Les Petites-Affiches
Beginning in the late 1820s, the well-known artists associated with the satirical periodicals La Caricature and Le Charivari took aim at the Parisian matrimonial agencies and the fantastical advertisements these businesses regularly published in the Petites affiches de Paris. The Petites affiches was a popular newspaper that printed classifieds for individuals as well as commercial advertisements, news, and announcements of various sorts. In this publication, the lines between these categories were often blurred and the réclame, or advertisement disguised as an editorial piece, reigned supreme.
As I discuss in my book, Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France, self-styled marriage brokers took advantage of these new anonymous commercial spaces in the press to craft engaging consumer narratives for readers about the search for love and marriage in an alienating urban environment. Both professional matchmaking and matrimonial ads in France took root in the surprising context of the First Empire, a period of unprecedented historical change wrought by revolution, war, and Napoleon’s social restructuring. Broker Claude Villiaume hit upon a winning formula when he constructed love as a product of blind destiny and marriage as a “lottery” that subverted rational attempts at control and planning.
Building on his success in the Petites affiches, other matrimonial agents soon began targeting “gogos,” or gullible clients who were taken in by the speculative nature of the new spousal marketplace and its promises of astronomical dowries supposedly available to clients from humble backgrounds.
These two prints by lithographers Charles-Joseph Traviès de Villers and Charles Philipon satirize the novel matchmaking business on display in the Petites affiches during the late Restoration and July Monarchy. They link it to
the numerous get-rich-quick schemes that captured the public imagination in this era of boom-and-bust economic cycles and laissez-faire policies. In addition to lampooning the shady matrimonial agents peddling their wares in the press, Traviès de Villers and Philipon both mock the credulous clients who fell for their outlandish matrimonial ads.
In the print by Traviès de Villers, a man who seems to be carrying all his worldly possessions in a bindle cannot believe his good fortune when he sees the advertisement for “a beautiful young lady of 22 with a dowry of 40,000 francs in cash” who “does not care about wealth as long as [her future spouse] comes from an honest family and has a pleasant appearance.” This man is reading the Petites affiches, which the artist has jokingly subtitled the Journal de l’Espérance, a play on the double meaning of the French term “l’espérance,” which referred to both inheritance prospects and hope more generally. The male reader is specifically directed to the office of Claude Villiaume to find his new bride.
The second print by the founder of La Caricature and Le Charivari, Charles Philipon, belongs to his series on Matrimonial Agencies and the Petites affiches parisiennes. The text underneath lists two women on offer at the marriage bureau of “M. Procure” and takes the form of a matchmaker’s advertisement in the classifieds. The first imaginary client is a “young orphan of 18 years, dowered with 80,000 francs.” Brokers often promised orphans to customers due to their lack of family members who might have inheritance claims on the future bride’s wealth. The second is “a middle-aged widow who possesses 10,000 livres of annuity.” Both women, the announcement assures us, “are guaranteed without defects or flaws. Lovers can see them at the office of M. Procure for the modest customary fee of 50 francs.” Naming the agent “M. Procure” links the practice of matchmaking to venal sex. This and other aspects of the print such as the masculine “widow” who is taking snuff and looks like she may be suffering from venereal disease imply that marriage agencies were fronts for prostitution. This was a common perception of matchmakers from the beginning and one that the brokers of this new trade worked tirelessly to dispel.