Turned away by the nuns, St. Zélie started a lace business

ALENÇON, Normandy, early 1850s AD — Saint Zélie Martin came to Alençon with her parents in 1844 AD, when she was thirteen. Back then she was still called Zélie Guérin. For years she wanted to share the work of the Daughters of Charity at the town hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu. At about nineteen, she went there with her mother to ask to be let in. The sister in charge decided at once that she was not meant to be a nun. The sisters would not take her, so she had to earn a living.

In Alençon, many young women earned their living at lace. The town’s needle lace, Point d’Alençon (Alençon stitch), was its main industry. Every bit of it was made by hand with a fine needle, over a pattern, in small pieces. A different expert worked each part, and then the pieces were joined with seams no one could see. A fine piece could take months.

St. Zélie already knew how to make the lace and put the pieces together. Her mother had decided her daughters would learn needlework, and she pushed them hard at it. St. Zélie learned the basics at the Picpus Sisters’ school. Then she went to a trade school to learn how to join the finished pieces. She also worked in several lace workshops.

What she heard on a feast day

On December 8, 1851 AD, St. Zélie finished praying a novena to Our Lady. That day was the feast of the Immaculate Conception. By her own account, she then heard an inner voice say: “Fais faire du point d’Alençon” (Have some Alençon stitch).

The words didn’t tell her to make the lace. They told her to have it made by other people.

St. Zélie told her mother she wanted to open a lace workshop. Her mother agreed, but on one condition. St. Zélie’s sister Marie-Louise, who was two years older, had to be in charge of the business.

The workshop was her parents’ house in the rue Saint-Blaise. The lace was made by women working in their own homes. On Thursdays St. Zélie was at the house to hand out work, take in what was finished and pay for it. She usually mended the fine mesh that makes the lace’s background. Most often she was the one who joined all the pieces together.

Starting out was hard on her. St. Zélie later wrote in a letter: “When I began my Alençon lace business, I ended up sick with all the worries”.

A shy sister in a big city

Selling was harder. Hardly anyone in a small town could afford lace that expensive. The buyers had to be found in Paris. Marie-Louise and their father made the first contacts with lace shops there. Then Marie-Louise went to Paris to offer the lace to the trading houses.

Years later, Marie-Louise wrote to their younger brother that she had set out “with such extraordinary timidity that I could not go to our neighbors without blushing”. She told him she had arrived “in a big city, without knowing anything, not even a single address of luxury merchants”. So she wanted to go to all the lace merchants.

Soon afterwards, a large Paris house agreed to keep buying from the Guérin sisters. The quality of St. Zélie’s work made the workshop well known. People came to see her as an artist at making lace.

Then Marie-Louise fell ill with tuberculosis. She left the business and promised God she would become a nun if she got better.

The sister who had found the buyers was about to leave. So in 1856 AD, St. Zélie stopped running a lace business of her own. Instead she went to work for a Paris lace firm, the Pigache house, and ran the making of its lace in Alençon. Marie-Louise entered the Visitation convent at Le Mans on April 7, 1858 AD.