This article reports on discoveries recently published by two Russian scholars, Véra Milchina and A.A. Nikolayev, about Félicité Hullin who travelled with Fernando Sor to Russia and then had an important role in the development of ballet in Russia. Then I report on the official documentation of her wedding in 1846 to one Hippolyte Hertel, and on the will which she made in Paris in 1873. We see from Véra Milchina’s article that someone who knew her well in Russia wrote that she was a lady of “amabilité, gentillesse, bonté, fierté d’âme, désintéressement”; then from Nikolayev’s article we see not only that she was instrumental in the teaching of ballet in Russia but that she held the post of ballet-master of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and choreographed performances there from 1831 to 1839; and from her will we see that she was a careful, responsible and loving person who took care of other people in the specifications of that will.
Félicité Hullin, ballerina, was born in Paris on 30 November 1803, the daughter of the dance teacher Jean-Baptiste Hullin. In 1823 when she was nineteen years old she travelled with Sor from Paris to Russia where she starred in Sor’s ballet Cendrillon. Sor referred to her in a letter as “ma chère petite femme”. She travelled back with Sor from Russia to London and Paris in 1827 and then returned to Russia without Sor who remained in London and Paris. The new discoveries which I describe here tell us not just bare facts but much more about what kind of person she was.
Véra Milchina’s article
The first article is by Véra Milchina, “Gustave-Euphranor Marin-Darbel, précepteur du prince Gagarine, expert dans la lutte contre le choléra et théoricien de l’éducation nationale en Russie” in Slavica Occitania, Toulouse, 44-45, 2017.
From her article we see that Gustave-Euphranor Marin-Darbel (1802-1878), archivist and palaeographer and one of the first graduates of the newly founded École des chartes in Paris, was invited to Moscow in 1824 at the age of 22 to be the tutor of the children of Prince Sergei Ivanovich Gagarin (1777-1862). While there, in 1830, he came to know Félicité Hullin and frequently visited her. He rather imprudently mentioned this in a letter to his mother back in Paris, and his mother became disturbed at this news of her son’s relationship with “Mlle Hortense Félicité” and wrote him a moralizing letter dated 29 April 1830 in which she compared her son’s beloved with La Contemporaine, that is to say with the writer Ida Saint Elme who had been a spy. She suggested that “Mlle Hortense Félicité” might very well be a spy either for the Russians or for the French government or for both, and that the virtues that her son had listed in his letter to her, namely “amabilité, gentillesse, bonté, fierté d’âme, désintéressement, etc” could very easily be the pretences of a spy, as spies of that type (she wrote) are frequently skilled in pretending such things.
So we have new light on Félicité’s character: that according to Marin-Darbel who knew her well, she had those virtues of “amabilité, gentillesse, bonté, fierté d’âme, désintéressement, etc” (‘likeability, kindness, goodness, proud nature, selflessness’). Good counterparts, I think, to what we know of the character of Sor.
The Russian authorities intercepted his mother’s letter and launched a secret police investigation into both Marin-Darbel and Félicité. From a report to St. Petersburg by police officer Perfiliev dated 9 July 1830 we see that Marin-Darbel’s mother’s fears that Félicité might be a spy were without foundation. The report stated that Marin-Darbel led a very sober life; that he met very few foreigners and never went to restaurants or other public places; was never drunk; was loved by everyone in the Prince’s household; that he had spent the summer with all the Prince’s family at Iassenovo [today Yasenevo] from where he went to Moscow every Saturday to spend the night at the house of the dancer Hullinsor from where he returned the next day. Officer Perfiliev also wrote that the porter of the Gagarin family had the task of taking letters from Marin-Darbel to Félicité Hullinsor, and that Félicité Hullinsor through her talents enjoyed the highest esteem in Moscow society and gave private lessons in several great houses.
A.A. Nikolayev’s article
The second article, “New facts regarding the life of Félicité Hullin-Sor” (in Russian), is by A.A. Nikolayev and gives many details about her time in Russia. It was published in 2020 by the Russian Institute of Art History, St. Petersburg, and in 2024 was available (in Russian) online at https://vaganov.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/1356?locale=en_US . It does not appear to be available there now in June 2025.
