Madame Du Deffand and Her World

497 Pages·1994·48.499 MB·English

by  Benedetta Craveri

' BENEDETTA CRAVER!
Madanie du Def/a nd,
' I
anJHer World
Es
Es s ING "a definite taste for defiance," the
Marquise du Deffa nd ( 1696-1780) shocked even the
immoral French society of the 1700s by flouting
decorum and blatantly disregarding women's tradi
tional roles. Madame du Deffand and Her World is the
first full-length portrait of this remarkable woman,
among the most scandalous of her time, who played
a major part in the turbulent decades leading up to the
French Revolution.
Married young to a colorless nobleman ten years
her senior, Madame du Deffand soon joined a noto
rious band of high-born debauches whose excesses
dominated the day's gossip. Unwilling to accept sti
fling conventions off idelity, she approached love and
sex with a frankness centuries ahead of her time. But
Madame du Deffa nd was notable not only as a lib
ertine, for her keen intelligence, wit, and spirit -
though at times submerged by the cynicism and li
cense of the period - made her a true aristocrat of
the Paris salons (her own salon remained the cen
ter of French intelligentsia for forty years) and a
close friend and correspondent of the most promi
nent figures of the Enlightenment, from Voltaire to
Montesquieu.
Richly documented, evocatively written, and f ea
turing numerous excerpts from du Deffand 's cele
brated correspondence, Madame du Dejfand and Her
World- winner of the Comisso and Viareggio
prizes in Italy, and of the Prix du Meilleur Livre
Etranger in F ranee -- is historical biography on a
regal scale.
►
Translated_{ronz the Italian and the French
~y Teresa Waugh
Benedetta Craveri, granddaughter of the noted phi
losopher Benedetto Croce, is a professor of French
literature at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo, and a
frequent contributor to the New York ReviewofBooks
and La Repubblica. Her other works include the Ital
ian edition of Andre Chenier's Poesies, the letters of
Mademoiselle Aisse, and La Vie privie du Marechal
de Richelieu. A native of Rome, she currently lives in
Prague.
Jacket illustration:
a
Le Thi lAnglaise dans le salon des quatre
a
glaces au palaz's du Temple Paris en z:76'4
by Michel-Barthelemy Ollivier.
Courtesy La Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris.
jacket design by Anne Chalmers
R.
DAVID GODINE, PUBLISHER
Horticultural Hall
Massachusetts Avenue
300
Boston, Massachusetts 5
0211

