a narrative format, and the contrast to ordinary life seemed to justify the effort.299 Fanny continued her diary in a small quarto volume, writing from 1831 through 1833 up until Joseph began to keep his diary on the Agendas. This diary no longer exists and the only explicit reference to it can be found in the conclusion to Joseph’s autobiography.300 Fanny stopped keeping a diary at the point that Joseph began. In 1833 Joseph took over the documentation of the family, dominating the record until his death 1878. This transition of authorship was a watershed moment, as control of the marital narrative shifted decisively into Joseph’s hands. Never again would Fanny have ascendancy in determining the nature of the record, its contents or its composition. Joseph decided to purchase an agenda with pre-printed dates and began to write daily entries to write what “there will be of interest in our life.”301 The initial entries were short, though as time went on they became more detailed, and more centered on the principal writer. For the next forty-five years there were scarcely any blank days in the growing collection of annual agendas, with the final entry in Joseph’s hand coming a month before his death.302 Fanny occasionally contributed as an author, but it was not her diary. With a few exceptions, all of these volumes still exist in excellent condition in the Musée Gadagne. For part of this period, Fanny kept a parallel set of documents that 299 Philippe Lejeune and Victoria Lodewick, “How Do Diaries End?,” Biography 24 (2001): 101; Daniel Fabre, “Le Récit de Vie et Son Modèle. Mémoires D’un Languedocien Ordinaire, Pierre Prion (1687-1759),” Annales Du Midi 122 (2010): 212. 300 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” 161. 301 Joseph Bergier, diary, 17 February 1856, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 302 Joseph Bergier, diary, 3 April 1878, MG. 138 she titled Récoltes, which were primarily household accounts and records of harvest yields at their summer estate. Joseph completed his life record by indexing his diaries and creating an autobiography, thereby producing a self-archive that spanned from before his parents met until shortly before his death. In the 1860s he made an index for his personal diaries, which he inserted in loose leafs at the back of each volume. The second, and more substantial project of his later years was his two-volume autobiography. A reader approaching his archive would be tempted to see this as his first work, because it begins with an account of his antecedents and concludes in 1831, right before his diary takes up the record. In actuality, the autobiography was the last literary effort in which he engaged, and he worked on it concurrently with his daily diaries of the 1860s and 1870s. In the preface, Joseph wrote that his one regret was “to have started it too late.” The autobiography was designed to “compensate for the absence of daily journals during the first years of my life.”303 It also functioned as a tool for image control and self- justification, as will be discussed more fully. These various writings, Fanny’s travel journals, the Agendas and the autobiography, as well as the letters cited elsewhere, make up the Bergier archive housed in the Musée Gadagne. Composing Companionate Marriage: Fanny’s Record Fanny initiated the project of diary writing as an adult, using it as a means to strengthen relationships within her family, particularly with Joseph, and to delineate the boundaries of her inner circle. Unlike many young girls of her era, there is no evidence 303 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 4. 139 that she ever kept a diary growing up. As a result, there is very little information about her childhood or adolescence, and no contemporary record of it. She took the unusual step of beginning a diary as a married woman, the very point at which most French women abandoned the practice.304 Her first foray into ego writing came in 1825 when she and Joseph left on what could be termed a belated honeymoon through the Midi. This was her first trip away from her family and Lyon and she had an epistolary pact with her younger brother César to write lengthy missives. She fulfilled this obligation by keeping a diary on loose sheets, which she periodically sent to him, bridging the line between diaries and letters. The letter became a diary from the point in which she separated it with several dates, always writing in the immediate present. This small breach in narrative continuity was significant, in the course of a few sentences the present became the past.305 Fanny’s purpose in beginning the 1825 travel diary was to amuse her younger brother and to have a record for herself. She told César, “this will be my little journal that I will send every two or three days” promising “I will give you at the same time news of our health.”306 She contrasted her own style with Joseph’s, acknowledging “I do not know how to write in rhetoric and even less about architecture I will do neither one nor the other but will simply attach myself to narrating facts as well as possible waiting to 304 Alain Corbin, L’avènement des loisirs: 1850-1960 (Paris: Aubier, 1995), 59. 305 Lyons, Reading Culture, 174. Lyons coined the term epistolary pact to signify the unspoken contract between correspondants that a long letter should receive one of equal or greater length. This practice was widespread in France in the time period discussed; Lejeune, On Diary, 86. 306 Fanny Bergier to César Bertholon, 18 April 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 140 clarify them to you in person.”307 Her signature style, lacking punctuation as it did, is best read aloud and would be made easier to understand if the reader were someone familiar with her spoken cadences. In a way, Fanny’s family would have in a sense heard her voice when they shared her writing at family gatherings. Her writing style would have created a moment of intimacy with her family that Joseph’s more polished prose would not.308 Fanny rejected fame or enduring distinction as motives for writing. She wrote to her father that, “I write for my parents for my friends and for myself” adding somewhat tartly that if it were otherwise she “would not put my letters in the post but of course in the gazette.”309 She fully expected that more readers than just César would have access to her epistolary journal, as reading letters aloud within the family and to friends was common practice. For all that, however, she did not consider it a public document. Her travel diary was meant to amuse and comfort her family, as well as herself, but she did not intend it as a record for posterity or as a document to entertain a broad audience.310 Fanny used her epistolary diary to delineate the boundaries of her family, limiting its circulation as a means of defining who belonged and who did not. She felt the need to assert to her father that she wasn’t writing for the newspaper precisely because he was violating her ideas of appropriate use of the journal. As was discussed in the second 307 Fanny Bergier to César Bertholon, 25 April 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 308 Martha Hanna, “A Republic of Letters: The Epistolary Tradition in France during World War I,” The American Historical Review 108 (2003): 1349. 309 Fanny to Jean-François, 2 May 1825, MG. 310 Hanna, “Republic of Letters," 1343; Lyons, Reading Culture, 172. Hanna and Lyons discuss the broad readership of family letters. 141 chapter, her family had loaned the epistolary diary to Agathe Reynaud and her sisters, allowing it to pass out of their control physically and to be used for purposes that Fanny had never intended. She wrote that, “it angered me and above all Bergier. We both found this to be very bad of them to have asked for [the letters] and of you to have given them.” She urged her father to recover the diary and not repeat the mistake, adding that, “if you do not send my journals wandering you will give me pleasure.”311 For Fanny, control of the diary as a physical object was linked to the boundaries of who was family and who was not. At the time Agathe was her close confidante, though subsequent events destroyed that relationship. Fanny sent her regards to Agathe by way of her family in at least two letters during her 1825 trip, asking, “if you sometimes see the Dlles. Reynaud how are they doing give them news.”312 It was not antipathy for Agathe or her sisters that prompted their exclusion. Rather, it was Fanny’s way of controlling the parameters of kinship. The Reynaud sisters could have the information within the diary-letters, but not the documents themselves, marking a clear boundary of familial belonging. The epistolary journal was also useful to Fanny in strengthening her relationship with Joseph. Her view of companionability centered on building a strong spousal connection. When Fanny took the lead in the self-writing project, keeping a diary jointly served the purpose admirably. She encouraged him to write in her place, which he did with good humor. Shared writing could be emotionally intimate, as perusing one another’s entries provided an opportunity to read and understand the other person’s 311 Fanny to Jean-François, 2 May 1825, MG. 312 Fanny and Joseph to César, 23 April 1825, MG; see also Fanny to Jean-François, 2 May 1825, MG. 142 views. It was also a physically intimate act, as the couple sat together, one reading as the other wrote. The following example illustrates the emotional and physical intimacy of joint journal writing. Joseph wrote about visiting a botanical garden where each plant had a label, using the occasion to tease Fanny who was “a passionate lover of flora.” He wrote “While putting [my] hand on a plaque I said: What is that one? She sometimes took a jasmine for a jonquil etc.; but I stop myself, because she is watching me write & pretends that it isn’t true.”313 The story itself reveals a bantering easy relationship between husband and wife, with Joseph twitting his wife about her knowledge of plants. He wrote as much to tease her as to inform her brother. Reflecting on the natural beauties they were enjoying spoke to another, deeply personal, aspect of their honeymoon. Many people in the nineteenth century felt that natural surroundings would help cement heterosexual relationships and improve fertility should such be necessary. As this was the unspoken purpose of the trip, reflecting on their walks among plants was another layer of affectionate reflection.314 The passage also conveys the intimacy of writing as an action. Even as Joseph relived his jest, Fanny was by his side reading his words and remonstrating with him. He recorded not only the original anecdote, but also the moment of writing and the shared remembrance of the event. They were physically close even though only Joseph was writing. In this earliest phase of keeping a journal, they truly did so jointly. In order to 313 Joseph Bergier to César Bertholon, 24 April 1825, Box 64.2 MG. 314 Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 26; Cyprien Camus, Opuscule Sur Cauterets et Ses Eaux Minérales Chaudes (Auch: Duprat, 1817), 186. 143 read over his shoulder she must have been standing or sitting quite close to her husband, pairing physical closeness with the intimate act of writing. This involvement of Joseph in what was essentially Fanny’s project contributed, at an early stage in their marriage, to the cultivation of their identity as a couple in the face of a home environment less congenial, from Fanny’s perspective, to such. In Lyon, Joseph was frequently distracted by work and pleasure-seeking, spending most of his free time at a little café “kept by a Widow & her young girl that we [his male friends] nicknamed la Chichone. At all hours we went there to play.” His games of choice were cards and dominoes, but his prolonged and frequent absences left Fanny at the mercy of her in-laws.315 They lived with his parents, who were far from gracious to their childless daughter-in law, “never approving of any of her acts.”316 These combined factors made establishing an identity as a couple and building an affectionate relationship difficult in everyday life. Fanny intended to use the diary as a source of comfort and marital strength in the face of these challenges. In the short term the epistolary diary functioned as a letter, being sent to a third party. In the long term, she intended to reclaim it for her own use. Fanny sent the second installment of the diary by way of her father and charged him to ask César “from me to not destroy it, seeing as Bergier is no longer writing his own [diary] and it could amuse us again [after] we arrive in Lyon.”317 The journal was a way 315 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 101. 