Nikolayev writes that after a theatrical reform in 1822, the director of the Imperial Theatres in Moscow, F.F. Kokoshkin, radically reformed the ballet company and that it was through that that Félicité Hullin and Sor arrived in Moscow in 1823. He writes that Félicité Hullin was a talented teacher and choreographer who left a vivid mark on the history of ballet in Russia, that Sor and Hullin arrived in Moscow in October 1823 and that Félicité Hullin appeared 21 times on the stage of the Bolshoi and Malyi theaters by the end of that year 1823; and that she held the post of ballet-master of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and choreographed performances there from 1831 to 1839. It must surely have been very unusual at that time for a woman to be the ballet-master for a company. Her students G.I. Voronina, T.S. Karpakova, E.A. Sankovskaya, and D.S. Lopukhina left a significant mark in the history and development of ballet in Russia. In 1837 for the quality of her work and for her education of new talents who brought honour and adornment to the theatre, she was given the highest award with a diamond locket.
Nikolayev’s research also shows that in 1833 she became a Russian citizen. He writes that the change of citizenship was common among artists, because a Russian national with ten years of service in the theatre would then receive a pension of two thirds of the highest salary, whereas a foreigner had to serve at the theatre for fifteen years and would then be able to claim only one third of his or her salary in the form of a pension. The documents regarding her pension state that she was a Russian citizen and “ballet master of the Moscow theatres” and that she travelled frequently to Paris. Her pension began on 19 December 1838 at two-thirds of her highest wage. She died in Paris in 1874 as the widow of one Hippolyte Hertel.
Sor and Félicité
What these two articles tell us about Félicité’s character can throw light on the moment in 1823 when Sor set out from Paris for Russia in the company of his daughter Caroline aged eight at the time, Félicité aged nineteen at the time, and the dancer Joseph Richard. It is nice to know from Milchina’s article about the virtues that Marin-Darbel described in her, and it is nice to know from Nikolayev that later in Russia everyone liked and respected her, and, importantly, that she was not just a ballet teacher and choreographer there but that she laid such a mark on ballet in Russia that perhaps without her the famous Russian ballet, the Bolshoi ballet, would not have been the same. Now we can see that when Sor, Caroline and Félicité set off together from Paris to Russia, Félicité was a responsible and gifted person.
Were Sor and Félicité married? Well, the official record of her later wedding to Hippolyte Hertel seems to show almost without any doubt, as we shall see, that they were not. However, there are a number of documentary references to her as “Hullin-Sor”, including for example in the title of Nikolayev’s article. Officer Perfiliev in 1830 whose report we saw above secretly obtained his information about her from persons unknown and he refers to her as Hullinsor, which indicates that that must have been how his informants referred to her. Sor himself referred to her three times in letters as “ma femme”, and in French “ma femme” quite simply means “my wife”. The three times are as follows. In a letter to the dancer Albert of about December 1824 Sor calls her “ma chère petite femme”; he also calls her “ma Félicité”; and he writes “de notre part” and “embrassez pour nous”, which surely very much look like the words of a married man. In another letter to the publisher Meissonnier dated 1 April 1827 he refers to her as “ma pauvre petite femme” (“pauvre” because she was tired by overwork); and in that same letter he sends best wishes also from “ma femme”, which might imply (but not conclusively) that Meissonnier in Paris already knew Félicité as Sor’s wife. My instinct tells me that there must be more to this than meets the eye, and I am not going to venture here even a hypothesis about what that might be. In a way, that would be to intrude on their privacy. Rather, I am very much interested in the good qualities of this lady with whom Sor was certainly very much involved, that are revealed in these present documents.
