Elisabeth Françoise Sophie Lalive de Bellegarde, Comtesse d'Houdetot (18 December 1730 – 28 January 1813) was a French noblewoman. She is remembered primarily for the brief but intense love she inspired in 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...

 in 1757, but she was also for fifty years in a relationship with the poet and academician Jean François de Saint-Lambert

Jean François de Saint-Lambert

Jean François de Saint-Lambert was a French poet and military officer, but he is most remembered for his involvement in two love affairs....

.

Background

Daughter of the wealthy tax-collector Louis Denis Lalive de Bellegarde and his wife Marie Josèphe Prouveur, Sophie married Claude Constant César, Comte d' Houdetot, an army brigadier, at the Saint-Roch church

Église Saint-Roch

The Church of Saint Roch is a late Baroque church in Paris. Located at 284 rue Saint-Honoré, in the 1st arrondissement, it was built between 1653 and 1722.- History :...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 on 28 February 1748. She was presented at court, an honor reserved for ladies of a certain nobility and social distinction. She mingled in literary circles in Paris, aided by her cousin and sister-in-law, Louise d'Épinay

Louise d'Epinay

Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Esclavelles d'Épinay was a French writer, a saloniste and woman of fashion, known on account of her liaisons with Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gives malicious reports of her in his Confessions...

, who was in a relationship with Frédéric Melchior, baron de 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...

, editor of the handwritten literary journal in which Diderot circulated much of his work. Mme d'Épinay often helped with editorial work and was part of the coterie around Diderot, Grimm and the 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...

. The Comtesse d'Houdetot gave birth to three children, one of whom, César Louis Marie François Ange d'Houdetot, became an army brigadier like his father and was governor of Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

 during the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

.

Her acquaintances praised Sophie d'Houdetot for her generosity and intelligence rather than for her beauty. A friend in later years, Claire Élisabeth de Rémusat

Madame de Rémusat

Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Gravier de Vergennes de Rémusat . She married at sixteen, and was attached to the Empress Josephine as dame du palais in 1802....

, said of her: "One can hardly go further than Madame d'Houdetot, I would say not so much in kindness as in benevolence." The Baron de Frénilly, who knew her in the 1790s, described her as "the good, amiable, and eternally young Vicomtesse d'Houdetot ... a laugher at etiquette, cheerful, vivacious, witty, prolific in ingenious thoughts and happy phrases" despite "an ignoble ugliness, a raucous voice, and a treacherous eye which was always looking sideways when it seemed to be looking you in the face."

Rousseau gave this description of her in his Confessions:

Relation to Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was pursuing his writing in solitude in 1757, as a guest of Mme d'Épinay at her estate in the country. He had met Sophie d'Houdetot several times before, without being attracted to her. In January 1757, her coachman took a wrong turn, and her carriage got stuck in the mud; she got out and continued through the mire on foot, finally seeking shelter in Rousseau's modest dwelling. As he described it in Book 9 of his Confessions, "This visit seemed a bit like the beginning of a novel." Both the lady and the philosophe laughed heartily, and she accepted an invitation to stay for a simple meal. Not long afterwards, in the spring of 1757, she returned, on horseback, dressed as a man. In Rousseau's words: "This time it was love. ... it was the first and only time in my life."

What happened next has been, and continues to be, much debated. Jean-Jacques declared his love to Sophie on 24 May 1757, and for a few months they saw a great deal of each other. He began to associate her with the characters in the novel he was then writing, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. One evening during a tender conversation in a grove, she told him, "Never was a man so lovable, and no lover ever loved like you," only to add, "but your friend Saint-Lambert is listening to us, and my heart could never love twice." Rousseau ends the scene by saying, "In the middle of the night she left the grove and the arms of her friend, as intact, as pure in body and heart, as when she entered." Saint-Lambert, who had been away on military service, returned in July, and after his return to duty Sophie brought the affair with Jean-Jacques to an end. Readers ever since have argued about whether they ever consummated their love, an unanswerable question. Scholars have also tried to analyze the influence this liaison might have had on the composition of the novel and the evolution of Rousseau's ideas.

Later life

Saint-Lambert had become Mme d'Houdetot's lover around 1752. Her husband tolerated and perhaps even welcomed the situation; she had fulfilled her conjugal obligations by providing him with a son, and her lover was a presentable man. It was not uncommon in the Old Régime for partners in a marriage of convenience to accept this kind of infidelity in a Ménage à trois

Ménage à trois

Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...

; Émilie du Châtelet

Émilie du Châtelet

-Early life:Du Châtelet was born on 17 December 1706 in Paris, the only daughter of six children. Three brothers lived to adulthood: René-Alexandre , Charles-Auguste , and Elisabeth-Théodore . Her eldest brother, René-Alexandre, died in 1720, and the next brother, Charles-Auguste, died in 1731...

, her husband and 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...

 are another example. Saint-Lambert and Sophie d'Houdetot remained together until the poet's death in 1803. Sophie took an interest in the newly independent American colonies

Thirteen Colonies

The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...

, and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

, received Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

 into her home, and became friends with Saint-John de Crèvecœur.

After the French Revolution, the Houdetots and Saint-Lambert moved to Sannois

Sannois

Sannois is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France.-Public transport:Sannois is served by Sannois station on the Transilien Paris – Saint-Lazare suburban rail line.-Roads:...

, where they created a society of men of letters from the pre-Revolutionary 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...

, like La Harpe

Jean-François de La Harpe

Jean-François de La Harpe was a French playwright, writer and critic.-Life:La Harpe was born in Paris of poor parents. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family originally of Vaud...

, abbé Morellet

André Morellet

André Morellet was a French economist and writer. He was one of the last of the philosophes, and in this character he figures in many memoirs, such as those of Madame de Rémusat....

, and Suard

Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard

Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard was a French journalist, translator and man of letters during the Age of Enlightenment....

 - and some rising stars like Chateaubriand

François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...

, who wrote in his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe - literally "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave" - is an autobiography in 42 volumes by François-René de Chateaubriand, published posthumously in 1848...

(Memoirs from beyond the grave) that Saint-Lambert and Sophie d'Houdetot "both represented the opinions and the freedoms of a by-gone age, carefully stuffed and preserved: it was the eighteenth century expired and married in its manner. It was sufficient to remain steadfast in one's life for illegitimacies to become legitimacies." Rather than an attack on the aged countess and her lover, one should understand these words as the voice of a new Romantic generation

Romanticism

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...

condemning the ways of a discredited past.