316 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 98. 317 Fanny Bergier to Jean-François Bertholon, 22 April 1825, Box 64.2 MG. Joseph briefly kept a separate travel diary but abandoned the project. It does not survive in the archive. 144 of reliving the happiness of their holiday, the first and only time in the first several years of their marriage that they lived as a couple without the presence of his family. Journal writing was a way of creating and preserving that couple identity that was so precious to Fanny in particular. More than a holiday diversion, it was an emotional investment. The diary from 1825 is an example of how diary writing fed into Fanny’s view of companionate marriage. It was not an end in itself, and there is no evidence that she saw the journal as being of value to posterity or a wider public. The act of writing was a tool that could draw her closer to her husband and give them a shared interest. The product of their joint writing could forge bonds between Joseph and his young brother-in-law and could strengthen the affectionate ties that held her to her family. Withholding access to the diary was a means of maintaining familial exclusivity and defining the boundaries of the family. For her, family signified lived relationships and close emotional ties. Joseph appropriated the diary-writing project around the same time he gave up hope of having children. Fanny had kept a personal diary in the early 1830s, but in 1833 Joseph began his diary and Fanny abandoned hers. Her diaries from this period are lost, so it is impossible to know her thoughts or motivations for ceasing to keep an independent diary. The time period also coincides with the point at which the Bergiers ceased to expect to have children, as evidenced by the fact that Fanny no longer sought treatment for infertility.318 318 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 161. 145 Writing for Posterity: Joseph’s Writing Under Joseph’s hand, the purpose of the project shifted from building companionability to creating a legacy. The diary did important work for Joseph on two levels: it alleviated feelings of anxiety about class, and it provided a surrogate heir to palliate his childlessness. Joseph felt profound ambivalence about his worth as a bourgeois, as his wealth allowed a life of leisure that stood in contrast to a cultural expectation of industry. He frequently berated himself for filling his time with frivolity when he “had such need to study, to learn, to teach myself, without being lazy.” Yet “like an incorrigible child, knowing my faults, I do not know how to correct myself.”319 These feelings of self-loathing formed a consistent theme through his diary and are central to this portion of the chapter. The diary provided a forum to address his social anxieties, becoming a source of reassurance and internal validation. It also functioned as a surrogate heir by acting as a vehicle to carry on his name and memory after he died. Neither of these functions of the diary fit well with Fanny’s model of using ego writing to build marital intimacy. As a writer, Joseph was focused on himself and how he would be remembered rather than lived relationships. For Joseph, diaries functioned as instruments of both personal and state surveillance. In the preface to his autobiography he justified diary writing as a tool of social control. He felt that daily entries should be compulsory, so that any who refused to do so would show that “they had so many things for which to reproach themselves that they did not dare write the history of their life.”320 The act of writing was to Joseph an 319 Joseph Bergier, diary, 13 October 1842, MG. 320 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 1. 146 affirmation of innocence and a blameless life. Keeping a diary was not simply a personal diversion; it was a means of gauging moral character. His own extreme diligence was, by this standard, testament to his irreproachable personal life. Diary writing was both a manifestation of morality and a means of producing virtuous behavior. Knowing that each day must be recorded, he was sure that most “would avoid with care all shameful acts so as not to have a stain on the journal of their existence.”321 Keeping a journal could act as an instrument of social control, preventing criminal and dishonorable acts by appealing to the conscience through secular means. A further benefit, in Joseph’s estimation, would be to ensure honesty and consistency of principle. A man could not “today serve an absolute monarchy and tomorrow a democratic power,” a serious source of annoyance to the loyally republican Joseph, who had lived through three revolutions.322 Joseph imagined that critics of his system might claim that criminals would simply write their alibis and lie, keeping a false journal. To this he replied that it would be harder than it sounds and that “when one must each day lie to oneself one gets tired of it, & one prefers to abandon this tiring job” which would, of course, be a sign of guilt in itself.323 Diligence in journal writing was proof of the personal integrity and virtue of the author to any who read the work. It was also testament to the truthfulness of the record as, in his view, no one could be bothered to write lies for long. Given Joseph’s near 321 Ibid., 2. 322 Ibid., 3. 323 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 2. 147 perfect record of daily writing, by this standard Joseph’s moral rectitude and trustworthiness as a narrator was unimpeachable. Diaries were a means of making the inner life legible. Joseph was not alone in seeing diaries as a useful mechanism for scrutiny that functioned along similar lines as Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon.324 Marc-Antoine Jullien, a man of letters who was Joseph’s contemporary, developed a program in which boys from the age of seven to fourteen would have a diary kept on their behalf by a governor, which the child was to read every other day. After the age of fourteen the boy was to take on the governor’s role, keeping not only his own diary but also diaries on the activities of his classmates.325 Jullien intended diaries to be used to make the inner life visible at all times. Joseph’s own approach to diary writing served a similar function. While writing and rereading the diaries were certainly leisure activities that Joseph enjoyed, like Jullien he believed that diary writing was not simply a private practice for personal pleasure. Rather, it was a regulatory tool that created the possibility of supervising the inner thoughts as well as the outward behavior.326 Implicit in Joseph’s framing of diaries as instruments of scrutiny was the satisfying thought that he held up well to such examination. His dogged determination to 324 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 210. 325 Marc-Antoine Jullien, Essai général d’éducation physique, morale et intellectuelle (Paris: Didot, 1808), 172, 186. 326 Marc-Antoine Jullien, Essai sur l’emploi du temps ou méthode qui a pour objet de bien régler l’emploi du temps, premier moyen d’être heureux, destiné spécialement à l’usage des jeunes gens de 15 à 25 ans (Paris: Didot, 1810), 227; Philippe Lejeune, “Marc-Antoine Jullien: Controlling Time,” in Controlling Time and Shaping the Self: Developments in Autobiographical Writing Since the Sixteenth Century ed. Arianne Baggerman et al., (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 102; Lejeune, On Diary, 107. 148 write every day for over forty-five years enabled him to pass the test of diligence easily. If writing every day meant you had nothing of which you were ashamed, he certainly achieved that. The fact that he needed to prove himself at all, however, betrayed a deep anxiety about the life that he led, his utility and his legacy in the absence of children. Joseph’s uneasiness about his value to society led him to frame his combined writings as a story of bourgeois success and social ascent. In his testament he explained what a reader would find in his collected manuscripts: “if one takes the trouble of perusing them, they will make known all the existence of [Joseph]; they will demonstrate that his father, Joseph Bergier, sole artisan of his fortune conquered it by his assiduous and persistent work and that it did not have other sources.” Joseph claimed that that his narrative was one of triumph. He wanted his journal to tell a bourgeois story of social success, chronicling the family’s rise from comparatively humble circumstances to social and political prominence. Despite Joseph’s claim in his testament that his diary told a story of social ascent and the embodiment of bourgeois values, his own words undercut this assertion. After claiming the diary was the story of a self-made family, he admitted to personal failure and substantial financial losses. He wrote that the reader would see, “the care that I took to conserve [the fortune], and if I did not completely succeed” it was due to a poor business venture in which he lost 200,000 francs.327 As a result of this bad investment, Joseph had to sell the estate in Collonges, undoing his father’s work both as a landowner 327 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. 149 and tarnishing his legacy municipal counselor then mayor of the village.328 This contradiction between Joseph seeing his story as a success and anxiety that he was in reality a failure played out again and again in his diaries. Throughout his diary, Joseph addressed an imaginary reader who was, in his mind’s eye, critical of the author’s inadequate work ethic. Although there are comparatively few direct references to this reader, or cher lecteur as Joseph put it, the device appeared throughout his writings. He paid only intermittent attention to his reader, but the fact that one appeared at all indicated a consistent awareness of audience on his part.329 In Joseph’s imagination, his reader was judging his industry and work ethic. This concern appeared in entries where he castigated himself for idleness. He wrote “I tell my self every day, let’s work, let’s work, why am I never able to realize this project [that is] so suitable. I don’t know; the reader can judge in seeing the journal of my life.”330 Joseph imagined his lectors to be something like himself, from Lyon and likely members of the bourgeoisie, possessing the cultural values of that place and social class. In this context it is scarcely surprising that he imagined his audience would be highly critical of his admissions of a leisured and unproductive life.331 328 Étude Vachez, “Vente Bergier Chonier,” ADR; Tableau des Membres Composant le Conseil Municipal de la Commune de Collonges, September 1822, 2 M 58 ADR; Fonction commune de Collonges: Maire, 1827, 2 M 58 ADR. 329 Michael Sheringham, French Autobiography Devices and Desires: Rousseau to Perec (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), 138. Sheringham discusses the device of paying intermittent attention to the reader. 330 Joseph Bergier, diary, 14 September 1842, MG. 331 Pellissier, La vie privée, 36. 