FOOTNOTE
If Sor and Félicité were in fact married – which as we shall see seems practically impossible because of the wedding documents later– then where might they have got married? If they married in London it is likely that it would have been at the Spanish Chapel because of restrictions against Catholicism which were still in force at that date in England; but I checked the marriage register of that Chapel when I was there and I did not find the record of such a marriage. If they married in Paris, the record of that has not yet been found. They could also have married in Moscow where there were Catholic churches, so one could investigate in the records of the Catholic churches in Moscow, of which there were several. They would have had to marry well before about December 1824 when Sor refers to Félicité as “ma chère petite femme” in his letter to Albert. There is an excellent article by Vladislav S. Ržeuckij, « La colonie française et l’église catholique de Moscou à la fin du XVIIIe siècle », in Cahiers du monde russe, 41/4, octobre-décembre 2000, pp. 615-628, available online at https://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/61?file=1 in which Ržeuckij several times cites details of items such as the number of baptisms in those Catholic churches per year, and gives chapter and verse for his sources, so starting from his citations one might be able to find records of marriages in those churches during the years 1823 and 1824.
END OF FOOTNOTE
But whether they were married or not, a question with which this new documentary evidence might help us is why exactly they separated in 1827, Sor remaining in London and Paris and Félicité returning to Russia. We know that they left Russia at some time after Sor sent a letter from St Petersburg dated 1 April 1827, probably quite soon after because the letter describes their return to Paris as imminent. It seems likely that they may have travelled to London in late 1827 for the preparations for Sor’s new ballet Hassan et le Calife ou le Dormeur Eveillé, which was first performed in London on 12 January 1828.
Meanwhile an entry in the Larousse Dictionnaire de la Danse of 1999 (available online in Gallica), states under the entry for Flore et Zéphire, which was a late 18th-century ballet by Didelot, that a new production of Flore et Zéphire was mounted by F. Hullin-Sor in 1827 at the Adelphi Theatre in London, and that must have been before her departure to Russia probably in August 1827, because the Moskovskie vedomosti newspaper announced that there will be a new Divertissement by Hullin-Sor, music by Sor, on 7 October 1827 at the Bolshoi, and they write that it will be the first time after Hullin’s return from Paris. Unfortunately the Dictionnaire de la Danse does not give a reference for their entry.
We know from another source that Félicité’s father Jean-Baptiste Hullin was ballet-master at the Adelphi Theatre in London from late 1826 to late 1827, so for her to produce a ballet at that theatre at that time seems to be perfectly possible.
So Sor and Caroline remained in London and then Paris, and Félicité went back to Russia. But we do not know why that separation took place. Both of them were without any doubt professionals, he as a musician and composer, she as a dancer. Both of them were decent people, as we know from the Inquisition document in the case of Sor and now from Marin-Darbel’s description in the case of Félicité and also from Félicité’s will as we will see. And surely the welfare of Caroline will have been taken into account. Whatever the reasons for the separation were, my own guess is that professional factors were involved. Let us look at some details.
In his letter of 1 April 1827 from St Petersburg, Sor states that he and Félicité have leave from Russia for five months, which means, if taken literally, that they were both expected back in Russia by 1 September 1827. He even adds “avec tous les appointements”, that is to say “on full salary”, and in that case it is surely certain that they, or at least Félicité, were expected to return to their posts. Travelling from Paris or London to Moscow meant travelling for some weeks, which means that to arrive in Moscow by 1 September they would have had to leave in plenty of time in August at latest. So the decision about their futures would have had to be taken at latest in early August 1827.
Félicité had a firm post awaiting her in Russia, but she surely had rather few prospects in ballet in London or in Paris, having by now been away from those cities for several years. So it is likely that she would wish to take up her post in Russia. On the other hand we do not know whether Sor had a post available to him in Russia that had the same kind of firmness as Félicité’s. As a conjecture, the two of them may well have decided that Paris would be a better place than Moscow and St Petersburg for the now twelve-year-old Caroline to grow up in. So for those reasons, they may have taken the decision that for now at least Félicité would return to Russia and Fernando and Caroline would go to live in Paris, perhaps even as only a temporary solution but one which turned out to be permanent. That might have been the decision of these two responsible people as we now know that they both were.
