Avignon, Birthplace of Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse

    AVIGNON, the beautiful city on the Rhône in Southern France, was the birthplace of Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse (1720-1804), a writer of the Enlightenment period who deserves to be better known. She was a poet, novelist and daring satirist who was well-known in her own time and her life was both extraordinary and fascinating.

Clocher des Augustins

Her family name was Fauques and she adopted the pen-name of Madame de Vaucluse because although she left Avignon and settled in England, she remembered the city of her birth with affection and described the Fontaine de Vaucluse as the most beautiful place on earth. 

    Fauques' life was extraordinary and scandalous in many ways. In her youth, she was forced by her family to enter a nunnery, which she contrived to escape after twelve years of intolerable confinement. Seeking love and adventure, she found both  - perhaps a little too much sometimes - and wrote about them in her poems and novels.

    In 1759, she caused a diplomatic row by publishing a book that denounced Madame de Pompadour, the French King's mistress. Pompadour was described as the hated tyrant of France, a power-mad and incompetent ruler who lived in luxury while the poor suffered and starved. The French government tried to get the book suppressed, but failed as it was published in England and the Netherlands.

    Fauques lived on in England until 1804, publishing an amazing variety of books, including La Dernière Guerre des Bêtes, a satire on the Seven Years' War, and The Transmigrations of Hermes, a philosophical fantasy. Most of her books appeared in both French and English. An enthusiast of Enlightenment ideas, in 1792 she published L'Apparation, a long poem about Voltaire and the French Revolution. She was a religious sceptic, a fierce feminist and an advocate of animal rights. 

    In 1797, she published a translation of Voltaire's epic poem La Henriade, into English rhyming verse. It was a tour de force, uniting her love of poetry, of France, of Voltaire and of Enlightenment ideals.

    

The convent of Augustine nuns where Fauques was immured for twelve years was dedicated to Sainte-Ursule. It is very likely that it is this one, of which the bell-tower (Clocher des Augustins) survives in rue de la Carreterie, overlooking the Place des Carmes. Once this was one of the biggest convents in the city.

 Clocher des Augustins and adjacent houses. 

Although the convent was suppressed in the 18th century, parts of its buildings survive and were incorporated into the adjacent houses. This Gothic window was part of it and the smaller windows in the street may even be those of the original nuns' cells.

                     Burial place of Anne-Marie Fauques at Fonthill in Wiltshire.

Surely Fauques deserves a plaque to commemorate her in the city of her birth? Perhaps even a road named after her? On top of the tower of the Augustins is a curious metal campanile, like a bird cage. It reminds me of Anne-Marie Fauques, who was once confined there like a caged bird until she succeeded in flying away.

To learn more about her unconventional life, and her writings, read Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse, a Tiger among the Bluestockings (Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse, Un Tigre Parmi les Bas Bleus i.e. femmes savantes).

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/julia-gasper/anne-marie-fauques-de-vaucluse-a-tiger-among-the-bluestockings/paperback/product-pmm74q.html?page=1&pageSize=4

https://elizabethberkeleycraven.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-burial-place-of-anne-marie-fauques.html