150 Joseph’s ambivalence about living a life of pleasure and diversion makes sense in the larger context of Lyonnais industry. In 1909 Justin Godart, the politician who gained possession of Joseph’s diaries, affirmed that, “Lyon is the town of work.” It was a source of municipal pride that the inhabitants were known for tireless engagement and hard work, across all social strata.332 The masculine ideal for the bourgeoisie is well encapsulated in this funerary panegyric from the Revue du Lyonnais. The deceased was “the perfect example of the Lyonnais merchant of his time, active and hard working instrument of his fortune” whose virtues included “prudence, application and intelligence” and who limited his ambition to public service and care for the poor.333 Paradoxically, leisure was also a defining characteristic of bourgeois respectability and notability as it afforded the possibility of associational activity, civic engagement and pastoral retreat.334 Joseph’s father had been so successful in meeting this ideal that Joseph was able to retire to live on his private income in his mid-thirties. Leisure in itself was not culpable, but perpetual vacation was hardly consonant with Lyonnais values, particularly for a man in the prime of his life. Joseph diverted potential criticism of a life that could be characterized as repetitious and unimportant by being the first to censure himself. The above example illustrates his tendency to preempt condemnation by finding fault with his own behavior. In other instances the judging eye of the reader was implicit rather than explicit: “It is shameful to repeat it too often, & and to be unable to correct oneself, but not more today 332 Saunier, L’esprit lyonnais, 19, 36. 333 J. Morin, “Mathieu de Lafont,” Revue du Lyonnais 10 (1839): 36-46. 334 Odile Parsis-Barubé, “L’occupation savante des loisirs chez un notable lillois,” Revue du Nord 390 (2011): 434; Angleraud and Pellissier, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 340. 151 than yesterday, not more yesterday than previously, nothing of use, nothing of worth reports my existence.”335 The process of keeping a diary, forcing him to reflect on how he spent each day, drove home the point that he had in fact very little about which to write. Acknowledging the repetition, and the shame he felt in redundant entries, were additional means of seeking validation from the reader. By showing that he was not oblivious to his own faults he encouraged his reader to forgive them. At one point he wrote, “dear reader, you will find much uniformity in the recital of my life, & what you would be better off doing, it is to not read my reiteration every evening.”336 By acknowledging that his record was not really a story of bourgeois ascent, nor was it a riveting read, Joseph appropriated the prerogative to judge his own life even as he apparently deferred to his imaginary interlocutor. The criticism was in fact a means of ingratiating himself to a potential reader, rather than the expression of an actual hope that his beloved record would be ignored and forgotten.337 Diary writing was in itself a form of industry, acting as a further palliative to Joseph’s feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps in daily life Joseph was accomplishing little, but he then wrote about accomplishing little and had, in the process, accomplished something. This could be termed a sort of double failure, with the diary constituting the 335 Joseph Bergier, diary, 15 June 1844, MG. 336 Joseph Bergier, diary, 30 May 1871, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 337 Sheringham, French Autobiography, 143. 152 oeuvre of one who has neither truly lived nor really written anything.338 Though Joseph may have feared he was not living up to his potential, the very work of creating the diary fulfilled in some measure the requirement that he spend his life profitably. The diaries served a gratifying function to Joseph reassuring him that whatever his faults he was improving and making valuable contributions to society as time passed. That he reread his journals with a certain degree of pleasure is clear – as this was an action of a day, he dutifully recorded the time he spent reading about himself.339 On one occasion he made a table comparing his actions on a given day over time. The notation after the slash indicates his actions of the present day. He wrote, “on the same day in 1833: I got up late ≠ I got up early. Progress. I went to a session of the com[mission] / I went to the administrative council. Parity.” He continued the comparison through other volumes of his diary. “On the same day 1836. What will I find. Dear God, it is the anniversary of my mother-in-law’s death. ------- [No comparison]. On the same day 1837 I worked almost all day on the elections / Again public utility.”340 Joseph used his diary as a yardstick to measure his own improvement through the years. Rereading his diaries for one day over five years he came to a satisfying conclusion as to his own character. In some areas, such as arising early, he had improved. In other praiseworthy respects he had remained constant: “Decidedly I do not have much to complain about myself, for in this examination . . . I see that I have almost always worked in the general interest.” He concluded that he could say of himself “I did 338 Maurice Blanchot, Le livre à venir (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 225-26; Lejeune, On Diary, 149. 339 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 4. 340 Joseph Bergier, diary, 5 September 1838, MG. 153 a little good, it is my most beautiful work.”341 The diaries served a gratifying function to Joseph, assuring him that whatever his faults he was improving and making valuable contributions to society over time. Though he could not say he spent his days producing anything or belonging to a profession, his participation in associational activity and his philanthropy constituted an adequate replacement for business. A life spent in public works was not a waste. For Joseph, diary writing served to alleviate feelings of anxiety about class. His wealth and social position opened to him the many pleasurable activities membership in the bourgeoisie afforded.342 Decades of hard work on the part of his father had finally enabled their family to reach the elite status of no longer needing to work to maintain an elegant standard of living. Yet work was central to the bourgeois ethos, and Joseph was profoundly uncomfortable with the reality that he could live the life of a bourgeois without having to work like one. Journal writing both relieved some of his internal tension and provided concrete proof to his anxious mind that he had made a meaningful and lasting contribution to society, both in the acts he recorded and in the creation of the document itself. Joseph saw his diary as a surrogate child that would bear his name and carry on his existence after he died. In her writings, Fanny had emphasized communication, using diaries and letters interchangeably. By contrast, Joseph included Fanny as an author not 341 Ibid. Emphasis original. 342 Pellissier, Loisirs et sociabilités. Pellissier provides a thorough discussion of private life and leisure activities of the bourgeoisie of Lyon in this time period, including membership in clubs, the social season, literary associations and informal sociability. 154 in order to communicate with her, but so that she might corroborate his vision of his own life in order to leave his mark as he wanted. Joseph used self-documentation as a means for preserving a legacy of himself and his family. With this intent in mind he took great care to organize his corpus into an archive. The extensive collection of Bergier family papers housed in the Musée Gadagne exists because Joseph was himself an amateur but enthusiastic archivist. That he cherished a passion for archiving himself should come as no surprise given his love of keeping a diary. It is the diary that gives us what little we know about his process of organizing and classifying his library, and of creating the archive of his personal papers. He spent about a week in 1843 creating a catalogue of all his bound works: “First thing in the morning, fairly early, I came to work industriously in my office putting my library in order and cataloguing it; this chore, to which I’ve already actively devoted myself for several days, is not yet done, and probably will not be for some time. After a work of several hours, I’ve nevertheless finished cataloging all the old books which I have; what is left is to catalogue those which I’ve recently bought.”343 In addition to creating his reference library, Joseph organized his own papers annually for easy reference: “I worked again for a little, & and started to arrange my papers from 1842 in my cardboard boxes and to put titles on them.”344 The archive, which Joseph meticulously assembled and catalogued over the course of his life, provided readily organized source material when in 1861 he decided to write an autobiography. His notes in his diary at the time illustrate how quickly he turned 343 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 May 1843, MG. 344 Joseph Bergier, diary, 7 February 1843, MG. 155 to his archive when he decided to begin to write. On August 21 he wrote, “I worked a little on the journal of my life, which I want to take back to my birth.” This is the first mention in his diary of his autobiography, and the succeeding entries show the importance of his archive in the project. On the 23rd he wrote “I amused myself by reading a great number of old family papers, which permit me to establish my genealogy.” On the 24th he added, “I continued to work, or rather to read the old archives which will allow me to write, according to my intent, the journal of my life.”345 The process of creating the archive began long before Joseph ever considered putting it to personal use, but once he conceived of writing an autobiography, he had a wealth of primary sources ready to hand. Joseph’s passion for preserving his legacy and that of his family through collected papers demonstrates that he was in a sense an archivist of himself. In addition to providing primary material for the autobiography, Joseph’s archive served as a surrogate family when he was a lonely widower. In Joseph’s later years his library was often his only company, and the love he had of his own records served as an impetus to create a document that would be approachable to a wider audience. He wrote in 1871 of his daily life and the role his records played in it: “Alone, always alone. Alone to breakfast, alone to dinner, having no other comp[anion] than my books & my old archives that I always consult with pleasure.”346 His archive had been the creation of his youth, consisting of letters and papers that were written while Joseph was in his prime, and he had organized them annually. Like a child, the archive had grown over the course 345 Joseph Bergier, diary, 21, 23-24 August 1861, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 346 Joseph Bergier, diary, 21 July 1871, MG. 156 of many years as he invested more and more time in self-documentation. As an old man, the preserved papers were the sole surviving evidence of his family and the convivial life he enjoyed with them in his youth. It is scarcely surprising that he would treasure his papers as the companions of his old age and the material from which he created his intellectual child, his autobiography. Joseph was not writing for children and grandchildren; rather he was writing to create something akin to a child that would continue to exist and remind the reader of the author. Joseph’s case is unusual in that he saw his writing as his posterity. In rereading his own writing, he saw to his regret that the end result did not contain enough of himself. In the preface to his autobiography he expressed regret that he had “developed too much material facts and a life that was too often uniform, instead of having retraced my moral impressions, my pains & my sorrows; the strong vexations that I experienced, the pleasures & the joys that I felt.”347 The great flaw with his journal was that it provided an incomplete portrait. Having begun to write as he neared middle age, his childhood and youth were not preserved. Furthermore, while he had faithfully documented what he did, he had largely failed to record what he felt, thought or said. He wrote his autobiography “to make up for the absence of daily journals during the first years of my life” with the intent to complete the project with the aid of his agendas. In the event he concluded the autobiography at about the point that his diaries began, but his goal was to create a full picture of himself, inside and out, that would persist following his demise. Joseph saw his diary as his heir, a fact that is particularly evident in the way in which he provided for it after his death. He left his diaries to the Asile, tying the fate of 347 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 4. 