Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: The woman was fencing in a tavern, brandishing her sword
Speaker 1: in wide circles and curly cues with a showman's air
Speaker 1: for performance. She shouted and leaped on to a bench.
Speaker 1: Her opponent did the same. The pair of them clinked
Speaker 1: swords as they half thought half danced up on to
Speaker 1: the long table. It helped her agility that the woman
Speaker 1: was wearing men's clothing, boots and pants. The woman smiled
Speaker 1: and winked at the patrons lifting their mugs of ale
Speaker 1: at her, even as she defended herself from Perry's and jabs.
Speaker 1: Her name was Julie Daubney, and soon she would be
Speaker 1: a legend. The sword fight was really a sword fight.
Speaker 1: It was a performance, a fencing demonstration between Julie and
Speaker 1: her lover, a swordsman named Seran. He had trained her
Speaker 1: for months while they toured together from town to town,
Speaker 1: tavern to tavern around France, and now people said that
Speaker 1: her skills surpassed even his. When the fighting portion of
Speaker 1: the entertainment was over, Julie remained standing on the table
Speaker 1: at the tavern and began to sing in a beautiful,
Speaker 1: clear contralto voice that she could make thick with emotion
Speaker 1: on que. Soon the drunken tavern patrons were joining in
Speaker 1: on the choruses, stomping their feet and slapping their thighs
Speaker 1: in time to the beat. When the song quieted down,
Speaker 1: one drunken reveler teetered, spilling his drink from the sides
Speaker 1: of his cup. She's not even a real lady, he shouted.
Speaker 1: No woman dresses or fences like that. It's a man.
Speaker 1: Julie d'aubney smiled without a word. She removed her jacket,
Speaker 1: unbuttoned her blouse, and showed the heckler and half of
Speaker 1: the pub her naked breasts. That story about Julie Daubney,
Speaker 1: the woman who would go on to enchant Paris as
Speaker 1: the unfontrebla of the opera world, is apocryphal, as are
Speaker 1: so many of the stories about her life. Julie Dabney was,
Speaker 1: even in her lifetime, a figure larger than life, who
Speaker 1: scandalized and quickly became sensationalized. Her biography seems ripped from
Speaker 1: a romance novel. It's only fitting that it's been fictionalized
Speaker 1: dozens of times in different iterations. She is the archetype,
Speaker 1: at least in my mind, for a number of female
Speaker 1: characters in period pieces. That girl who fences and seduces,
Speaker 1: who runs away and gets into trouble, only to seduce
Speaker 1: her way out of trouble. Jule was a nobleman's mistress, offenser,
Speaker 1: a nun, and an opera singer all before she was twenty.
Speaker 1: Because so much of her life has been borrowed or fabricated,
Speaker 1: either to fit the mold of an adventure story or
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale, it's almost impossible to tease out what
Speaker 1: actually happened in real life. All we have are the stories.
Speaker 1: And so I'll tell you the story of the woman
Speaker 1: who became known as Lamupin and leave you with the
Speaker 1: terrible burden of knowing that some of it might be
Speaker 1: too outlandish to be true. But then again it might
Speaker 1: not be. If Julie Daubney can teach us anything, it's
Speaker 1: that people who live and love without landish passion can
Speaker 1: sometimes lead extraordinary lives. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is
Speaker 1: noble blood. We don't know for sure when Julie Dubny
Speaker 1: was born, but we can guess that it was around
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy three. She was the only child to a
Speaker 1: man named Gaston, who worked as the secretary to the
Speaker 1: Compte Armagnac. The Comte de Armagnac was King Louis, the
Speaker 1: fourteenth Master of the Horse, and so as the daughter
Speaker 1: of his secretary, Julie spent much of her childhood at
Speaker 1: the riding school at the Tuileries in Paris, before she
Speaker 1: eventually moved with the court to Versailles, where she lived
Speaker 1: in the Great Stables. Maybe because her father had had
Speaker 1: no sons and Julie was his only child, but for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, Julie received a courtly education, both in manners
Speaker 1: and in sword fighting. Her father, Gaston, was an accomplished swordsman,
Speaker 1: and one of his duties at Versailles was training the
Speaker 1: page boys in the basics. Julie learned alongside them, becoming
Speaker 1: adept and then astonished shingly good, all before puberty. At
Speaker 1: some point in her adolescence, her father died, and it
Speaker 1: was also around that time that her father's boss, the
Speaker 1: Compe d'Armagnac, took Julie as his mistress. Julie was around
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen. At that time, she was a child
Speaker 1: and the comfort was an adult man, and so even
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century, I think it's worth noting the
Speaker 1: power dynamics that would have been at play there. A
Speaker 1: sexual relationship with the count was one of Julie's few
Speaker 1: ways of gaining any leverage whatsoever over her future, and
Speaker 1: the compt was the one who made the decision that
Speaker 1: with her father dead, Julie would need an arranged marriage,
Speaker 1: and so he married her off to a tax collector
Speaker 1: named MupA, who then conveniently was sent out of town.
