Sophie de Condorcet
Encyclopedia
Sophie de Condorcet best known as Madame de Condorcet, was a prominent salon
hostess from 1789 to the Reign of Terror
, and again from 1799 until her death in 1822. She was the wife, then widow, of the mathematician and philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet, who died during the Reign of Terror
. Despite his death, and the exile of her brother Marshal Emmanuel, Marquis de Grouchy
between 1815 and 1821, she maintained her own identity and was well-connected and influential before, during, and after the French Revolution.
As a hostess, Madame de Condorcet was popular for her kind heart, beauty, and indifference to a person's class or social origins. Unlike her fellow-Girondist hostess Madame Roland
, Madame de Condorcet's salons always included other women, notably Olympe de Gouges
. De Condorcet was also a writer and a translator in her own right, highly educated for her day, completely fluent in English and Italian http://www-personal.umich.edu/~vickik/piercy2.html. She produced influential translations of Thomas Paine
and Adam Smith
.
, opposite the Louvre, and later at the Rue de Lille in Paris, that was attended by, among many others, many foreign visitors including Thomas Jefferson
, http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Users/McLean/ddhc3.pdf British aristocrats Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope
, David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield
and the 7th Viscount Stormont, the economist Adam Smith
, the Marquis de Beccaria, Turgot, the writer Pierre Beaumarchais
, the pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges
, the writer and hostess Germaine de Staël and many French philosophers. This salon played an important role in the rise of the Girondin movement that stressed the rights of women.
Sophie de Condorcet allowed the Cercle Social — an association with the goal of equal political and legal rights for women — to meet at her house. Its members included women's rights advocate Olympe de Gouges
who had published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
. It has been argued that Sophie de Condorcet's own interest in women's rights were responsible for her husband's arguments for greater rights for women in the ten-page essay "Sur l’admission des femmes au droit de cité" (3 July 1790). Unfortunately, this essay had little influence in its day, being overshadowed by the more passionate essays by British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
(who visited Paris from 1791 to 1793) and de Gouges; the latter for certain attended Madame de Condorcet's salons.
's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft mentions their sad history. The Marquis de Condorcet denounced the new Jacobin constitution which had no safeguards of the kind envisaged by him and the Girondins, and then fled into hiding with a female friend for eight months. His wife visited him secretly. Along with his friends, she encouraged de Condorcet to continue to write while in hiding. During this period, 1793–1794, he composed his most famous work— Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l'Esprit Humain (Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
). He also wrote Avis d'un Proscrit à sa Fille for his young daughter.
After the Marquis was proscribed 3 October 1793, he asked his wife to divorce him in 1793 to protect their family assets for their daughter. (A web-blog on Sophie de Condorcet claims that Cabanis urged this measure on the husband and wife, and that the divorce was applied for on 14 January 1794). The Marquis lost his nerve, and fled his friend's roof believing that his presence had been detected. He approached other friends who refused to shelter him and then ordered a twelve-egg omelette for breakfast in a village.http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/COM_COR/CONDORCET_MARIE_JEAN_ANTOINE_NI.html The suspicious peasants there handed him over to the authorities, and he was found dead after the first night in prison. Although he might have died of hardship or other natural causes, most historians today believe that he poisoned himself, possibly with the help of his sister-in-law's lover Cabinis. According to Tomalin, Sophie de Condorcet was not informed about his death until several months later.
Madame de Condorcet had his last works published posthumously, starting with the Sketch or Equisse in 1795.
After the end of the Jacobin Terror a few months later in second year of Thermidor
(July 1794), de Condorcet published a translation of Adam Smith
's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in 1798, adding eight letters, Lettres sur la Sympathie, commenting upon this work. This became the standard French translation for the next two centuries. De Condorcet's eight letters on sympathy were however ignored by historians of economic thought, and were just recently translated into English (Brown, 2008). In 1799, de Condorcet also arranged to publish her husband's Éloges des Academiciens, and was finally able to revive her salon at the former home of another salon hostess Madame Helvétius
at Auteuil
(Guillois 1897, pp. 94, 177).