157 his two surrogate children to one another. Joseph used his wealth and influence to try to ensure the fate of his journal. In his testament he made specific provisions for the entire archive. Having left virtually all of his fortune to create the Asile Bergier, he stipulated that his papers be given a home in that institution. He asked that his executors “reunite with care THE JOURNAL OF MY LIFE (as yet unfinished) and all the journals in the form of agendas that I create daily, and where are mentioned all my daily acts, since 1821.” He helpfully told them where to find these documents, and then asked that they be placed in a locked case “in the front room, serving as a library, at the Bergier institution.” He noted that “those of my family that bear my name” could read them, without removing them, at any time.348 At the time of Joseph’s death he still had several living family members who could have become the curators of the archive, yet Joseph chose instead to leave it to the Asile. Brutus Bergier was a first cousin on his father’s side, and Fanchette Dartige Pignard was his first cousin once removed on his mother’s side.349 While these relationships were not close enough to give them legal rights of inheritance, Joseph had left them legacies of remembrance. Furthermore, Joseph had associated closely with both of them during his lifetime and Brutus had named his eldest son Joseph.350 Alternatively, Joseph could have left the archive to César, Fanny’s brother. After all, the collection contained many documents written by Fanny including some addressed to César. Having had no children of his own, Joseph was related to several individuals who would have 348 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. Emphasis original. 349 Étude Vachez, “Notoriété Bergier,” ADR. 350 Étude Ducruet, “Mariage Bergier Koch,” 14 October 1851, ADR. 158 cared for it and kept it in the family. Yet instead of bequeathing this record to family members, he left it to the strangers who would live in his home. He did give permission to his family to read it, but they could not keep it: “one could always communicate the journals, without displacing them to those of my family who bear my name.”351 The Asile Bergier and the diary were the twin means by which Joseph hoped to memorialize his name after death. By generously endowing the institution he created, he insured – or so he hoped -- that his archive would be cared for and kept in one place. In this respect he was like other donors who used legacies to fight against anonymity by creating institutions or libraries.352 The fact that Joseph left his diaries to the Asile whose charges were orphans lends credence to the suggestion that he thought of those orphans as surrogate children and heirs. The Asile was an easy solution for the problem of preserving his own diary, but Joseph was also concerned about the fate of diaries for other childless people. His diary was his intellectual child and the companion of his old age, as well as being the vehicle that would preserve his good name. Other infertile diarists might not be so lucky in having a tailor-made institution to care for their precious documents. In the preface to his autobiography he proposed a solution: “the diaries conserved in archives would become the property of the Member closest to the defunct, & when a family would be extinguished, [the diaries] would be deposited in the governmental archives.”353 The ideal would be to have a family member who would take care of the documents and 351 Joseph Bergier, will dated July 11, 1873, ADR. 352 Marais, Histoire du don, 324-326. 353 Joseph Bergier, “Journal de la vie,” MG, 3. 159 preserve them, but when the family failed to honor its commitment the government should step in. In Joseph’s view, the state had an obligation to preserve private documents if the family failed, providing a sort of welfare safety net for orphan diaries. The proposal may seem peculiar, but it reflected Joseph’s deep anxiety that diaries might fail in their work of preserving the author for immortality for lack of a proper archivist to care for them. Diary writing was for Joseph far more than an idle pastime. It was a means of confronting anxiety about how he fit into the bourgeoisie. His diaries were also a partial solution to the problem of childlessness. They were not, however, a means of communicating with Fanny or building unity in their marriage. His view of family was dynastic, in that he never fully reconciled himself to being childless. Rather than pour that energy into the spousal relationship as Fanny did, he continued to try to find ways of meeting his need for an heir. To him, Fanny’s main role in the diary project was to be supportive of his goals for it, a view that she did not share. Their contested use of the diary is visible in a series of entries during the February days of the Revolution of 1848. Keeping the Diary Jointly: Fanny and Joseph Write as a Couple Joseph wrote his diary for himself and his own ends, not for Fanny or their relationship, an attitude that was in direct conflict with Fanny’s approach. This section shifts from a discussion of their writings taken as the work of individuals to an examination of the diary as a joint endeavor. Their common writings produced a diary that was both a revelation of their relationship, putting in written form conflicts that often 160 went unexpressed and unrecorded, and a working out of their relationship serving in itself as a tool of negotiation and reconciliation. A tension between exclusion and inclusion and between confidence and secrecy had always characterized Joseph’s attitude toward Fanny as a reader. He relied on code to convey intimacy through writing, a pattern that was first evident in their correspondence. Like many of his contemporaries he used symbols and cryptographs to signify romantic acts.354 Joseph used a sign resembling a slashed O to signify a kiss: “my good woman I kiss you ø & kiss you again & and remain as forever your faithful husband.”355 The slashed O was not a difficult sign to interpret, even to an outside reader, but it was a semi-private way of expressing a desire for physical intimacy between spouses. When it suited him, Joseph used writing to foster closeness with his wife; in this case the code was designed to include her in the secret. In contrast to the legible code of Joseph’s early letters, he employed a cryptic system of underlining in his diaries that was intended to exclude Fanny even as she read his most private thoughts. When recording his assignations with his mistress Agathe, he always used a variation on the phrase “I went to run an errand,” underlining it each time he used it as a stand-in for an adulterous encounter.356 The phrase was completely innocuous, even banal. Its significance is clear only with the help of the letters from Agathe that he saved, in which she frequently referred specifically to past or future 354 Lyons, “Reading Culture,” 169; Favier, Orgueil et narcissisme, 26; Cosnier, Le silence des filles, 189; Vassort and Lejeune, “Lectures croisées,” 169. All of these authors discuss the use of code words and language in French diaries. 355 Joseph to Fanny, 27 July 1829, MG. 356 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 December 1835, MG. 161 encounters. Because she dated her letters it is possible to create a calendar of their meetings, from which his coded pattern emerges quite clearly. Not having access to Agathe’s letters, which Joseph surely hid, Fanny would have had no means of working out Joseph’s cipher for adultery, if she had even recognized it as a code in the first place. While she read his diary, believing herself to have access to his internal world, he consciously and carefully excluded her from his most intimate thoughts and acts. Sharing the task of diary writing built closeness, but Joseph was anxious to control the level of communication and private knowledge between them. The diary could be used to build intimacy, but was also a means of securing control of the marital narrative. Joseph occasionally called upon Fanny to write in his stead in his diary. Fanny’s entries reaffirm the point that for her, diary writing was about immediate communication with those closest to her. One entry from early in the record illustrates how Fanny used the journal to speak to Joseph, and how her authorial voice undermined Joseph’s self- justifying purpose in writing. When he first began the project in 1833 he had not yet acquired the self-discipline to write every day, but he still insisted on consistency. Accordingly, he asked Fanny to write in his place, which she did: “Bergier, being overcome by laziness did not want to write his journal [in] the evening he gave me power of attorney and I will carry it out. My illustrious husband got up at 9 o’clock he stayed at the counter until the dinner hour where I like to think he worked.”357 Her acerbic tone indicates that she saw this request as something of an imposition. Significantly, it also 357 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 17 May 1833, MG. 162 points to her awareness of him as a reader. Fanny’s rebuke was not intended for posterity to read and judge; it was directed at her husband. Fanny’s critique of her husband’s laziness undermined the vision of himself as an industrious bourgeois that he wished to portray. Rather than affirm that he was too busy or too tired from work to write, she ascribed his delegation of writing to his sloth both at home and on the job. While it seems she could be persuaded to write on his behalf, he could not guarantee that her prose would build him up or bolster his image. She did not create an idealized portrait for a fictional posterity; she conveyed her feelings in the present to her husband. Joseph’s success in establishing his narrative could be measured in part by the degree to which he could successfully get Fanny to reify his account. Joseph’s ambivalence about his success in embodying bourgeois ideals had consistently undermined his thesis for his diary. In 1848, when the revolution broke out, his moment to prove his value came. He had found justification for his existence in public service; now his commitment to the municipal government and the public was put to the test. He valued his consistently republican principles evidenced throughout his diary; now at last the republic was to be born. This was his moment, and he needed Fanny to substantiate his claims and record his deeds. On February twenty-fifth the political crisis that had been building for some time came to a head. The social tensions of the 1840s found expression in the banquet campaign, both in Paris and the provinces, led by those who supported electoral and parliamentary reform. The repression of these meetings in Paris led to an uprising that forced Louis-Philippe out of power, replacing the monarchy with a republic. The news 163 reached Lyon by telegraph almost immediately, prompting a parallel declaration in a city ripe for revolutionary action.358 The revolutionary government in Lyon, composed of liberals, republicans and members of radical secret societies, gathered in the Hôtel de Ville, forming a Central Committee. On the night of February twenty-fifth, crowds continued to mill in the square outside demanding arms to defend the Committee, which sent emissaries, including Joseph, to obtain arms for the people and the National Guard. This Committee worked without relief, attempting to set up a functional government through various commissions through the months of March and April. Joseph served as the head of the Finance Commission, which dealt with problems attendant on the financial crash that accompanied the revolution. Other commissions faced problems of food riots and destruction of property. The Central Committee served as an interim government between the collapse of monarchical institutions in February and the establishment of the new Republican government in May.359 Joseph was at the center of power in Lyon during the February days due in large measure to his relationship with Démophile Laforest, the provisional mayor. They had both served as members of the City Council and Joseph had actively campaigned on 358 Roger Price, The French Second Republic: A Social History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 97; Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment, 1848-1852 trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 23-24, 28. 