Speaker 1: But Julie wouldn't stick around town much longer either. She
Speaker 1: ran away with a fencing master named Saran, who became
Speaker 1: her next lover. Depending on the stories, Sharan murdered a
Speaker 1: man in a duel, and since duels were illegal, he
Speaker 1: had to flee town. Julie came with him, and so
Speaker 1: the pair of them toured through France, performing at fencing
Speaker 1: demonstrations in taverns and at local fairs. But Julie grew
Speaker 1: tired of her lover and their profession equally quickly, and
Speaker 1: when the pair reached the south of France, she abandoned
Speaker 1: shurran and began to sing in the opera at Marseilles.
Speaker 1: It was there, as a teenage opera singer that she
Speaker 1: drew the attention of a local merchant's daughter who happened
Speaker 1: to be in the audience one night. This is the
Speaker 1: story from Julie's life that I find the most outlandish,
Speaker 1: but it's also one of the stories with the most evidence.
Speaker 1: The pieces are there, and so it's up to us
Speaker 1: as historians to piece them together into a way that
Speaker 1: makes some semblance of sense. Again, this is a story
Speaker 1: stranger than fiction in almost every ingle sense that merchant's
Speaker 1: daughter watched Julie on stage, and Julie on stage saw
Speaker 1: the girl in the audience gazing up at her. The
Speaker 1: two began an affair that became an open secret and
Speaker 1: that scandalized the local community, and the merchant, in a
Speaker 1: fit of fury and misplaced fatherly protectiveness, banished his daughter
Speaker 1: to a convent. But Julie was in love, and convent
Speaker 1: walls couldn't keep her away from her lover. Julie herself
Speaker 1: entered the convent, pretending to be interested in becoming a nun.
Speaker 1: As if any career path could have been further from
Speaker 1: the life that she had lived up until that point.
Speaker 1: Julie and the merchant's daughter began thinking of ways that
Speaker 1: they could run away together, elaborate schemes that would buy
Speaker 1: them the freedom that they wanted. Conveniently enough for them,
Speaker 1: one of the elderly nuns in the convent happened to
Speaker 1: die from unrelated causes. Seeing an opportunity, Julie allegedly dug
Speaker 1: up the body, put it into her lover's bedroom, and
Speaker 1: then tipped a candle over to start a fire. The
Speaker 1: idea was that people would see the dead body burnt
Speaker 1: beyond recognition and assume that the merchant's daughter had died.
Speaker 1: Then the merchant's daughter and Julie would be free to
Speaker 1: start a new life. But the candle did it work
Speaker 1: too well. Soon the entire convent was up in flames,
Speaker 1: and though their plot was quickly discovered, Julie and the
Speaker 1: merchant's daughter were able to escape. In the chaos, Julie
Speaker 1: was sentenced by the Parliament in Provence in absentia for arson,
Speaker 1: for body snatching, and for kidnapping. Julie's sentence was death.
Speaker 1: Peculiarly enough, the sentence was for as Sieur de Maupin
Speaker 1: as if Julie were a man. It seems that the
Speaker 1: court wanted to spare the merchant's family from the final
Speaker 1: public humiliation of their daughter having run away with another woman.
Speaker 1: The merchant's daughter would have her own humiliation soon enough.
Speaker 1: When Julie tired of her new lover, she deposited her
Speaker 1: back at her parents house. Julie was still on the
Speaker 1: run and once again alone, but loneliness never stuck to
Speaker 1: Julie Daubney. Her next partner wouldn't be romantic, but instead
Speaker 1: one of the most defining friendships of her life. While
Speaker 1: near Poitier, she encountered an old actor who had once
Speaker 1: been a celebrated singing teacher. His name was Machrichel, and
Speaker 1: though his alcoholism left him teetering on the edge of ruin,
Speaker 1: Julie stayed with him for a while and learned from him.
Speaker 1: It was his encouragement that ultimately spurred Julie into auditioning
Speaker 1: for the prestigious RS Opera. Julie auditioned and didn't get in.
