Restoration influencer: how Charles II's clever mistress set trends ahead of her time

There were few places in 17th-century London where women could embrace the same economic and intellectual freedoms as men. Hortense Mancini’s salon next to St James’s Palace was one of them, new research reveals – yet its influence in Restoration society has largely been dismissed throughout history.

Mancini, a mistress of Charles II, was a renowned Italian beauty who famously fled to England dressed as a man to escape her abusive aristocratic husband. But she also wielded her fame and status to create a subversive space in London where royal mistresses could meet, gamble, drink champagne and discuss science and literature on an equal footing with men, according to Annalisa Nicholson, a researcher in French Studies at Cambridge University.

She created “the most celebrated salon in Europe” in the late 17th century, Nicholson says. “She opened up a space in London for women, particularly, to learn about new ideas, hear scientific lectures, talk about the latest literature and engage in a museum-like culture, where you could handle all sorts of exotic objects and animals.”

It was at her salon that champagne was introduced to English society. “Suddenly, you have this very trendy, fashionable salon, run by Hortense Mancini, a famous woman – a very early celebrity – and everyone’s got a glass of champagne in their hands. And so champagne becomes interwoven with aristocratic socialising.”

Other royal mistresses, including Nell Gwyn, Barbara Villiers and Louise de Kéroualle, attended the salon. “A lot of the histories of the royal mistresses focus on the cattiness of the women and their rivalry,” said Nicholson. “But Kéroualle is very happy to come and socialise with Mancini, even though she’s just been pushed off her pedestal as the official royal mistress.”

Nicholson thinks Mancini – “a notorious figure” who sometimes dressed as a man and was rumoured to be bisexual – is a woman with whom a lot of male historians have felt uncomfortable. “They try to push her out of the picture,” said Nicholson, who will discuss her groundbreaking research at the university’s Cambridge Festival, which starts on 26 March. “She has been massively ignored.”

She says Mancini was one of the first women to write a memoir. Bravely, she wrote about the abuse she suffered from her husband – a mentally unstable, “incredibly jealous” French duke who had sexual fears about cows’ udders and knocked out the front teeth of his female servants to make them less attractive.

She sought refuge in England when she was in her 30s, shortly after her book was translated into English. “Her memoir creates this huge buzz and everyone is so excited even before she arrives. She is already famous as a beauty and has spent seven years running across Europe fleeing her husband.”

Once in London she began to wield the kind of power that “influencers” today have over people’s lives. “For example, when Mancini’s salon starts reading a scientific text by Fontanelle, suddenly so many more people are interested in this text and Aphra Behn translates it very soon afterwards. You have this incredible ripple effect. When the salon does it, other people and places want to do it as well.”

All of this has been overshadowed by Mancini’s relationship with Charles II. “Hortense Mancini is not just a mistress of Charles II, she is a hostess of a vital cultural institution in Restoration London. Yet historians tend to write off her salon as a gambling site.” At the time, wealthy women were barred from handling their own financial affairs – so the fact women were able to gamble at a salon run by a woman was “hugely significant”, Nicholson says.

It was an illicit way to enjoy, for a few hours, the same financial freedoms as the men they gambled with: “At the gaming table, everyone is equal. The salon is this wonderful place where women can come and behave financially independently, at a time when women are often obstructed in areas of economics and finance. That’s what Mancini’s salon achieved – a space where women are equal to men, sometimes even superior.” Women would also meet at the salon to read one another a recent play, or listen to an author read their most recent literary or scientific work. “It’s a bit like a book club where you come together and talk about a text. You’ve got this mingling of playwrights with theologians and scientists in one place.”

Nicholson has researched unstudied letters between Mancini and her epicurean co-host, Charles de Saint-Évremond, a 60-year-old Frenchman in exile. These give “glimpses” of the conversations around the gaming tables. “They’re talking about politics, for example – diplomatic events that have taken place. They’re talking about theology. New evidence was suggesting that some of the events in the Bible, like the flood, couldn’t have happened 3,000 years ago.” Normally, men would have those conversations in coffee houses or academies, but at the salon, the royal mistresses and other aristocratic women and female intellectuals could participate. “For women who are barred from these institutions, places like Mancini’s salon are the only spaces they can have those conversations.”

As well as her many cats and dogs, Mancini filled her salon with an aviary of exotic birds, including a white sparrow and a number of parrots, and objects imported from the colonies that would fascinate fashionable women, such as ribbons, feathers, shells and brightly coloured stones. “It was a spectacle. She was putting on events and displaying objects that would stimulate conversation.”

She held the salon in two rooms, about 500 sq ft in total. “It’s a very cosy, intimate space. It must have had a spellbinding atmosphere.”