Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand
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France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
hostess and patron of the arts.
She was born at the Château de Chamrond, in Ligny-en-Brionnais
Ligny-en-Brionnais
Ligny-en-Brionnais is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.-References:*...
, a village near Charolles
Charolles
Charolles is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.-Geography:Charolles is located at the confluence of the Semence and the Arconce rivers, . W.N.W. of Mâcon.-History:...
(département of Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire
Saône-et-Loire is a French department, named after the Saône and the Loire rivers between which it lies.-History:When it was formed during the French Revolution, as of March 4, 1790 in fulfillment of the law of December 22, 1789, the new department combined parts of the provinces of southern...
) of a noble family. Educated at a convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...
in Paris, she showed great intelligence and a sceptical, cynical turn of mind. The abbess, alarmed at the freedom of her views, arranged for Jean Baptiste Massillon
Jean Baptiste Massillon
Jean Baptiste Massillon was a French Catholic bishop and famous preacher, Bishop of Clermont from 1717 until his death.-Early years:Massillon was born at Hyères in Provence where his father was a royal notary...
to visit and reason with her, but he accomplished nothing. Her parents married her at twenty-one years of age to her kinsman, Jean Baptiste de la Lande, marquis du Deffand, without consulting her inclination. The marriage was an unhappy one, and the couple separated in 1722.
Madame du Deffand is said by Horace Walpole (in a letter to Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
) to have been for a short time the mistress of the regent, the duke of Orléans
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Philippe d'Orléans was a member of the royal family of France and served as Regent of the Kingdom from 1715 to 1723. Born at his father's palace at Saint-Cloud, he was known from birth under the title of Duke of Chartres...
. She appeared in her earlier days to be incapable of any strong attachment, but her intelligence, her cynicism and her esprit made her the centre of attraction of a brilliant circle. In 1721 began a friendship with 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...
, but their regular correspondence dates only from 1736. She spent much time at Sceaux, at the court of the duchesse du Maine
Anne, Duchess of Maine
Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon , was the daughter of Henri Jules de Bourbon, prince de Condé and Anne Henriette of Bavaria. As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, she was a princesse du sang. She was known as Louise-Bénédicte. She has no surviving descendants...
, where she contracted a close friendship with the president Hénault
Charles-Jean-François Hénault
Charles-Jean-François Hénault was a French historian.-Early years:Hénault was born in Paris. His father, a farmer-general of taxes, was a man of literary tastes, and young Hénault obtained a good education at the Jesuit college...
. In Paris she joined the Club de l'Entresol
Club de l'Entresol
The Club de l'Entresol |Mezzanine]] Club) was a think-tank, club and discussion group founded in 1724 by Pierre-Joseph Alary and Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre on the English model for free discussion of political and economic questions...
and was the rival of Mme Geoffrin
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin has been referred to as one of the leading female figures in the French Enlightenment. From 1750-1777, Madame Geoffrin played host to many of the most influential Philosophes and Encyclopédistes of her time...
, but the members of her salon were drawn from aristocratic society more than from literary circles. There were exceptions: Voltaire, Montesquieu
Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu , generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment...
, Fontenelle
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle , also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille...
and Madame de Staal-Delaunay were among the habitués. When Hénault introduced 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...
, Madame du Deffand was captivated by him. She tolerated the encyclopaedists only for his sake.
In 1752 she retired from Paris, intending to remain in the country, but she was persuaded by her friends to return. She had taken up residence in 1747 in apartments in the convent of Saint-Joseph in the rue Saint-Dominique, which had a separate entrance from the street. When she lost her sight in 1754, she engaged Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to help her in entertaining. This lady's wit made some of the guests, including D'Alembert, prefer her society to that of Madame du Deffand, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse
Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse
Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse owned a prominent salon in France.-Early life:She was born in Lyon, an illegitimate child of the comtesse d'Albon, but was brought up as the daughter of Claude Lespinasse of Lyon...
received visitors for an hour before her patron appeared. When this was discovered, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was dismissed (1764), and the salon broke up, for she took with her D'Alembert, Turgot and the literary clique. From this time Madame du Deffand very rarely received any literary men. The principal friendships of her later years were with the duchesse de Choiseul and with Horace Walpole, the latter becoming the strongest and longest-lasting of all her attachments. In this period, she developed qualities of style and eloquence of which her earlier writings had given little promise. In the opinion of Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...
the prose of her letters ranks with that of Voltaire as the best of that classical epoch without excepting any even of the great writers.
Walpole refused at first to acknowledge the closeness of their intimacy from an exaggerated fear of the ridicule attaching to her age, but he paid several visits to Paris expressly for the purpose of enjoying her society, and maintained a close and most interesting correspondence with her for fifteen years. On her death, she left her dog Tonton to the care of Walpole, who was also entrusted with her papers. Of her innumerable witty sayings the best known is her remark on the cardinal de Polignac's account of St Denis's miraculous walk of two miles with his head in his hands--Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte (The distance doesn't matter; it is only the first step that is the most difficult.).
The of Madame du Deffand with D'Alembert, Hénault, Montesquieu, and others was published in Paris (2 vols.) in 1809. Letters of the marquise du Deffand to the Hon. Horace Walpole, afterwards earl of Orford, from the year 1766 to the year 1780 (4vols.), edited, with a biographical sketch, by Miss Mary Berry, were published in London from the originals at Strawberry Hill
Strawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
in 1810.
The standard edition of her letters is in the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence vols. 9-10, edited by Wilmarth S. Lewis. Other papers of Mme du Deffand obtained at the breaking up of Walpole's collection are in private hands. Mme du Deffand returned many of Walpole's letters at his request, and subsequently destroyed those she received from him. Those in his possession appear to have been destroyed after his death by Miss Berry, who printed fragments from them as footnotes to the edition of 1810. The correspondence between Walpole and Madame du Deffand thus remains one-sided, but seven of Walpole's letters to her are printed for the first time in the edition (1903) of his correspondence by Mrs Paget Toynbee, who discovered a quantity of her unedited letters. See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vols. i. and xiv.; and the notice by Lescure in his edition of the correspondence.