Speaker 1: She auditioned again, rejected again, but she would make another
Speaker 1: friend a lover, this time a rising star who had
Speaker 1: just been accepted by the Paris Opera himself. His name
Speaker 1: was Gabriel Visontevna, and he whispered to the people in
Speaker 1: power that they should give Julie another chance. They did,
Speaker 1: and this time her audition impressed them. The Parisian Opera
Speaker 1: even helped convince the King to pardon Julie for her
Speaker 1: youthful arson in discretions, and the king obliged, and so
Speaker 1: Julie Daubney joined the opera. As a willful woman, prone
Speaker 1: to picking fights and to dressing in men's clothing, she
Speaker 1: was never going to be a fit for the operatic
Speaker 1: roles of an ingenue soprano. Roles were instead written for
Speaker 1: her as a contralto roles of powerful women, goddesses and enchantresses.
Speaker 1: Though Julie was married, all oppera singers married or not
Speaker 1: performed as Mademoiselle, and so Julie began her tenure on
Speaker 1: stage as Mademoiselle de Maupin, or, as she would become famous,
Speaker 1: lampin From Here. Julie Daubney's life rolls through wild sounding stories,
Speaker 1: as if in montage. In her lifetime, she became famous
Speaker 1: as an opera singer, but less for her voice and
Speaker 1: more for her escapades off the stage. It's the same
Speaker 1: situation you might imagine befalling an actor today who's maybe
Speaker 1: not quite as talented as some other performers, but who
Speaker 1: still always manages to appear on the front page of tabloids.
Speaker 1: These stories come from wildly disparate sources, and very few
Speaker 1: of them have the type of specific details that might
Speaker 1: make me more confident in them as fact, or at
Speaker 1: least confident in where they occurred in Julie's biography. And
Speaker 1: to make matters even more complicated, after Julie's death, the
Speaker 1: French writer at thefol Gautier wrote a novel called Mademoiselle
Speaker 1: de Maupin, which was only loosely based on the real
Speaker 1: life of its namesake character, but which plenty of readers
Speaker 1: mistook and continued to mistake for a fact. One of
Speaker 1: those stories begins with Julie in her favorite place in
Speaker 1: the world, performing for a crowd. She was at a
Speaker 1: tavern an after party, and the crowd was growing slightly
Speaker 1: rowdier than normal. One man named Albert was emboldened by
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and by the several drinks he had already imbibed.
Speaker 1: And now for my next song, Lamou pomp heard. Delbert
Speaker 1: shouted back, I've listened to your chirping, but now tell
Speaker 1: me of your plumage. It was a seventeenth century come on.
Speaker 1: Julie's sword was drawn before the dunken smile even fell
Speaker 1: from Delbert's face. The man tried briefly to defend himself
Speaker 1: against her swift sword work, but it was a useless attempt.
Speaker 1: Julie parried and ran her sword clean through his shoulder. Later,
Speaker 1: Julie felt guilty. He had been drunk and he had
Speaker 1: been flirting. Did he really deserve a blade all the
Speaker 1: way through and coming out the other side of his body?
Speaker 1: So she visited him in the hospital, and depending on
Speaker 1: the story you believe, she and the man Delbert, either
Speaker 1: became longtime lovers or friends. Some fictionalized versions of Julie's
Speaker 1: life even framed Albert as her primary love interest, a
Speaker 1: lover who spanned the rest of her life. But I
Speaker 1: have to assume that that's maybe based more on the
Speaker 1: power of the meat cute, unless on actual source evidence
Speaker 1: of the significance of their relationship. Another story is about
Speaker 1: another opera singer, a man named Domnil, who tried to
Speaker 1: hit on Julie and when she rejected him, he spat
Speaker 1: at her feet and insulted her singing voice. Julie challenged
Speaker 1: him to a duel and quickly disarmed him. Rather than
Speaker 1: stab him, she beat him a few times with a
Speaker 1: cane and stole his snuffbox and his watch for good measure.
Speaker 1: A few days following their altercation, Julie came across Dominil
Speaker 1: surrounded by a group of swooning admirers. He was bandaged
Speaker 1: and bruised, and he was telling a dramatic story about
Speaker 1: how he was assaulted by a gang of thieves, at
Speaker 1: least half a dozen of them. It's true, they stole
Speaker 1: my watch in my snuffbox before I managed to fight
Speaker 1: them off, he moaned. Julie rolled her eyes. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: she dug into her pockets. There you go, she said,
Speaker 1: flinging the watch and the snuff box back at him.