The above is only conjecture, scarcely even a hypothesis. But it is in accordance with what we now know of their two characters. I do not see signs of acrimony. If that is what did in fact happen, then perhaps as the song says,
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s’aiment
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit …
Sor died in 1839. Félicité is said to have travelled to Paris in 1837, that is to say two years before Sor died, so the possibility exists that they may have met again then, or indeed in one or more of the other visits to Paris that she is known to have made.
Félicité’s wedding in 1846
Félicité married one Hippolyte Hertel in 1846 at the village of Saint-Pierre-en-Port in the French département which is now called Seine-Maritime, near the northern coast of France, and the official account of the wedding can be found in the register of births, marriages and deaths of Saint-Pierre-en-Port which is scanned and available on the website of the Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime at https://www.archivesdepartementales76.net, by searching the shelf-mark of that register which is 4 E 7359. The pages of the register are unnumbered and the wedding is recorded beginning at opening 19 (out of 124) in the scan which is on the website of those Archives.
I am most grateful to Catherine Marlat who discovered these references to Félicité and told me about them.
The register tells us that the wedding took place on 21 April 1846 at 6 in the afternoon, between Hippolyte Arsène Hertel who was born in the local town Angerville-la-Martel on “le treize brumaire l’an neuf de la republique” (4 November 1800) and who was now resident “en cette Commune” (that is to say, in Saint-Pierre-en-Port) and of the profession of rentier, that is to say, on a pension or of private means; and of demoiselle Félicité Virginie Vichard dite Hulin, born in Paris at rue de Chabannais no 31 division Pelletier on “le huit frimaire an douze de la Republique” (30 November 1803) and now resident in Batignolles-Monceau (which is now part of Paris) and of the profession of rentière, that is to say, on a pension or of private means, “fille majeure de Vichard dit Hulin Jean-Baptiste, décédé à Moscou (Russie) le vingt trois decembre mil huit cent trente neuf, et de dame Caron Françoise Marie Thérèse, profession de rentière, demeurant à Batignolles Monceau, rue des Dames no 8” (‘daughter of Jean-Baptiste Vichard dit Hulin who died at Moscow on 23 December 1839 and of Mme Françoise Marie Thérèse Caron, rentière, also living at Batignolles-Monceau at rue des Dames no. 8’). The document tells us that the forthcoming wedding had been announced at the doors of the Maisons Communes of Saint-Pierre-en-Port and of Batignolles-Monceau without any objection being made. It also tells us that the couple produced necessary documentation among which was the bride’s mother’s written consent to the marriage, which had been certified by a notary at Batignolles-Monceau back in March. The wedding then took place in the presence of named witnesses all of whom appear to have been local people of Saint-Pierre-en-Port.
Who was Hippolyte Arsène Hertel? The marriage document describes him as a “rentier”, someone who lives on an income. A search on the internet reveals a Hippolyte Arsène Hertel who is described as a “marin”, a sailor. The entry for Félicité Hullin in French Wikipedia (accessed 10 February 2023) writes that in 1839 she married “le professeur Hertel” but does not give any documentation for that, and that Wikipedia entry is in any case incorrect since its date 1839 for the marriage is wrong since the marriage took place in 1846 as we have seen. Since Félicité at her death owned a house at Épreville (not far from Saint-Pierre-en-Port), we may guess that Hippolyte was at least reasonably well-off. We don’t know more.
We see that there is absolutely no mention in this document of any earlier marriage of either the bride or the groom, even though the bride was 42 years old at the time of the marriage and the groom was 45. The document calls her “demoiselle” and in one place “Mademoiselle”. If Félicité had indeed been married to Sor, who died in 1839, then in 1846 she could openly and legally have stated that to the authorities at Saint-Pierre-en-Port, and evidently she did not do so, so that it seems very unlikely indeed that she and Sor had in fact been married.
A curious item is that the document says that the marriage was carried out with witnesses, two of them amis de l’époux and two of them amis de l’épouse, but it does not mention Félicité’s mother at that point as it surely would have done if she had been there. The mother gave her approval for the wedding by means of an official document made in Batignolles-Monceau rather than by coming in person to Saint-Pierre-en-Port. So why did she not go to the wedding? The mother must have been an old lady by then and perhaps it was for that reason that she did not go. Another question is that surely normally a wedding takes place in the place where the bride resides not the groom, so why was the wedding not celebrated at Batignolles-Monceau? Saint-Pierre-en-Port is not so very far from Batignolles-Monceau, so one wonders why the groom did not go to Batignolles-Monceau and celebrate the wedding there.