De Condorcet worked with her brother-in-law, the philosopher and doctor Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (who had married her sister Charlotte some time between 1794 and 1800), and with Joseph Garat to publish her husband's complete works in 21 volumes between 1801 and 1804.http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 She adhered to the end to her husband's political views, and under the Consulate and Empire, her salon became a meeting place for those opposed to the autocratic regime. Sophie de Condorcet survived the French Revolution, the Directory, and the era of Napoleon, to witness the revival of reaction under the restored Bourbons.
(21 October 1772 - 15 July 1844) that lasted until her death. Fauriel's Wikipedia entry states that he gave up all his energies to love, friendship and learning, and that the salon of Madame de Condorcet was a rallying point for dissenting republicans.
Sophie de Condorcet died in Paris on the 8th of September 1822.http://www.nndb.com/people/882/000093603/ Even at the end, she was determined to preserve Condorcet's memory through his works, and was preparing to bring out a new edition.http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 According to Tomalin, Madame de Condorcet had the will and intelligence, but not the stamina, to lead the French women's rights movement.
, in County Offaly).http://www.searcs-web.com/oconn2.htmlhttp://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101020509/ He was later called General Condorcet-O'Connor, and was almost as old as Eliza's late father. He achieved some standing with Napoleon. By strange coincidence Eliza's maternal uncle Grouchy had commanded the army forces in the abortive invasion of Ireland
of 1796-1797.
Eliza and Arthur Condorcet-O'Connor's efforts took over where Eliza's mother had left off,http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 publishing Eliza's father's works in twelve volumes in 1847-1849. According to one website, Eliza and Arthur left descendants who have served as officers in the French army until recently.http://gaelart.net/irishbios.html
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...
hostess from 1789 to the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
, and again from 1799 until her death in 1822. She was the wife, then widow, of the mathematician and philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet, who died during the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
. Despite his death, and the exile of her brother Marshal Emmanuel, Marquis de Grouchy
Grouchy
Grouchy is a French surname.* Jean de Grouchy , knight at the time of the Hundred Years War* Johannes de Grocheio , a French musical theorist...
between 1815 and 1821, she maintained her own identity and was well-connected and influential before, during, and after the French Revolution.
As a hostess, Madame de Condorcet was popular for her kind heart, beauty, and indifference to a person's class or social origins. Unlike her fellow-Girondist hostess Madame Roland
Madame Roland
Marie-Jeanne Roland, better known simply as Madame Roland and born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon , was, together with her husband Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, a supporter of the French Revolution and influential member of the Girondist faction...
, Madame de Condorcet's salons always included other women, notably Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....
. De Condorcet was also a writer and a translator in her own right, highly educated for her day, completely fluent in English and Italian http://www-personal.umich.edu/~vickik/piercy2.html. She produced influential translations of Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
and Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
.
Background
Born Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, daughter of Francoise Jacques Marquis de Grouchy (a former page of Louis XV) by his intellectual wife Marie Gilberte Henriette Freteau, Sophie de Grouchy, in 1786, married the famous mathematician and philosopher Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (17 September 1743-28–29 March 1794). Then 21 or 22, she was an acknowledged beauty; he was 42 and Inspector-General of the Mint and a prominent French Academician. Although there was a twenty-year age difference, the two shared many intellectual interests, and had a strong and happy marriage.The salon
After her marriage, Madame de Condorcet started a famous salon at Hôtel des Monnaies in ParisHôtel des Monnaies, Paris
The hôtel des Monnaies is an 18th century building on the quai Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It has housed the Monnaie de Paris ever since its construction...
, opposite the Louvre, and later at the Rue de Lille in Paris, that was attended by, among many others, many foreign visitors including 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...