Speaker 1: Band of thieves. Huh, I guess it's better than telling
Speaker 1: your little friend that I whipped your butt. It's a
Speaker 1: good story. But Julie Dubney's real moment of scandal and
Speaker 1: triumph would occur later at a party held by the
Speaker 1: King's brother, an event that would come to be known
Speaker 1: as the evening of Gasps. Dressed as a man, like
Speaker 1: she so often did, Julie swept into the party and
Speaker 1: immediately locked eyes with a beautiful young lady. Julie requested
Speaker 1: that the woman dance with her, and when the song
Speaker 1: was over, Julie dipped the woman and, in full view
Speaker 1: of the party, kissed her square on the lips. Night
Speaker 1: of Gasps. Indeed, the kiss would have been bad enough,
Speaker 1: but unbeknownst to Julie, the woman had three male suitors
Speaker 1: at the party, and all three of them, red faced
Speaker 1: and huffing, challenged Julie to a duel. Okay, she said
Speaker 1: in the guard in, Julie dueled the three suitors one
Speaker 1: at a time, and she beat each one, dueling being illegal.
Speaker 1: Julie acquired yet another pardon from the King. This one
Speaker 1: was granted because of the merciful intervention of the King's brother,
Speaker 1: the party host, who assured the King that it was
Speaker 1: all in good fun. But before the pardon came through,
Speaker 1: Julie fled France, at least temporarily, until the heat died down.
Speaker 1: In Brussels, she began an affair with the Elector of Bavaria,
Speaker 1: although during a performance trying to make headlines, she used
Speaker 1: a real dagger instead of a stage dagger to stab herself,
Speaker 1: a shallow stabbing, but is stabbing. Nonetheless, the elector, shocked
Speaker 1: and clearly regretting the relationship, offered Julie forty thousand francs
Speaker 1: to politely end the relationship. In Spain, Julie worked as
Speaker 1: a lady's maid to a wealthy countess who was so
Speaker 1: horrible that Julie stayed in her employ only long enough
Speaker 1: to pull a prank. One evening, the countess was dressing
Speaker 1: for a grand ball, and Julie was tasked with helping
Speaker 1: her to style her elaborate hair do. Julie studdied the
Speaker 1: back of the countess's hair with radishes so that everyone
Speaker 1: but her would be able to see them. Before the
Speaker 1: countess came back to her palace that evening, Julie was
Speaker 1: already gone back to France. Julie's final recorded love affair
Speaker 1: was in seventeen oh three, when she fell in love
Speaker 1: with a woman named Madame Le Marquis de Florencac, sometimes
Speaker 1: referenced at the time as the most beautiful woman in
Speaker 1: all of France. La Florence Sock was so beautiful that
Speaker 1: the daufas himself became dangerously obsessed with her, and La
Speaker 1: florence Sock had to flee herself for some years to
Speaker 1: protect herself from the unwanted advances of a powerful man.
Speaker 1: According to some, Julie and La Florensock lived in domestic
Speaker 1: bliss for two years until La Florensock died of a fever.
Speaker 1: Julie was thirty one years old, and she would only
Speaker 1: live two more years, herself, dying in seventeen o seventy,
Speaker 1: at an age we can estimate around thirty three. Some
Speaker 1: say that, heartbroken and alone, she went to live and
Speaker 1: die in a convent. To me, that ending of Julie
Speaker 1: dying sad and alone in a convent reeks of a
Speaker 1: morality tale propaganda after her death, see here was a
Speaker 1: sinful woman, and she died young and desperate to repent.
Speaker 1: It seems far more likely, at least to me, that
Speaker 1: Julie would have died in the heart of the city
Speaker 1: after a night on stage or at a tavern that
Speaker 1: she made her stage. At least in my imagination, it
Speaker 1: was a night that she spent meeting strangers and making
Speaker 1: them fall in love with her. That's the story of
Speaker 1: the life of Julie Daubney. But continue listening after a
Speaker 1: brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
Speaker 1: her legacy in the twenty one century. Julie Dubney might
Speaker 1: seem like a strange choice for a popular modern heroine,
Speaker 1: considering that she lived in the sixteen hundreds and that
Speaker 1: we know so very little about her actual life. But
Speaker 1: then again, she is a bisexual swordswoman who seduced her
Speaker 1: way across Europe. In two thousand and thirteen, Julie Dubney
Speaker 1: had something of a modern online renaissance, not on a
Speaker 1: history website, but on of all places, Umbler. That sweet
Speaker 1: strange blog site became a hub for Julie Daubney fan art.
Speaker 1: People from around the world have drawn the fencing frenchwoman
Speaker 1: in all manner of dress, from pirate garb to Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette esque ball gowns. Even several centuries later, people continue
Speaker 1: to be inspired by just the idea of Julie Daubney,
Speaker 1: a woman larger than life who can become anything that
Speaker 1: we want her to be. Noble Blood is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive
Speaker 1: producers include Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by rima Ill Kali and Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
Speaker 1: and you can learn more about the show over at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M hmmm,