359 Mary Lynn Stewart-McDougall, The Artisan Republic: Revolution, Reaction and Resistance in Lyon 1848-1851 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 32- 48. 164 Laforest’s behalf in the 1846 elections.360 When the official mayor ceded office to Laforest following the fall of the Orléanists, the first thing the latter did was appoint Joseph and four other liberal councilors to a revolutionary committee.361 Joseph further benefitted from his relationship with César Bertholon, Fanny’s brother. César had founded and funded the newspaper Le Censeur, one of the key factors in turning republican sentiment into political action in the years preceding the Revolution.362 This family tie reinforced Joseph’s credentials as a republican and a leader, putting him at the heart of events in Lyon from February through the end of March when he left for Paris. From the moment Laforest proclaimed the republic, Joseph completely abandoned the task of keeping his diary to Fanny. She wrote on his behalf, recording what he told her orally of his adventures. After the long first night of the republic he had a “face completely overwhelmed by fatigue, hunger . . . and emotion while we prepared a bouillon for him this is what he told us.” He went on to explain to her that he, Laforest, and the four other counselors “spent the night at the Hôtel de Ville and what a night. The room, the Square and the roads were packed they had the troops retreat and there were only people who yelled and demanded arms left.” Joseph played a key part in attempting to resolve this crisis: “Bergier went to the General [de Perron] who promised him 500 guns for Ten o’clock and 500 others at dawn . . . when the hour came the Arms did not 360 Joseph Bergier, diary, 18-25 July 1848, Box Bergier Diary, MG; Patrice Béghain et al. Dictionnaire historique de Lyon (Padoue: Stéphane Bachès, 2009), 744. 361 Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic, 24. 362 Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic, 25-26; René Barjeton ed., Dictionnaire Biographique des préfets septembre 1870 - mai 1982 (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1994), 87; Vincent Wright, Les préfets de Gambetta (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris- Sorbonne, 2007), 98; Pierre Vaisse, L’Esprit d’un siècle Lyon 1800-1914 (Lyon: Éditions Fage, 2007), 28. 165 come the cries recommenced with greater force.”363 Joseph again attempted to negotiate de Perron who again delayed remission of arms, pushing Joseph to a breaking point.364 To a degree, Fanny obliged Joseph by recording his narrative of public engagement at personal sacrifice for the sake of principles. She acted as his scribe, writing what he dictated in their rare moments together in order to preserve for posterity his heroic role in the foundation of a new republic. Joseph was dependent on her to lend her voice in support of the story he was trying to tell about himself and his family. Yet even as Fanny acted as his amanuensis, she did not abandon her own priority of using the diary to make a claim for a companionate relationship. Fanny interrupted her transcription of Joseph’s adventures at the Hôtel de Ville with a narrative to her own experience of this moment of crisis. She was on tenterhooks, having “sent Denis [the servant] several time to the Terreaux I told him to try to enter in the Hôtel de Ville to penetrate to the room where the committee was meeting to know what they were doing there.”365 Finally at one thirty in the morning of the twenty-sixth she received a note from Joseph assuring her that the Republic was proclaimed and he was overseeing public safety. She noted “this Note far from reassuring me troubled me all the more I saw that he must not be tranquil I barely recognized his handwriting.”366 She was utterly unable to fall back asleep and was consumed with anxiety. 363 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 25 February 1848, MG. 364 Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic, 34; Bruno Benoit, “Relecture des violences collectives lyonnaises du XIXe siècle,” Revue Historique 288 (1998): 275. 365 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 25 February 1848, MG. 366 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 26 February 1848, MG. 166 This parallelism repeated itself throughout her account of the dramatic events of February and March 1848. The specific roles they played within the revolution were different, but Fanny did not simply subsume her own experience in favor of Joseph’s. She was not merely his scribe, writing the journal as he would have written it if he had more leisure or inclination. While she did summarize what he told her of his political dealings with the mayor, she balanced his viewpoint with her own firsthand witness of events in the street. Fanny’s perspective as a flâneuse provided a counterpoint to Joseph’s insider view. She saw luddites in action while walking with Joséphine Vachez: “the crowding going toward the house of St. Olive where there was also a machine to cut out shawls that they were going to sack, the crowd was going but without a noise without a cry without any demonstration.”367 While Joseph’s gender, class and sympathies put him in a position to act in the halls of power, his situation also kept him from actually witnessing the events in the streets that made up much of the drama of the period. Fanny, by contrast, was well poised to become the chronicler, a role she took on enthusiastically as she recorded her observations alongside Joseph’s narration. In addition to recording working-class action, Fanny also observed the horror and reaction of the bourgeoisie. On the first day of the Revolution she was returning to town from Collonges, passing throngs of frightened people fleeing the city: “we saw a fiacre full of women and children, weighted with parcels and packets. We began to joke about 367 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 27 February 1848, MG; See also Jeff Horn, “Machine-Breaking in England and France during the Age of Revolution,” Labour/Le Travail 55 (2005): 154; Mary Lynn McDougall, “Popular Culture, Political Culture: The Case of Lyon, 1830-1950,” Historical Reflections 8 (1981): 33. Horn and McDougall discuss the long history of Luddite action in the region. 167 all these moonlight moves,” but the sheer number of people escaping led to worry about fighting in the streets.368 A few weeks later she witnessed a run on the bank: “work does not recommence, the workers are always parading and all peaceful men begin to grow alarmed. Everyone hides his money, the demands at the Caisse d’épargne are appalling.”369 Joseph, as the chairman of the new Finance Commission, was preoccupied with the monetary crisis but had little to offer as a witness to events in the streets.370 Fanny put herself forward as a chronicler of the Revolution in tandem with Joseph’s political role. Many of the lines from the 1848 diary that made it interesting and valuable to historians were in fact Fanny’s observations, often misattributed to Joseph.371 She asserted her own value as a witness by placing her record alongside his. In order to accomplish this she violated the textual boundaries that Joseph zealously respected, adding in many extra sheets to accommodate her more verbose style, and to give enough room for both stories. In keeping the diary, Fanny’s claim for companionability was implicit, rather than explicit. Her earlier diaries had taken an obvious epistolary form. These entries lacked the trappings of a letter but were nevertheless clearly intended for Joseph to read at some point if not immediately. In previous journals she had addressed Joseph directly, roasting him about his laziness. In the journal for 1848 she put forward a marital narrative that presented them as equals in terms of the importance of their stories. She gave equal 368 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 25 February 1848, MG. 369 Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary 8 March 1848, MG. 370 Stewart-McDougall, Artisan Republic, 39. 371 See for instance Price, French Second Republic, 125. 168 weight to both perspectives and placed her own views beside his. She was not content merely to take his dictation or record his historic exploits. She was not the clerk of a politician; she was a wife telling their story as a couple. Ironically it was Fanny’s contribution to the Revolution as a historian that had greater long-term impact than Joseph’s actions as a politician. Joseph lost the election to the Constituent Assembly, leaving him to play very little role in the Second Republic after the initial furor. By contrast the diary for 1848 is the most cited volume of the corpus and seemingly the only one of which most historians are aware.372 It is also the only part that was ever published, under the direction of Justin Godart, who abridged and annotated it before publishing under the title Le journal d’un bourgeois de Lyon en 1848.373 Fanny’s chronicle of February through April is of critical importance in this work and is central to what makes it noteworthy and important. The value of Fanny’s writing to historians was incidental to her own aims in writing. She did not keep the diary for posterity or literary immortality; she used it as a tool to build her relationship with her husband. She was, at least in the short term, successful. Her role as author ended abruptly at the end of April when Joseph left for Paris, taking the diary with him. Fanny remained behind in Lyon for a few days, 372 See William Fortescue, France and 1848: The End of Monarchy (New York: Routledge, 2004), 171; Michael Elliott-Bateman, John Ellis and Tom Bowden, Revolt to Revolution: Studies in the 19th and 20th Century European Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), 66; Bruno Benoit, L’identité politique de Lyon: Entre violence collectives et mémoire des élites 1786-1905 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 68. 373 Joseph Bergier and Justin Godart, Le journal d’un bourgeois de Lyon en 1848 (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1924). 