Batignolles-Monceau existed as an entity from 1830 to 1860. According to Wikipedia that area was at that time being built up, very agreeably. Some pictures of it can be seen on the internet. Nowadays it is very much part of Paris, now in the 17th arrondissement. The railway line into Saint-Lazare which was built in 1837 ran through Batignolles-Monceau.
The document mentions that Félicité’s mother lived at rue des Dames no. 8 in Batignolles-Monceau. It also says that Félicité lived in Batignolles-Monceau. It doesn’t give a street address for her but surely it would have been the same as that of her mother, namely rue des Dames no. 8.
The rue des Dames still exists. Of course the street numbering of the rue des Dames would have to be checked to see if it was ever renumbered, but the present-day rue des Dames no. 8 is only about 300 meters from the Cimetière Montmartre where in 1846 Fernando Sor lay buried already since 1839 … Félicité living in the rue des Dames in 1846 and perhaps earlier, at whatever number, would surely have known that Fernando was buried there.
So Félicité retired in Russia in December 1838 with a good pension, her father died in Moscow in December 1839 as we saw above, and it looks as though she and her mother then went to live at Batignolles-Monceau which was then just outside Paris, a very good restful place to live at that time. Then it seems that in some way Félicité met Hippolyte Hertel whose roots were all on the north coast of France in what is now the département of Seine-Maritime, a man born at Angerville-la-Martel and resident in the village of Saint-Pierre-en-Port half way between Le Havre and Dieppe, and she married him in 1846. Then he died, we don’t know when. Also her mother must have died, we don’t know when. We next meet Félicité on 10 June 1873 which is the day on which she signed her will, living in Paris at rue Brunel no. 50, which is also in that same 17th arrondissement as Batignolles-Monceau, this time a bit north-west of the Arc de Triomphe. We don’t know on what date Félicité (and Hippolyte?) moved into rue Brunel no. 50. The present rue Brunel no. 50 enjoys nowadays a particularly good position being on a corner just a few meters from the delightful garden promenade which today lies in the centre of the Boulevard Pereire, but in 1846 that garden was not yet there: rather, beginning in 1852, the Petite Ceinture railway was built where the garden promenade is now so that rue Brunel no. 50, if the street-numbering was the same as it is today, was next to that railway. Did Hippolyte and Félicité go to live at rue des Dames no. 8 and then perhaps move to rue Brunel no. 50, or did he die and then she moved to rue Brunel no. 50? We don’t know. What we do have is her will. So let’s look at that will.
Félicité’s will
The will is in the Archives Nationales in Paris, and I am again most grateful to Catherine Marlat who told me about it and who went to the Archives and took photographs for me.
Félicité signed the will on 10 June 1873, that is to say just one year before she died on 18 July 1874. That alone shows forethought. The will is detailed, with fifteen separate bequests to quite a lot of different people, which also tells us that she was a careful person. I like the fact that the largest bequest, 8,000 francs, was to Marie Barbe Follé, her maid, and she even writes in her will: “Marie Barbe Follé ma domestique 8000 c’est une personne que j’estime infiniment” (‘[To] Marie Barbe Follé my maid, 8000 [francs]; she is a person for whom I have an infinitely high regard”).
She writes that the items which she is bequeathing are “le fruit de mon travail et de mes économies”, and the words “le fruit de mon travail” must refer to the payments and pension received from Russia for her work in ballet in Russia, rather than being items and money which she might have inherited from Hippolyte Hertel.
She is religious, writing “je donne mon âme à Dieu mon créateur et mon sauveur et le prie et le supplie de bien vouloir me pardonner mes péchés et me recevoir dans le sein de sa divine providence », words which by their length, and bearing in mind that the will was holograph, that is to say personally written by her in her own hand, appear to go beyond a mere formula. She mentions that she has a godson, Felix Hippolyte Fuesil.
