Marguerite Jeanne "Meg" Japy Steinheil, Baroness Abinger (16 April 1869 – 17 July 1954) was a French woman known for her many love affairs with important men. She was present at the death of
President
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Félix Faure
Félix François Faure (; 30 January 1841 – 16 February 1899) was the President of France from 1895 until his death in 1899. A native of Paris, he worked as a tanner in his younger years. Faure became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for ...
, who was rumored to have died after having a seizure while allegedly having sex with her. She was later tried for the murders of her husband and mother, but was acquitted.
Early life
Steinheil was born Marguerite Jeanne Japy in
Beaucourt
Beaucourt () is a commune in the Territoire de Belfort department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in northeastern France. The archivist and palaeographer Élie Berger (1850–1925) was born in Beaucourt.
Population
Literature
''Beaucourt Revisite ...
, in the
Territoire de Belfort
The Territoire de Belfort () is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, eastern France. It had a population of 141,318 in 2019. She married the French painter Adolphe Steinheil, son of painter Louis Charles Auguste Steinheil, in July 1890. She became a prominent figure in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
ian society, and her salon was frequented by men of eminence in French political and social circles, including
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
,
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand Marie, Comte de Lesseps (; 19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was a French diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal, which in 1869 joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distances and times ...
,
René Lalique
René Jules Lalique (6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments.
Life
Lalique' ...
François Coppée
François Edouard Joachim Coppée (26 January 1842 – 23 May 1908) was a French poet and novelist.
Biography
Coppée was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war and won ...
,
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...
, and
Pierre Loti
Pierre Loti (; pseudonym of Louis Marie-Julien Viaud ; 14 January 1850 – 10 June 1923) was a French naval officer and novelist, known for his exotic novels and short stories.This article is derived largely from the ''Encyclopædia Britannica El ...
.
Mistress of President Félix Faure
In 1897, she was introduced, at
Chamonix
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc ( frp, Chamôni), more commonly known as Chamonix, is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. It was the site of the first Winter Olympics in 1924. In 2019, it had ...
, to President
Félix Faure
Félix François Faure (; 30 January 1841 – 16 February 1899) was the President of France from 1895 until his death in 1899. A native of Paris, he worked as a tanner in his younger years. Faure became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for ...
, who was giving an official contract to Adolphe Steinheil. Because of this, Faure came often to their home on the .
Shortly afterward Marguerite became Faure's mistress and was regularly ushered into the in the private quarters of the presidential Élysée Palace.
On 16 February 1899, Félix Faure called Marguerite by telephone, asking her to come to the palace at the end of the afternoon. Briefly after her arrival, servants were rung for and they found the president lying on the couch while Marguerite Steinheil adjusted her disordered clothing. Faure died several hours later.
Unverified legend has it that she was performing
oral sex
Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex p ...
on him when he suffered a fatal stroke, his convulsed hands tangled in her hair. This was not officially announced, but rumours started spreading immediately, although for several years it was believed that his partner at the time of his death was actress Cécile Sorel.
After the death of Félix Faure, Marguerite Steinheil became the mistress of many famous men.
In her , she records how she and her spouse received a mysterious German guest, who bought back from them each of the pearls of a collar given to her by Faure (, as it became known in the press) and who reclaimed a manuscript of the president's memoirs which he had entrusted to Marguerite.
In February 1908, she met the powerful industrialist Maurice Borderel, also from the Ardennes, and soon became his lover.
On 31 May 1908, Marguerite's mother and husband were found dead in their residence in the , off the . Both had died of suffocation by strangulation. Marguerite was found gagged and bound to a bed. She initially said that she had been tied up by four black-robed strangers, three men and a woman. Some newspapers speculated that they had come to her house in search of secret documents which Faure had entrusted to her keeping, possibly relating to the
Dreyfus affair
The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...
.
The police immediately regarded her as a suspect in the killings but had no hard evidence and made a pretence of abandoning the investigation. But Steinheil herself would not let the affair rest. She made an attempt to frame her manservant, Rémy Couillard, by concealing a small pearl which she affirmed had been stolen at the time of the murder in a pocketbook belonging to Couillard; after that fabrication was discovered, she blamed Alexandre Wolff, the son of her old housekeeper, but he was able to establish an alibi. She was arrested in November 1908 and taken to Saint-Lazare Prison. The crime created a sensation in Paris. It was revealed that she had had a great number of admirers, including even King
Sisowath of Cambodia
Sisowath ( km, ស៊ីសុវត្ថិ, ; 7 September 1840 – 9 August 1927) was King of Cambodia from 27 April 1904 to his death in 1927. He was the son of King Ang Duong and half brother of Prince Si Votha and King Norodom. He is th ...
. Opponents of the government tried to make political capital of the affair, the anti-Semitic even charging her with having poisoned President Faure. A sensational trial finally ended in her acquittal on 14 November 1909, although the judge called her stories "tissues of lies".
Later life
After the trial she moved to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, where she was known as Mme de Serignac. She wrote ''My Memoirs'' in 1912. On 26 June 1917, she married Robert Scarlett, 6th Baron Abinger, who died in 1927. She lived at 24
Adelaide Crescent
Adelaide Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in Hove, part of the English city and seaside resort of Brighton and Hove. Conceived as an ambitious attempt to rival the large, high-class Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, the c ...
in
Hove
Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th c ...
from that year and died in a nursing home in the town.
In popular culture
Steinheil is a character in the French TV drama, '' Paris Police 1900'', which premiered in 2021 on
Canal+
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...
in France and BBC Four in the UK. She is played by Evelyne Brochu. The French television film ''The President's Mistress''" (''La maîtresse du président'', 2009) is a dramatized version of these events.
References
Sources
* Alain Decaux : ''Les assassins'', Perrin.
* Armand Lanoux : ''Madame Steinheil ou la Connaissance du président'' (1983).
* Christian Siméon, dramaturge : ''La Priapée des Écrevisses ou l’Affaire Steinheil''.
*Pierre Darmon, historien : ''Marguerite Steinheil, ingénue criminelle?'' (Perrin, 1996).
*
Jacques Neirynck
Jacques Neirynck (born 17 August 1931), Belgian-born and naturalized Swiss, is an emeritus professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), writer and politician.
He is a member of the Christian Democratic People's Party of Sw ...