Readalong: Abigail in Paris

Wallace at Unputdownables is hosting a John Adams readalong, and if you haven't joined in yet, you really should. I missed a week so, this week I am discussing Chapter 6: Abigail in Paris. 

This chapter strayed from the typical in that the focus is not on Adams himself. He plays a secondary role to the two stars of the chapter: Abigail and Thomas Jefferson. The chapter begins with Abigail's decision to cross an ocean to be with her husband, through the stormy crossing itself, to her eventual reunion with Adams and the settling of their life in France. In Paris, Abigail is both horrified and intrigued by the spectacle that is French life, a combination of performance and decadence far different from her simple life in America.

The story then swings to Jefferson who after many hardships - particularly the death of his wife - joins Adams in Paris to develop commercial treatise with various countries, a slow and not particularly lucrative (whether in outcome or money) endeavor. Towards the end, we move back to Abigail as the entire Adams family leaves Paris: John Quincy for home and Harvard, and the rest to London where Adams has been made minister to Britain.

Instead of focusing on the plot, I wanted to concentrate on a side note that stood out to me in the chapter:

The house the Adams family moves into in Paris "had once been the country villa of two extravagant, scandalous sisters, the Demoiselles Verrieres." That line is the only mention of these women with no further development, but it definitely had me intrigued. Who were these extravagant sisters? Why were they considered scandalous?

A quick Google search revealed no information that wasn't in French. A further search, primarily through Wikipedia, revealed that Marie (Rinteau) is described as "a courtesan ungrateful and treacherous" by the French poet Charles-Pierre Colardeau, apparently because she gave him a venereal disease which caused his death. An affair with a different man set her on the path to become the great-grandmother of George Sand (who is one awesome writer and woman). All of the references to Marie are on the pages of the men she slept with which I find disturbing as she sure sounds like a woman who deserves her own page.

The website for the Metropolitan Museum of Art features a painting of Marie (shown above) which provided more information: "Marie and her younger sister Geneviève, who were of humble origins, enjoyed a brief moment of success in music and theatre and longer careers as cultured courtesans. In Paris and at Autueil they built private theatres, lived in luxury, and received important guests. Neither married and from the 1750s they were known as "les demoiselles de Verrières." The portrait of Genevieve (to the left) is about the only thing I could find just on her. Marie seems to be the "more popular" sister, probably due to her progeny.

I must admit that I am very intrigued by these women. As they have very little to do with John Adams himself - outside of him living in their house for a time - I recognize the strangeness of spending so much time thinking about them. But that is one of the things I love so much about reading history; it sparks interest in so many other topics, paving the way for exploration into areas you didn't even know about.

Do any of you know anything about these two women?