169 following him to the capital within a week. If he had not had leisure to read her account of the preceding months before, he did at that point. Under ordinary circumstances, Joseph gave Fanny very little space or attention in his entries, but during their weeklong separation he used his diary to write what amounted to love letters to her. Each day of her absence began with longing for her presence. Though physically apart, in the diary Fanny was very much present. He wrote “In getting up, I ran to the post, & great was my disappointment in finding no letter from Fanny; I admit that I counted on it . . . this silence from my wife saddened me.”374 Certain that the following day would bring the desired letter he rushed to the post office only to find no communication. When no missive came the third day he began to panic: “I still did not find a single letter from Fanny. Thursday, I hoped, Friday, I counted on it, Saturday I had the most intimate conviction that I would have one, saving a serious or unfortunate event, today I am seriously worried & pained.”375 His impatience was testament to an epistolary pact that she would write to him at least once despite the brevity of their separation. As soon as he arrived in Paris he wrote her a letter, hoping that she would receive it before her departure. He assured her that “I await your news with the greatest impatience” despite the fact that he had left her only two days previous and she would have little news to impart. He added that, “I will give you a good big kiss on Wednesday [when she arrived]. Until then, be prudent, take care 374 Joseph Bergier, diary, 28 April 1848, MG. 375 Joseph Bergier, diary, 30 April 1848, MG. 170 of yourself . . . I am impatient to be at the day of our reunion & to tell you that which I can only write today, that I love you with all my heart.”376 Though absent in reality, Fanny was present in Joseph’s imagination: “I see the end of my widowhood arrive, & all day I could say to myself: Fanny is on her way. Now, she is at la Polisse, then at Moulins, then at Nevers etc.”377 Joseph’s imagination was fulfilled and they were at last reunited: “At last, in writing my journal this evening, I am happy, I am no longer alone in my room, Fanny is close to me . . . Fanny is undressing and will soon sleep because she is overwhelmed with fatigue.”378 The week’s worth of entries show Joseph adopting Fanny’s epistolary diary style from earlier years. There was little purpose in sending her paper letters that she would not receive having set out only a few days after he did. Instead he used his diary to write what he could not send so that when she arrived she could read his sentiments and know how he missed her. Her entries in the diary allowed her to be present to him when they were separated, and Joseph in turn adopted this use of the diary, however briefly. In this respect, the months of diary keeping for Fanny marked a victory for her vision of ego- documents as a means toward companionate marriage. Taking over the diary was simultaneously a source of influence for Fanny and a reaffirmation of her secondary role in their relationship. She controlled the story of the Revolution for the Bergiers, but she still occupied the less important position in terms of familial legacy. Though she gained control over Joseph’s most prized possession and 376 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 26 April 1848, Box 49.2 Biographique, MG. 377 Joseph Bergier, diary, 2 May 1848, MG. 378 Joseph Bergier, diary, 3 May 1848, MG. 171 took the role of chronicler that Joseph had dominated for years, her place was still secondary to Joseph’s newfound glory. While writing the account of the Revolution gave her control over their joint narrative, that power was limited. When the crisis ended, Fanny’s voice was once again silenced, never again to reappear in their record with equal strength. The gendered structure of the Bergiers’ marriage, and its link to diary writing can be better understood using the double-helix model of gender relationships posited Margaret and Patrice Higonnet on the subject of the two world wars. For the Bergiers, the diary was a masculine endeavor and was of central importance to Joseph’s identity and daily life. Though in French society more broadly diaries might be seen as a female occupation, for them the practice had become closely tied with masculinity, surrogate fatherhood, and narrative construction of bourgeois identity. The nature of the activity was not as critical as their perception of its value in a gendered structure of subordination.379 During the Revolution, Fanny took on a role within the family that Joseph had long since made his exclusive prerogative. In spite of this, her action did not bring her prestige or parity with her husband, because he had abandoned the diary only in order to take on a still more important function. He was a close aide and confidante to the Mayor of Lyon. He was under consideration to be the interim Prefect of the Rhône. He was a candidate for the Constituent Assembly. All of these jobs were far more important historically and politically than a mere diarist. Though Fanny had taken on a hitherto 379 Margaret Higonnet and Patrice Higonnet, “The Double Helix,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Margaret Higonnet et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 34. 172 male-dominated role, the fundamental devaluation of her work and position remained unchanged.380 Her power was illusory and fleeting. Maintaining control of the diary was most important to Joseph when he had no other opportunities of advancement or power. Joseph reclaimed the diary when he left for Paris to be closer to the nascent new Republic. He ran for election as the representative from Lyon in the new government, but lost. From then on he returned to his earlier pattern of dominating the diary and keeping it with obsessive exactitude. It was his most important legacy only when he had no more illustrious opportunities to distinguish himself. Conclusion For the Bergiers, diaries became a contested space in which Fanny and Joseph had competing marital narratives. Fanny saw writing and reading the diaries as an immediate avenue of communication between spouses, building intimacy and strengthening the couple relationship. It was the process, and not the ultimate output that mattered. She used the diaries as a means of supporting existing family bonds, particularly with her husband but to a lesser extent with her parents and brother. Conflating two genres, she used letters like a diary and her diaries like letters. For her, epistolary journals were a means to build intimacy with living family members, while their quasi-private nature 380 Démophile Laforest to Joseph Bergier, 14 February 1848, Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848, Box 49.2, MG; Fanny Bergier in Joseph Bergier, diary, 26 February 1848, MG. Her extended entry can be found in loose sheets inserted at the back of the volume; Fanny to Joseph, 28 April 1848, MG; Joseph Bergier (neveu) to Joseph Bergier, 1 June 1848, Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848, Box 49.2, MG; See also Higonnet and Higonnet, “Double Helix,” 35. 173 could be used as a tool of exclusion to delineate the boundaries of the family. Controlling the diary was a means for her to create her vision of companionate marriage. In contrast, Joseph intended the diaries to act as his legacy, telling the story of his success as a member of the bourgeoisie. He constructed a personal narrative in which he simultaneously expressed and confronted his anxieties about class. Including Fanny in the writing process was not a way to build a spousal relationship, but an opportunity for her to reify his vision of his own existence. He intended the diaries to tell the story of a bourgeois family on the make, who rose from nothing to a position of wealth and prominence. He used the diaries to cope with feelings of inadequacy, and Fanny’s voice was helpful primarily as a corroborating mouthpiece. Additionally, the diary itself fit within his dynastic view of family formation, serving as a surrogate heir that would help to carry on his name and ensure a measure of immortality in the absence of biological children. The function of the written word as an instrument both of control and intimacy speaks to broader patterns in the national transition toward companionate marriage. In nineteenth century France, adults rarely kept diaries and the creation of such as a joint spousal project was still more unusual. While the specifics of the Bergier example are unique, their story speaks to the broader French context. Husbands and wives had different ideas about what it would mean to have a companionate marriage, and how that ideal should be achieved. In the case of the Bergiers, these disagreements played out in written format, making them legible in a way that such conflicts were not for the majority of French couples. The transition from arranged marriages to marriages of affection, and the move from large families to limited fertility were not uncontested transformations of 174 family life. The diaries provide a narrative for a widespread uneasiness about the definition of family. 175 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION This dissertation began with my encounter with an exceptionally rich and unusual body of documents that enabled me to explore certain themes in the intimate life of a bourgeois couple of Lyon during the greater part of the nineteenth century. In my treatment of each of these themes, the guiding question has been exploring the sense or meaning of “the couple” to the two individuals in the culture of that time and place. The documents made available to me enabled not only a charting of the elements and evolution of their relationship, but also a close encounter with various aspects of its intimacy, as experienced by them emotionally and psychologically as well as practically. My interests and the sources led me to assess the quality of that experience in terms of both its mutuality and reciprocity – their life as a couple – and its gendered aspect, as experienced differently by each partner. In addition to the insights and conclusions which I derived from the sources for each theme, pertaining to the single example of the Bergiers, my exploration revealed certain directions of possible future inquiry for other cases, when and where equivalent kinds of sources exist. In this conclusion to my study, I would like to suggest some of these directions, by situating my study in the context of a broader historical literature for each of my major themes. I will then return to a discussion of the sources that made this study possible, outlining ways in which they might serve historiographical inquiries other than those I have undertaken here. In so doing I hope to show the extent to which the 176 collection of Bergier papers in the Musée Gadagne offers a unique window on the culture of the bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Lyon. The couple was, in many senses, an invention of the nineteenth century. In previous eras there had been little privacy to allow the formation of a marital relationship that was distinct from family roles. Accompanying this cultural shift was an eroticization of marriage, as men and women expected and developed emotionally and sexually satisfying conjugal relationships. The couple was all the more important in the French context because, for the first time, many partners were choosing to dramatically limit their family size. The possibility of being a family with few or no children was novel.381 Studies of marriage in the nineteenth century, often drawing from notary archives, have tended to emphasize that the French, and in particular the bourgeoisie, married for interest. Those historians who acknowledge that love began to play a role still underline the importance of strategic marriage practices.382 Even works that draw on the private writings of families as sources offer less than complete pictures of life as a couple. Christine Adams’ authoritative study of family relationships in Bordeaux lacked direct evidence to unpack the relationship between the husband and wife in the family, leaving their life as a couple largely undeveloped, even as she wrote masterfully about the parent- 381 Adler, Secrets d’alcôve, 11-12; Philippe Ariès, preface to Le Mariage et les hésitations de l’Occident, by Marie-Odile Métral (Paris: Aubier, 1977), 10-11; Foley, Women in France, 43. 382 See Laroche-Gisserot, “Pratiques de la dot,” 1440-1442; Daumard, “Affaire, amour,” 45; Michelle Perrot and Anne Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” in A History of Private Life, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1990), 186 and Alain Corbin, “Intimate Relations,” in Ibid., 593. 