Madame duDeffand
and Her Ifvr!d
Benedetta Crareri
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN AND THE FRENCH
BY TERESA WAUGH
DAVID R. GODINE, PUBLISHER
BOSTON
For My Mother
First published in the U.S. by
DAVID R. GODINE, PUBLISHER, INC.
Horticultural Hall
300 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 0211 5
Copyright© 1982 by Adelphi Edizioni, S.p.A.
English translation copyright© 1994 by Teresa Waugh
Originally published in Italian as Madame du Deffand e ii suo mondo
by Adelphi Edizioni, S.p.A., Milan, in 1982.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
FR o NT Is PI E c E: Madame du Deffand, by Carmontelle.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Craveri, Benedetta, 1942-
I I
Madame du Deffand e ii suo mondo. English
Madame Du Deffand and her world/ Benedetta Craveri ; translated
from the Italian by Teresa Waugh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56792-001-2
1. Du Deffand, Marie de Vichy Champrond, marquise, 1697-1780.
2. Authors, French-18th century-Biography. 3. France-Social life
and customs-I 8th century. 4. France-Court and courtiers
History-18th century. I. Title.
PQ1981.D65c713 1994
848 '. 50 9-dc20
rBl 94-34283 CIP
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contentc1
3
I. YOUTH
II. FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT ROMANCE:
, ,
THE PRESIDENT HENAULT 20
III. SCEAUX 34
's
IV. MADAME DU DE FF AND "SALON" 60
99
V. ILLNESS
VI. THE RETURN TO CHAMPROND 108
VII. PARIS AGAIN 140
VIII. MADAME DU DEFFAND AND
58
JULIE DE LESPINASSE AT SAINT-JOSEPH I
IX. FRIENDSHIP WITH VOLTAIRE 186
X. THE ROMANCE: HORACE WALPOLE 260
337
XI. OLD AGE
Bibliographical Noti'ce 3 9 3
Biographical Notes 3 9 5
Notes 433
Youth
"MADAME LA MARQUISE DU DEFFAND appears to be difficult to
define; the great naturalness which forms the basis of her character
shows her to be so different from one day to the next, that just as she
seems to have been captured in her essence, she reappears a moment
later under another guise. Would not all men be so if they revealed
themselves as they are; but in order to acquire respect, they take it upon
themselves to play, so to speak, certain parts to which they often
sacrifice their pleasures and their opinions and which they ever maintain
at the expense of the truth.
"Madame du Deffand is the enemy of all falseness and affectation;
her words and her face always interpret faithfully the sentiments of her
soul; she is neither beautiful nor ugly, her countenance is simple and
smooth, she has a good mind; but this would have been more developed
and sounder had she found herself among people capable of educating
and informing her. She is rational, has good taste and if she is sometimes
led astray by her high spirits, she is soon brought back by the truth. She
has a lively imagination which needs awakening. She often falls into an
ennui such as to extinguish all light from her mind; she finds this
condition so unbearable and it makes her so unhappy that to deliver
herself from it she blindly embraces whatever may appear; hence the
frivolity of her conversati~n and the imprudence of her behaviour which
are hard to reconcile with the idea which she gives of her judgement
when she is in a gentler frame of mind. She is generous-hearted, soft
and compassionate, her sincerity goes beyond the limits of prudence; it
costs her more to make a mistake than to admit to one; she is most
( 3 }
4 } MADAME DU DEFFAND AND HER WORLD
enlightened as to her own faults and quick to discern other people's; the
severity with which she judges herself leaves her impatient of folly in
others. Hence her reputation for mischievousness, a vice from which
she is far removed, having neither maliciousness nor jealousy nor any
of the base sentiments which give rise to this fault. "1
►
This captivating self-portrait which seems to require both indulgence
and sympathy is written by a woman of about thirty-two at a crucial
point in her existence. In 728 Madame du Deffand has a questionable
I
reputation and a failed marriage behind her; she suffers from a profound
existential malaise and must feel the need to have the past forgotten and
to present a completely new picture of herself. The reasons which drive
her to change direction are primarily of a social nature: the rules of
hienseance-perhaps the only criteria which the marquise's corrosive
scepticism will always allow her to respect-regained the upper hand
in the years following the death of Philippe d 'Orleans. Madame du
Deffand's youth coincided with the Regency and her dissipation during
those years was in keeping with the times. Now, on the threshold of
maturity, her preoccupation with her own reputation reflects, if not a
revival of morality in the society in which she lived, certainly a greater
respect for form.
Marie de Vichy-Champrond, later Marquise du Deffand, was born on
2 5 September r 6962-under the sign of Libra "which preserves us from
misunderstanding the sentiments we inspire and those we ought to
have"3-probably in the family chateau at Champrond,4 in the centre
of a vast estate on the edge of Burgundy in what is now the Saone-et
Loire, twenty-eight kilometres from the small town of Charolles and
thirty from Roanne. She was the third of four children: first came her
brothers, Gaspard III and Nicolas, and after her, her sister Anne, the
future Marquise d'Aulan. "I do not know whether I have English pride,
but I have French nobility and my relatives have no need to blush for
me, "5 she was to write when old, in a combative reply to the Duchesse
de Choiseul who was suspected of wishing to teach her a lesson about
honour. It is one of Madame du Deffand's rare allusions to her family
and indicates that she must have been motivated by a wave of legitimate
pride.
The Vichys were one of the most important families in the region.
Youth
( .5
Their roots went back to the year r ooo AD, and in the centuries which
followed many illustrious members brought distinction to the family.
6
In later times the Vichys continued to distinguish themselves as good
servants of the king; they followed military careers which brought no
glory but did consolidate their honourable reputation; they also estab
lished a broad network of family alliances in the Maconnais. Not least
among these was the alliance forged by the marriage of Marie's father
to Anne Bn1lart, daughter of the first President of the Parlement de
Bourgogne.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the family fortunes were
no longer in very good shape. Monsieur de Vichy ( the self-styled
Gaspard II, comte de Champrond) not only gives the impression that
his marriage was far from happy, but seems to involve his wife in a
share of responsibility for the economic decline: "If my wife had not
had a passion for Paris, we would have sold a further six thousand livres
of grain each year. " But it would be unjust to blame Anne Brulart's
7
frivolity entirely for the decline in the family fortunes. Such a decline
was a common phenomenon for many French aristocrats of the time.
But their financial difficulties were not such as to force the Vichys to
too great a sacrifice: a list of servants employed at the chateau includes
"a chaplain, a steward, a major-domo, two cooks, four footmen, a
coachman and two postilions, two secretaries and an under-governess, "
8
and this list does not include the housemaids. The children were edu
cated according to their social standing, starting with Marie who was
sent to school in Paris, to the elegant convent of the Madeleine du
T raisnel, because, as Gaspard said, "That is where young ladies should
be educated." The school was run on traditional lines and was very
9
well known, although partly for secular reasons.10
So the future Madame du Deffand was destined to the same woman's
fate which was to be denounced with such enlightened indignation fifty
years later in the Co"espondence litteraire: "Exiled ... since birth from the
family home, they are raised in religious houses of which the least that
can be said is that young women receive a correct idea of neither their
condition, nor their duty, nor of honour, nor decency, nor of the world,
nor of any of the situations in which they will afterwards find themselves
and for which they should be prepared in order to avoid the dangers
thereof. The morality of women is based entirely on arbitrary principles,
their honour is not true honour; their decency is false decency; and all