Catherine Hubscher was a washerwoman in Alsace when she married a sergeant who would become a Marshal of France. Her bluntness and her contempt for manners, despite the rise, earned her the name Madame Sans-Gêne. She died in 1835, fifteen years after her husband. It was only in 1893 that Victorien Sardou made her a stage heroine, played by Sarah Bernhardt, and it is the play that has been remembered.
The story
Catherine Hubscher was a laundress in Paris when she married a sergeant of the Gardes françaises named François-Joseph Lefebvre. Napoleon made him a Marshal of France and Duke of Danzig, and he too lies in Père-Lachaise; she, born in an Alsatian village, found herself a duchess.
She died in 1835, fifteen years after the marshal. Fifty-eight years later, in 1893, Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau made her the heroine of a play created at the Théâtre du Vaudeville by Réjane, Sarah Bernhardt's great rival. It is that play, and not the duchess, that fixed “Madame Sans-Gêne” in French memory.
Her grave is in Division 28, beside Marshal Lefebvre. In her lifetime no one ever called her Madame Sans-Gêne: she died as the Duchess of Danzig, and it was the theatre that, sixty years on, gave her the name by which France knows her.
On site, do not miss
In Division 28, look first for the grave of Marshal Lefebvre, her husband: it is by his that hers is found.
Visitors' questions
Where is Madame Sans-Gêne's grave?
In Division 28 of Père-Lachaise, that of Marshal Lefebvre, her husband, whom she joined fifteen years after him. It is by the Marshal's grave that hers is found.
Marshal LefebvreWhy that nickname?
Because of her bluntness and her want of ceremony, for all her rise in the world: a washerwoman turned marshal's wife, she changed neither her tone nor her manners. The nickname ended by rubbing out her name.
Joachim MuratWho was her husband?
Marshal François-Joseph Lefebvre (1755-1820), buried at Père-Lachaise too, in Division 28. She was an Alsatian washerwoman when she married him; she ended her days a marshal's wife.
Élisabeth DemidoffHow did she become famous?
Through the theatre: in 1893, Victorien Sardou made her the heroine of a play, acted by Sarah Bernhardt. It was that play, sixty years after her death, that fixed “Madame Sans-Gêne” in French memory.
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