An unprecedented collection of 1,500 documents from some of history’s greatest women is being auctioned, including items from Catherine the Great’s imperious letter shunning her lover to Brigitte Bardot’s plea to cancel the release of a song that ended up being banned in several countries owing to its sexual content. Some of the highlights:
Catherine the Great: Hands off my empire
The famously amorous Catherine II of Russia, above, linked to the coup that killed husband Peter III, is seen in a 1762 letter shunning her lover Stanislas Auguste Poniatowski. He wanted to come to Russia and become her new husband, but he is warned to stay away. Why? The fearsome Catherine had another lover and no intention of letting her old flame return to her life or take over her empire. “You read my letters with very little attention. I’ve told you and repeated that I risk being assaulted from all sides if you put one foot back in Russia,” she says in the blunt letter.
It sold Tuesday for $22,000.
Catherine of Aragon Save my marriage (and your church)
Catherine — queen of England from 1509 until 1533 and the first of King Henry VIII’s six wives — fell out of favor with the fearsome monarch after she failed to produce a son and heir. In the 1529 letter intended to reach the pope, she argues: “I am completely innocent” and being cast aside “without cause.” She asks for Henry’s planned annulment to be blocked. She also warns — correctly, as it turns out — that Henry will try to split from Rome. It’s simply signed “Katherina.”
It sold Tuesday for $86,000.
Edith Piaf “La vie en rehab”
Dated Jan. 5, 1956, the bittersweet letter is a loving ode to then-husband Jacques Pills from the clinic where she was undergoing detox after alcohol and morphine addictions. In it, the French cabaret singer of the famous signature song “La vie en Rose” reminds Pills that there will be good days ahead, when she gets released. “Lovely man, have confidence in me as you have always had and you will see it’s the good side in me that will win, by the end of the detoxification… you will see that things can start again!” Piaf died seven years later of liver cancer at age 47.
Brigitte Bardot Sachs appeal
The blond bombshell’s letter is a request to a record company to scrap the suggestive, sexually provocative song “Je t’aime, Moi non Plus.” (“I Love You … Me Neither”) that she had recorded with Serge Gainsbourg. It was straining her marriage to Gunter Sachs. Written a day after the song was first broadcast in 1967, the letter speaks of the “serious and grave personal reasons to not release under any circumstances” the recording. The song was withdrawn and later recorded with Gainsbourg’s wife, Jane Birkin, to become one of the iconic hits of the ’60s. Despite this, Bardot and Sachs still divorced in 1969.
Josephine Under Napoleon’s thumb (and quill)
Hardly anything remains of Empress Josephine’s letter to Queen Charlotte of Wurtemberg, crossed out with aggressive ink scribbles by her domineering husband. Napoleon left about 20 of the original words untouched, with Josephine’s hand nearly completely erased. According to manuscript specialist Thierry Bodin, “In this instance, Napoleon wanted to make a political union with the Queen Charlotte’s daughter, so he dictated what she could say. More broadly, it shows how women’s roles became more submissive in the 18th and 19th centuries.” It sold for $33,000.
