Sophia And Pierre In The Electoral Palatinate

Jean-George Noverre (1727-1810)
by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1760 Jean-George Noverre moved from Lyon to Stuttgart to take up an engagement with Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg. It was here that Noverre's career achieved its apogee following the publication of his Lettres sur la danse et les ballets (Lyon, 1760). Many of his ideas on the ballet d'action in this treatise were influenced by David Garrick (1717-1779), with whom he had spent two years in London from 1755. 

We know from the 1768 correspondence between Jean Monnet, former director of the Opéra Comique, and David Garrick that Mademoiselle Auselin had danced (circa 1765) at the opera in London. In 1766 she moved to Stuttgart to work with Noverre. After a brief engagement in Paris in April 1768 it is recorded in the same correspondence that she intended to travel to the Electoral Palatinate and the court of Charles Theodore, Prince-Elector and Count Palatine.

There is a confusing note on Pierre d'Aigueville's presence in the Electoral Palatinate. In La culture française à Francfort au XVIIIe siècle (1914), Bettina Strauss refers to the ballet master Pitrot, whose real name is Pierre d'Aigueville of Verseilles. It is possible that Pierre adopted this name but it provokes many questions. Jean Baptiste Pitrot (1729-1809) was active in Brussels, Lille, Ghent, Liège and became ballet master in the Hague in 1762. His elder brother, Antoine-Bonaventure (1727-after 1792), pursued his career throughout Europe and even worked in Russia. So, either this ballet master was Pierre or was perhaps Antoine-Bonaventure Pitrot.

The latter seems more likely, but in Festschrift zu Goethes 150. Geburtstagsfeier (Frankfurter Verein für Geschichte und Landeskunde, 1882) states that Pierre was usually called on playbills, "the famous Monsieur Pitrot." But, confusion aside, Pierre and Mademoiselle Auselin may have both performed in this region of Europe. Mademoiselle Auselin's engagement at the court theatre may have been somewhat briefer than her time in Stuttgart. Pierre was performing in London, partnered by Mrs. King, on the 1 November 1768 and both he and his wife were discharged by Garrick in the middle of the 1773-1774 season. Somewhere in between Madame d'Aigueville found time to give birth to James. His year of birth is given between 1770-1773.

I've often wondered whether Pierre was the price that Garrick paid to get Sophia who would "make much impact" on his theatre and if Garrick's theatre was the price that Sophia paid for Pierre.

Auselin or Anselme: A Problem Of Palaeography

Among the problems one encounters when trawling the Internet for information is just how many tasty snippets slip through the mesh of the net. My strategy when searching, particularly when using a proper noun, is to break the word down into as many permutations as possible. This can improve the quantity of the results because some old documents were acquired by the likes of Google as images.

These can be thought of as similar to the photographs produced by a digital camera. So, if you've ever been in a record office and photographed a baptism record you might have taken it home and then typed out all the information but kept the image as a memento.

The out of copyright documents in Google Books usually have an option to display these kind of images as a text that one can cut and paste into a word processor. If you haven't tried this then follow the link to Monnet's letter to Garrick (14 April 1768) and then click on the "Plain text" option. This is done by a process known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). If you've gone through the laborious process of typing out the text from your photos you will be pleased to know that there are OCR programmes available on the Internet.

It doesn't take long to discover that even when the original is a clearly printed document the process of converting an image to text makes frequent mistakes. When the original is a handwritten document or a cursive font has been used then there are usually many more mistakes to correct.

Human beings encounter similar problems in information processing. I've been working with original documents since a 1975 school history project on the Battle of Worcester and paleography is often just as baffling as that first adventure. I both expect and enjoy this challenge as some people enjoy crosswords. On first reading the naturalization act of James Hervet d'Egville I wasn't disappointed. I found it equally tantalizing when a dance historian told me that he had almost "fallen off his chair" when he had read the maiden name of James' mother.

At that time I'd very little knowledge of dance in the eighteenth century so I had no idea what he could mean other than it must be something very interesting indeed. So when I tried to make out the grey photocopy of a handwritten original I remained firmly in my seat. The legibility was such that I had to give it a second glance and the name that I read, "Ansaume," meant nothing to me.

Even after a quick Google Anseume or Anseaume meant little more and I had to burrow among the Google Books to get an idea of who he was. Rather than explaining I will leave you to explore this yourself if you are unfamiliar with him. It's enough to say that he was a significant figure in the Opéra Comique and might make a person fall off a chair. But it did not add up; for all sorts of reasons he could not be Sophia d'Aigueville's father.

I returned to the copy of the manuscript and to first principles. I looked for analogues of the letters among known words and eventually deciphered the name as "Anselme." The Anselme family of the Hague were even more difficult to find for the theatrical layperson - but I could easily understand that she too might make a person fall from a chair. For as many reasons as Ansaume was wrong she was definitely right - not least because Sophia Baptiste Anselme's collection of names fits with Jame's mother and there is the Hague connection.

I'm now interested to read a different interpretation of the name, "Auselin," from some of our contributors. I never wed myself to a particular hypothesis to the extent that I can't get a "quickie" divorce and I will certainly be returning to the manuscript. I will be happy to tear up some of my previous work if necessary. It is probably worth noting that Genlias - the Dutch genealogical database - doesn't return any results for Auselin today. I have used this phrase because it has given me differing results on different days. However, records from the Hague are not included.

The OCR process readily interprets "Anselme" as "Auselin" even in text which is obvious to the human brain. The autograph manuscript of M. Monnet's letter to Garrick has now become an object of desire for me but a visit to the Hague is a necessity.