She bequeaths her house at Épreville (that is some 15 km from Saint-Pierre-en-Port) and a terrain at Miquelet, but carefully specifies that those bequests shall not happen until the heir’s parents, who live in the Épreville house, shall die. So we see that Félicité was careful and thought of the welfare of others.
The will shows us that she was devoted to her late husband Hippolyte Hertel. She writes that she wishes her gravestone to bear the words “Félicité Hullin veuve Hertel – Dieu les a réunis – priez pour eux” (‘Félicité Hullin widow Hertel – God has reunited them – pray for them’. The only sign of Russia that I have been able to see in the will and in the voluminous inventory taken is a reference to a bust of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. There is no sign that I have been able to see of anything to do with Sor, nor is there any sign of the diamond locket that the Nikolayev article says that the Russian authorities gave her.
The total of the specific bequests is 30,000 francs. How much does that represent in today’s money? Well, it is notoriously difficult to assign a value to money of the past, but she left 1,200 francs for her funeral expenses. She wrote that they should be simple and not cost too much, but nevertheless she intended burial with a gravestone and an inscription. She specified the inscription that was to be placed on her gravestone. Nowadays I think that could cost about 4-5,000 euros. So if 1,200 francs in 1873 might be somewhere near equivalent to some 4-5000 euros today 2023, then for the 30,000 francs of 1873 we get an amount equivalent perhaps to about 120,000 euros of today. An amusing documented guess at what 30,000 francs might represent in the early 1870s comes from daumier.org at https://www.daumier.org/biography/cost-of-living-in-daumiers-time/ who cite:
1870 15,000.00 francs annual allowance for a senator
1871 30,000.00 francs annual allowance for the same senator a year later
Given the propensity of politicians to pay themselves large pay rises, perhaps this quotation might incline us to guess that Félicité’s 30,000 francs might represent a figure well north of that 120,000 euros in today’s money. (Of course we don’t know exactly what daumier.org mean by the word “allowance”).
Félicité died on 18 July 1874, as the document “Notoriété” states which is attached to the will. There is also a long inventory of Félicité’s property drawn up after her death, which says that her will was holograph, that is to say in her own hand, and that Marie Barbe Follé was a live-in maid. The inventory includes “un portrait au crayon du frère de Mad[am]e Hertel » (‘a pencil drawing of Mme Hertel’s brother’), that is perhaps Joseph Richard.
The inventory also says that her pension from Russia had been 2,666 roubles, and we imagine that that was the annual figure.
She owned a house at Épreville which is in what we might call Hertel territory where Hippolyte Hertel came from, which suggests that she inherited it from him. She doesn’t seem to have owned the flat at 50 rue Brunel or that would have been mentioned in the will. The will mentions the residue, that is to say the amount left over after the bequests, very casually with just the single word “argent”, which suggests that it was not a huge residue. What we can say is that she was certainly at least reasonably well off, with what she inherited from her late husband Hippolyte Hertel and with her considerable pension from Russia (assuming that it was paid which it probably was).
One of the documents that went with the will was the notoriété, that is a special legal document in France whereby certain people certify certain things. In Félicité’s case the two people certified that Félicité was a “veuve en premières noces”, that is, that she was a widow of her (first and) only husband who was Hippolyte Hertel (rather than being a “veuve en seconde noces” which she would have been if she had previously been married to Sor). Does that help us to know whether she and Sor were married? Not actually very much because in 1874 nearly fifty years had passed since Félicité and Sor separated in 1827, she to return to Russia and he to go with his daughter Caroline to live in Paris. What could these two gentlemen nearly fifty years later have known about that?
I am grateful to Alexander V. Trukhin of St Petersburg for telling me about the articles by Véra Milchina and A.A. Nikolayev, and to Catherine Marlat who kindly told me about the register in the archives of Seine-Maritime and who also very kindly went to the Archives Nationales in Paris and made photographs of Félicité’s will and associated documents for me.
Brian Jeffery
