Louise d'Epinay
Encyclopedia
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, a saloniste
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
and woman of fashion, known on account of her liaisons with Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm
Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm was a German-born French author.-Early years:Grimm was born at Regensburg, the son of a pastor...
, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
, who gives malicious reports of her in his Confessions
Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions...
. and her acquaintanceship with Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
, Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
, Baron d'Holbach
Baron d'Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon...
and other French men of letters during the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
.
Early life
Louise d'Épinay was born at the fortress of ValenciennesValenciennes
Valenciennes is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded...
, where her father, Tardieu d'Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was commanding officer; after he was killed in battle when she was nine, she was sent to Paris in the care of an aunt who was married to Louis-Denis de La Live de Bellegarde, an immensely wealthy fermier-général
Ferme générale
The Ferme générale was, in ancien régime France, essentially an outsourced customs and excise operation which collected duties on behalf of the king, under six-year contracts...
, a collector-general of taxes; treated to the stultifying education that was a girl's lot, in 1745 she married her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live d'Épinay, who was made a fermier-général. The marriage was at once an unhappy one; and the prodigality, dissipation and infidelities of her husband justified her in obtaining a formal separation of assets in May 1749. She settled in the Château of La Chevrette in the valley of Montmorency
Montmorency, Val-d'Oise
Montmorency is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.Montmorency was the fief of the Montmorency family, one of the oldest and most distinguished families of the French nobility...
, a few miles north of Paris, and there received a number of distinguished visitors.
Liaisons
Conceiving a strong attachment for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a cottage which she named the Hermitage, and in this retreat he found for a time the quiet and natural rural pleasures he praised so highly. Rousseau, in his Confessions, asserted that the inclination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
(1757-59), Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements on this point.
Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 1757-1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
. In Grimm's absence from France (1775-1776), Madame d'Épinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men of letters.
L'Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant
Her pseudo-memoires are written in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance, L'Histoire de Madame de Montbrillant, begun when she was thirty but never published in her lifetime. It intersperses fictionalized set pieces exhibiting the sensibilité of the earliest generation of RomanticsRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, with genuine letters and autobiographical material. Bequeathed to Baron Grimm a mangled version of the manuscript was edited by J.P.A. Parison and J.C. Brunet (Paris, 1818) as Mémoires et correspondance de Madame d’Épinay with all the names changed to identify the supposed originals: Madame d'Épinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and René is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Gamier as Diderot, who is sometimes credited with major interventions in the text. The work has had a checkered career since. The only accurate edition is George Roth, ed. Les Pseudo-mémoires de Madame d'Epinay, 3 vols., 1951.
Other works
Her Conversations d'Émilie, a dialogue recollecting the education of her granddaughter, Émilie de Belsunce, was published in 1774. The , was published at Paris (1818) from a manuscript which she had bequeathed to Grimm.Many of Madame d'Épinay's letters are contained in the (1818), which provided material for Francis Steegmuller's joint biography, and have since appeared in a definitive redaction. Two anonymous works, Lettres à mon fils (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Epinay.
In January 1783, three months before her death, she was awarded the Prix Monyon, recently established by the Académie to honour the author of the "book published in the current year that might be of most benefit to society"; it was her Conversations d'Émilie (1774),