Lady Credit, Fickle Goddess

Lady Credit, sometimes identified by her French moniker, “Madame Compagnie,” assumes the role of John Law’s sidekick in The Great Mirror of Folly. She appears variously as a beautiful, bewitching temptress, similar to her mythological counterpart Fortuna, or as a grotesque female personification of avarice and greed.

On the one hand, following the misogynistic musings of an eighteenth-century British treatise, we might interpret Lady Credit’s portrayal as embodying the “Deceit and vile Stratagems of Women.” Her rapacious thirst for New World commodities like chocolate and sugar drove these international trading ventures. On the other hand, she also evokes the robust participation of real-life women in the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles. Some, like the French regent’s mistress, invested heavily and got out early (possibly following insider advice). But others, such as the famous Parisian salon hostess Madame de Tencin, became active share traders and set up their own businesses on Paris’s rue Quincampoix and elsewhere. Perhaps the most notorious among these women was Lady Katherine Knollys, a descendant of the unlucky Queen Anne Boleyn, who became the Scottish financier’s common-law wife and accomplice to his schemes. She is portrayed in one print crowing about the couple’s triumph and her subsequent escape to Venice, safe haven for all serious pretenders.