, http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Users/McLean/ddhc3.pdf British aristocrats Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope
Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope
Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope aka Charles Mahon, 3rd Earl Stanhope FRS was a British statesman and scientist. He was the father of the great traveller and Arabist Lady Hester Stanhope and brother-in-law of William Pitt the Younger. He is sometimes confused with an exact contemporary of his,...
, David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield
David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield
David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield KT, PC , known from 1748 to 1793 as The Viscount Stormont, was a British politician. He succeeded to both the Mansfield and Stormont lines of the Murray family, inheriting two titles and two fortunes.-Life:Mansfield was the son of David Murray, 6th Viscount of...
and the 7th Viscount Stormont, the economist Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
, the Marquis de Beccaria, Turgot, the writer Pierre Beaumarchais
Pierre Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary ....
, the pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....
, the writer and hostess Germaine de Staël and many French philosophers. This salon played an important role in the rise of the Girondin movement that stressed the rights of women.
Sophie de Condorcet allowed the Cercle Social — an association with the goal of equal political and legal rights for women — to meet at her house. Its members included women's rights advocate Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....
who had published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen , also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written in 1791 by French activist and playwright Olympe de Gouges...
. It has been argued that Sophie de Condorcet's own interest in women's rights were responsible for her husband's arguments for greater rights for women in the ten-page essay "Sur l’admission des femmes au droit de cité" (3 July 1790). Unfortunately, this essay had little influence in its day, being overshadowed by the more passionate essays by British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
(who visited Paris from 1791 to 1793) and de Gouges; the latter for certain attended Madame de Condorcet's salons.
Daughter
The Condorcets had a daughter Louise Alexandrine de Condorcet, called Liza or Eliza, who was born in 1790. Eliza survived the French Revolution, along with her mother.Proscription and Death of the Marquis de Condorcet
Claire TomalinClaire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin is an English biographer and journalist. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.She was literary editor of the New Statesman and of the Sunday Times, and has written several noted biographies...
's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft mentions their sad history. The Marquis de Condorcet denounced the new Jacobin constitution which had no safeguards of the kind envisaged by him and the Girondins, and then fled into hiding with a female friend for eight months. His wife visited him secretly. Along with his friends, she encouraged de Condorcet to continue to write while in hiding. During this period, 1793–1794, he composed his most famous work— Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l'Esprit Humain (Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
The Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind is a work by the French philosopher and mathematician Marquis de Condorcet, written in 1794 while in prison during the French Revolution and published posthumously.-External links:...
). He also wrote Avis d'un Proscrit à sa Fille for his young daughter.
After the Marquis was proscribed 3 October 1793, he asked his wife to divorce him in 1793 to protect their family assets for their daughter. (A web-blog on Sophie de Condorcet claims that Cabanis urged this measure on the husband and wife, and that the divorce was applied for on 14 January 1794). The Marquis lost his nerve, and fled his friend's roof believing that his presence had been detected. He approached other friends who refused to shelter him and then ordered a twelve-egg omelette for breakfast in a village.http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/COM_COR/CONDORCET_MARIE_JEAN_ANTOINE_NI.html The suspicious peasants there handed him over to the authorities, and he was found dead after the first night in prison. Although he might have died of hardship or other natural causes, most historians today believe that he poisoned himself, possibly with the help of his sister-in-law's lover Cabinis. According to Tomalin, Sophie de Condorcet was not informed about his death until several months later.
Madame de Condorcet had his last works published posthumously, starting with the Sketch or Equisse in 1795.
Translations and the Revival of the Salon
Sophie de Condorcet was rendered penniless by her husband's proscription and his death which came before their divorce. Her financial circumstances compelled to support not only herself and her then-four year old daughter Eliza, but also her younger sister, Charlotte de Grouchy. Madame de Condorcet was obliged to open a shop to survive, and put aside her writing and translation work.After the end of the Jacobin Terror a few months later in second year of Thermidor
Thermidor
Thermidor was the eleventh month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the French word thermal which comes from the Greek word "thermos" which means heat....