177 child and sibling relationships.383 The value of a comprehensive collection of intimate documents like those left by the Bergiers is that they illuminate the emotional and personal sides of marriages in ways that many private archives as well as official records cannot.384 The question of what it means to be a family, and who should be allowed to consider themselves as such, has resonance in modern debates about gay marriage. The model that pundits today refer to as traditional marriage, consisting of a husband and wife who wed for love, was, in the nineteenth century, revolutionary. Joseph and Fanny found themselves in relatively uncharted territory, as they attempted to work out for themselves the definition of modern marriage. Joseph and Fanny both desired a marriage based on love. Joseph articulated this frequently in his letters, writing on one occasion “I have but one fixed idea, which is to tell you that I love you, that I love you & that is all. Love me too & I will be the happiest of men.”385 Fanny for her part wrote longingly during a separation “I will go to sleep dreaming of you.”386 Their mutual devotion, and their insistence on the importance of love was testament to the growing value of affection in marriage. Yet even as they shared the same ideal of family in this new version of marriage, what this ideal would mean in concrete terms was poorly defined and, as the actual experience of their relationship demonstrated, was a potential object of contestation. 383 Adams, Comfort and Status, 28. 384 Angleraud, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 365. 385 Joseph Bergier to Fanny Bergier, 17 June 1829, Box 64.2, MG. 386 Fanny Bergier to Joseph Bergier, 4 October 1848, Correspondances Bergier 1839- 1848, Box 49.2, MG. 178 A significant contributing factor to the Bergiers’ uncertainty over what modern marriage should look like was their inability to have children. In the context of nineteenth-century France, conditions affecting the desire for offspring were strongly influenced by the Napoleonic Code. The abolition of primogeniture instituted by the Code might theoretically have made reproduction a less centrally important function of marriage, but in fact this provision had the opposite effect. When class and social position was less a matter of birth and family name, and more a matter of economic considerations, as was the case after the Revolution, having children became all the more important. A bourgeois family could maintain social status only as long as there were sons to keep up the business and continue the ascent up the social ladder.387 The emphasis on inheritance was, in one sense, a reflection of the ways in which many bourgeois families of the Restoration mimicked the aristocracy of the past. Joseph’s insistence on a dynastic view of family life reflected the effect of the legal and social structure of his time. Biological reproduction was a dynastic imperative that was central to his sense of masculinity and to his understanding of the purpose of the family unit.388 The reality of the Bergiers’ family could not conform to this imperative, because of their infertility. Their case demonstrates both the extent to which infertility challenged the normative expectation of bourgeois marriage and the potentially devastating effect it could have on the companionate ideal of marriage that the Bergiers sought to incarnate. Moreover, infertility complicated the contemporary understanding of gender roles and the function of women within the family and society. In her history of the French couple in 387 Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes, 9. 388 See Angleraud, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 382. 179 the nineteenth century, Laure Adler equated womanhood with motherhood, claiming that women were not truly considered wives, nor were their marriages socially recognized, until they had children. Catherine Pellissier likewise emphasized the importance of motherhood to the bourgeoises of Lyon in particular.389 Joseph’s claim that Fanny sought treatment in order “to become a woman” seemed to substantiate Adler and Pellissier’s position that to be a mother was to be a woman.390 While highlighting the significance of motherhood to womanhood in the fullest sense, these historians do not address the implications of infertility for women’s identity in the broader culture of bourgeois society. The Bergiers’ efforts to face their infertility demonstrated both the strength of the ideal of womanhood in their culture and the urgency of their response to their particular situation. For Fanny was not cured. Did this mean she was therefore not a woman? Fanny’s determination to be seen as intrinsically valuable required a head-on confrontation with what it meant to be a woman and a wife who was not also a mother. Her story brought the elision of femininity and maternity to its logical conclusion, forcing her to reexamine her identity and her personhood in both a social and individual sense. Her case also calls for a reexamination by historians today of assumptions about womanhood and motherhood in the nineteenth century. In addition to infertility, adultery was a defining pathology of the Bergiers’ marriage. In this respect they shared an experience common to the relationships of couples throughout nineteenth-century France. The negotiations over the meaning of companionate marriage between Joseph, Fanny and, at one point, Agathe, resonated with 389 Adler, Secrets d’alcôve, 101; Pellissier, La vie privée, 196; See also Sohn, Chrysalides, 67; See also Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 137. 390 Joseph Bergier, “Histoire de ma famille,” MG, 117. 180 larger social questions in France that were informed by gender. In one sense, companionability implied partnership and a level of equality within marriage. Yet at the same time, the Napoleonic Code defined women as being legally children, owing obedience to their husbands and possessing no political rights. The letters between Fanny, Joseph and Agathe were all written in the 1830s, long before the beginnings of the feminist movement, much less the fight for suffrage began in France. Neither Fanny nor Agathe ever made a claim to legal rights or framed their private struggles in a national picture. Yet both of them proceeded from the assumption that companionability should be empowering, and that their respective partnerships with Joseph entitled them to make certain demands on him. In contrast, Joseph felt entitled to be the sole determiner of rights and boundaries within his relationships. He was an ardent and convinced republican, fighting consistently throughout his life against monarchy and despotism. Yet in his private life, he strongly resisted any demands that interfered with his own preferences, attempting to rule benevolently but to rule nonetheless. This contradiction was at the heart of the dissonance produced by the rise of companionate marriage. For women, companionability meant a partnership in which both parties could make equivalent demands of exclusivity, attachment, proximity and satisfaction. For men like Joseph, companionability meant being tied to a pleasant intelligent woman, freely chosen and enjoyable to live with. Men did not intend, however, their new loveable wives to hold any particular power of their own in relationships. Patriarchy and partnership were incompatible both in the home and in the public sphere, a truth with which Joseph, his wife and his mistress all grappled. 181 The Bergiers’ attempts to navigate their companionate marriage through the emotional tumult of adultery, enabled and even nurtured, in masculine society, by the existing norms of gendered culture, and also through the challenges presented by infertility, at variance with those norms, led them to valorize another readily available element of their bourgeois milieu. This was bourgeois sociability. Sociability among the nineteenth-century French bourgeoisie was closely linked to the creation of family ties. The formal organization of leisure, through the formation of clubs, and the creation of associations for a variety of purposes, was an important feature of both civic culture and political mobilization. Maurice Agulhon argued, for instance, that clubs were a step in the democratization of French life, as communal recreation shifted away from the salons, which had dominated the old regime and the Bourbon Restoration.391 Salons had had an implicit patron-client, host-guest relationship, whereas clubs, though exclusive, elected their own officers from amongst the members. In practice, often the same people got elected again and again, but they were freely chosen.392 Building on this, other historians have looked at what sociability could tell us about mentalités, for instance the role of singing societies and the pleasure of the mediocre.393 Associational activity also served as a means of measuring social position, allowing provincial notables to generate social capital and publicly signal status and wealth.394 391 Maurice Agulhon, Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise 1810-1848 (Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 1977), 52-54. 392 Angleraud, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 432. 393 Marie-Véronique Gauthier, Chanson, sociabilité et grivoiserie au XIXe siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1992), 7. 394 Pellissier, Loisirs et sociabilités, 95; Angleraud, Les dynasties lyonnaises, 434. 182 Rather than looking at sociability as a performance in the public sphere, this dissertation shows how it was a tool in forming family bonds and shaping private life. Informal social interactions played a vital role in the establishment of companionate relationships, both legally as in the case of Fanny and Joseph, or adulterously in the case of Agathe. These gatherings among friends simultaneously fueled infidelity, an obstacle to happy marriages, and provided an alternative form of companionability. Formal sociability in the practice of philanthropy put the elite and the poor in direct contact with one another, creating in the process an opportunity for surrogacy and informal adoption. Most studies that examine sociability do so as a form of leisure and an expression of status, and not, as in this study, with an eye to understanding the creation of family. The case of the Bergiers explored in this dissertation thus invites a reexamination of associations in terms of the impact of their activities on families. The examination of infertility, adultery, and alternative family creation through the sociability of association and kin has benefitted, in this study, from an intimate encounter with the relationship of the Bergiers as a couple, thanks to the kinds of sources that made this study possible. The results of this examination suggest that similar sources for other couples, not only letters and diaries but also other private forms of writing, might benefit equally from the kind of perspective taken here. These intimate sources not only tell us about private life, they are, in a sense, a form of family life in themselves. Diaries were not merely a record; they were also a type of heir. Given that private diaries were rarely truly private and secret, we should interrogate the ways in which they were intended as a form of private familial communication and used as a tool for creating and deepening intimacy. 183 The curators of the Musée Gadagne welcome use of the Bergier diaries as historical sources by scholars. Given the focus of this project on the couple, much of my research centered on the epistolary part of the archive and on the portions of the diary that the Bergiers kept jointly. My study does not rely on many of the volumes of the diary, which therefore do not appear here at all, nor do most of the letters. This dissertation represents nonetheless the first systematic history of the Bergiers making extensive use of the collection, and in doing so provides an initial guide to anyone seeking to use these documents for other types of research. These records are so rich that historians informed by other methodologies and interests would benefit as much, or more, from their use for subjects different than mine. I would now like to suggest some possible approaches of such investigations. One such line of inquiry is the material culture of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie of Lyon. Many small details of clothing, consumption and display, all meticulously recorded in daily entries, give a sense of how the elite of Lyon sought to project their prestige and read the status of others. The bourgeoisie of Lyon was not a monolithic entity possessing unified interests, but was rather a loosely identifiable group in constant flux as individuals sought to communicate non-verbally their standing relative to their compatriots. The Bergiers did this in a number of ways that appear only briefly in my study. These include property ownership, attire, urban and rural sociability, membership in associations and travel, all of which were means of establishing one’s place in the subtle gradations of intra-class hierarchy. The Bergier documents provide a rich source for a social historian seeking a quantifiable approach to bourgeois sociability. The diaries tell the story not only of a 184 couple, but also of a network of relationships. A scholar could compile a list of all the names mentioned in terms of both frequency and context, gaining a sense of the composition of bourgeois associations. Taken in conjunction with the notary records in the departmental archives, the Bergier diaries make possible a scientific approach to the geographical, economic and social ties of the provincial bourgeoisie of nineteenth- century France. The documents thus allow for an entirely different sort of investigation than mine, a study of the implicit geography of bourgeois existence, opening the door to a project on the “where” of bourgeois life. For example, a historian could make good use of Joseph’s careful detailing of his walks, his trips to cafés and his sociable peregrinations throughout the region. Alternatively, historians of republicanism and the political history of the nineteenth century would find the autobiography and diaries useful from another kind of reading. Fanny’s brother César founded Le Censeur, a staunchly republican newspaper that played a role in politicizing the denizens of Lyon prior to the Revolution of 1848. He served in national offices both during the Second and Third Republics. Joseph participated actively in the banquet campaigns of the 1840s and in political clubs, and he stood for office himself. Fanny kept a minute-by-minute record of the uprising of the canuts (silk workers) in 1834, recording her observations of the street fighting from her window and the rooftops. These first-hand accounts of major events in French history are likely to command significant interest on the part of historians of political and social developments. The Bergier diaries also have considerable literary value. In themselves, they provide an unusual example of adults keeping private diaries over a long period of time, a 185 subject that is treated but by no means exhausted here. In addition to the intrinsic literary interest of the diaries, the Bergiers themselves were avid readers and loved the theater. As part of this project I began to keep a list of all the books they read but ultimately did not incorporate my findings into this work. Their diaries provide a clear answer to the problem historians of the book face; what were people reading? While it is easy enough to track what people purchased or owned and what they read, it is more difficult to determine how long it took to read a work and what they thought about their reading material. The diary entries of the Bergiers cast some light on these knottier questions. The Bergiers were also devoted fans of the theater. Joseph recorded and reviewed every play he saw, helpfully underlining these entries to make locating them easier. He detailed the atmosphere of the theater, the quality of the lighting and sets, his impressions of the actors and whether he enjoyed himself. During some parts of his life he attended the theater several times a week, creating a rich source for both historians and scholars of French literature for exploring drama from the perspective of the audience. The potential usefulness of the Bergiers’ archive has therefore by no means been exhausted by the present study. The source that has both made this study possible and so enriched my encounter with the Bergiers as a couple and as feeling and thinking individuals has numerous and intriguing possibilities for avenues of research. Recalling my own excitement in my encounter with these sources, it is my hope that other historians and scholars will discover in the collection new material for their own research. Fanny died of a pulmonary illness on November sixth, 1862.395 Without Fanny, Joseph became morose. He wrote frequently of his desire to die and be with her again: “I 395 Joseph Bergier, diary, 6 November 1862, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 186 have lost my beloved companion, the half of myself; existence is without charms for me. I call for death with all my strength. I live without hope of the future.”396 In spite of his conviction that he would soon follow his companion to the grave, he lived on for another sixteen years. In that time he laid the foundation for the Asile Bergier, wrote his autobiography and catalogued his personal papers for preservation. He kept his entry faithfully through his prolonged final illness, breathing his last on the tenth of May 1878. The story of his life and his achievement for posterity is in fact the narrative of their life and achievement. Together they left an intimate portrait of a marriage troubled by pain and scandal, but ultimately a companionship that endured. 396 Joseph Bergier, diary, 31 December 1862, Box Bergier Diary, MG. 187 REFERENCES CITED Archives Départementales du Rhône Chazal, Jacques. Mariage Bergier Bertholon. 13 January 1824. 3 E 9285. Dugueyt, Stéphane. Mariage Bertholon Thevenet. 2 March 1835. 3 E 12248. Fonction commune de Collonges: Maire. 1827. 2 M 58. Mariage record Bergier Koch. 14 October 1851. ADR 3 E 12312. Tableau des Membres Composant le Conseil Municipal de la Commune de Collonges. September 1822. 2 M 58. Vachez, Claude. “Dépôt du testament olographe Mme Bergier.” 4 August 1854. 3 E 19845. Vachez, Claude. Joseph Bergier Will. July 11, 1873. 3 E 19933. Vachez, Claude. Notoriété Bergier [1878?]. 3 E 19933. Vachez, Claude. Vente Bergier Chonier. 25 May 1859. 3 E 19824. Archives Municipales de Lyon Mariage record Frinzine Vachez. 15 November 1860. 2 E 1157 Record 352. Marriage record Vachez Duviard. 22 January 1834. 2 E 1582 Record 13. “Société de Patronage Pour Les Enfants Pauvres de La Ville de Lyon et de Ses Faubourgs: Statuts.” n.d. Imprimerie Léon Boitel. 305.997. Undated newspaper clipping. Société de Patronage des Enfants Pauvres. 3 C 319. 188 Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon Boitel, Léon. Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la ville de Lyon et de ses faubourgs: Compte-rendu de 1844. Edited by Leon Boitel. Lyon: Leon Boitel, 1845. Fonds Ancien. Fonds Coste 352852. Boitel, Léon. Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la ville de Lyon et de ses faubourgs: Compte-rendu de 1848-1849. Lyon: Leon Boitel, 1850. Fonds Ancien. Fonds Coste 352853. Fuzier-Perrin. Historique de la Société de Patronage pour les Enfants Pauvres de la Ville de Lyon 1840-1890: Publiée en l’honneur de son Cinquantenaire. Lyon: Rey, 1891. Silo Moderne 116479. Musée Gadagne All sources relating to the Bergiers can be found in the collection Fonds Justin Godart. The box numbers below are part of this collection. All documents are in manuscript form. The Bergier diaries are all in a single box that does not have a special designation. Letters are sorted first by author, then recipient, then date. Box Bergier Diary Bergier, Fanny. Récoltes Diary. 1836-1837. Bergier, Joseph. “Journal de la vie de Joseph Bergier 1800-1813.” Unpublished autobiography, first volume. Bergier, Joseph. “Histoire de ma famille & de ma vie 2e volume.” Unpublished autobiography, second volume. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1833-36. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1838-46. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1848. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1856. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1859. 189 Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1860-62. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1869. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1871. Bergier, Joseph. Diary. 1878. Box 49.2 Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 28 April 1848. Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848. Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 4 October 1848. Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 26 April 1848. Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. Undated 1844 letter. Correspondance Bergier 1839- 1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 27 September 1848, Correspondance Bergier 1839- 1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 30 September 1848. Correspondance Bergier 1839- 1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 3 October 1848, Correspondance Bergier 1839-1848. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 7 October 1848, Correspondance Bergier 1839-1848. Bergier, Joseph (neveu) to Joseph Bergier. 1 June 1848. Correspondances Bergier 1839- 1848. Bergier and Bugand. “Product List.” 1820s. Biographique. Laforest, Démophile to Joseph Bergier. 14 February 1848. Correspondances Bergier 1839-1848. Box 64.2 Bergier, Fanny to César Bertholon. 18 April to 16 May 1825. Bergier, Fanny to Cesar Bertholon. 23 April 1825. Bergier, Fanny to César Bertholon. 25 April 1825. 190 Bergier, Fanny to Cesar Bertholon. 11 May 1825. Bergier, Fanny to Jean-François Bertholon. 22 April 1825. Bergier, Fanny to Jean François Bertholon. 2 May 1825. Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 13 November 1832. Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 4 March 1834. Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 20 April 1834. Bergier, Fanny to Joseph Bergier. 12 May 1834. Bergier, Fanny Travel Diary. 1830. Bergier, Joseph to César Bertholon. 24 April 1825. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier, 17 June 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 11 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 13 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 15 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 17 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 20 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 23 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 27 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 30 July 1829. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 12 July 1830. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 14 July 1830. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 19 July 1830. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 27 July 1830. 191 Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 30 May 1831. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 14 September 1831. Box 102 Bergier, Joseph to Agathe Reynaud. Draft. 14 February 1836. Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 4 May 1839. Lettres addressées à Mme Bergier. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 6 May 1839. Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 8 May 1839. Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier. Bergier, Joseph to Fanny Bergier. 17 May 1839. Lettres adressées à Mme. Bergier. Bergier, Joseph. “Inventaire de Collonges déc. 1833 État des mobiliers de Collonges et de Lyon après le décès de M. Bergier Père.” 1833. Bergier, Joseph. Note on the reverse side of Guichard. Undated Invitation. Loge Réguliere d’Union et Confiance O. de Lyon. Lettres Gastine. Christôt to Joseph Bergier. 5 February 1837. Correspondance addressé à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 14 November 1835. Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 17 October 1835. Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 25 October 1835. Correspondence addressée à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 28 October 1835. Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 4 November 1835. Correspondance addressée à Bergier en 1834. Reynaud, Agathe to Joseph Bergier. 22 November 1835. 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