(July 1794), de Condorcet published a translation of Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in 1798, adding eight letters, Lettres sur la Sympathie, commenting upon this work. This became the standard French translation for the next two centuries. De Condorcet's eight letters on sympathy were however ignored by historians of economic thought, and were just recently translated into English (Brown, 2008). In 1799, de Condorcet also arranged to publish her husband's Éloges des Academiciens, and was finally able to revive her salon at the former home of another salon hostess Madame Helvétius
Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius
Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius , also Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt, nicknamed "Minette", maintained a renowned salon in France in the eighteenth century....
at Auteuil
Auteuil
Auteuil may refer to:* Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy, an area of Paris* Auteuil, Quebec, a borough of Laval, Quebec, CanadaAuteuil is the name of several communes in France:* Auteuil, Oise* Auteuil, YvelinesAuteuil is also a surname:...
(Guillois 1897, pp. 94, 177).
De Condorcet worked with her brother-in-law, the philosopher and doctor Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (who had married her sister Charlotte some time between 1794 and 1800), and with Joseph Garat to publish her husband's complete works in 21 volumes between 1801 and 1804.http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 She adhered to the end to her husband's political views, and under the Consulate and Empire, her salon became a meeting place for those opposed to the autocratic regime. Sophie de Condorcet survived the French Revolution, the Directory, and the era of Napoleon, to witness the revival of reaction under the restored Bourbons.
Life during the Napoleonic regime
De Condorcet remained active as a salon hostess, and in promoting her late husband's political views, and while she never remarried, she did establish a long-term relationship with the French historian Claude Charles FaurielClaude Charles Fauriel
Claude Charles Fauriel was a French historian, philologist and critic.-Biography:He was born at Saint-Étienne, Loire, the son of a poor joiner, but received a good education in the Oratorian colleges of Tournon and Lyon...
(21 October 1772 - 15 July 1844) that lasted until her death. Fauriel's Wikipedia entry states that he gave up all his energies to love, friendship and learning, and that the salon of Madame de Condorcet was a rallying point for dissenting republicans.
Sophie de Condorcet died in Paris on the 8th of September 1822.http://www.nndb.com/people/882/000093603/ Even at the end, she was determined to preserve Condorcet's memory through his works, and was preparing to bring out a new edition.http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 According to Tomalin, Madame de Condorcet had the will and intelligence, but not the stamina, to lead the French women's rights movement.
Eliza Condorcet-O'Connor
The de Condorcet daughter Eliza (or Liza, or Elisa), survived to marry in 1807 an exiled Irish revolutionary, Arthur O'Connor (1763/5-1852, born in MitchelstownMitchelstown
Mitchelstown is a town in County Cork, Ireland with a population of approximately 3300. Mitchelstown is situated in the valley to the south of the Galtee Mountains close to the Mitchelstown Caves and is 28 km from Cahir, 50 km from Cork and 59 km from Limerick...
, in County Offaly).http://www.searcs-web.com/oconn2.htmlhttp://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101020509/ He was later called General Condorcet-O'Connor, and was almost as old as Eliza's late father. He achieved some standing with Napoleon. By strange coincidence Eliza's maternal uncle Grouchy had commanded the army forces in the abortive invasion of Ireland
Expédition d'Irlande
The Expédition d'Irlande was an unsuccessful attempt by the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars to assist the outlawed Society of United Irishmen, a popular rebel Irish republican group, in their planned rebellion against British rule...
of 1796-1797.
Eliza and Arthur Condorcet-O'Connor's efforts took over where Eliza's mother had left off,http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17200149 publishing Eliza's father's works in twelve volumes in 1847-1849. According to one website, Eliza and Arthur left descendants who have served as officers in the French army until recently.http://gaelart.net/irishbios.html
In French
- Madeleine Arnold-Tétard, Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de Condorcet : la dame de cœur, Paris, Christian, 2003
- M. d’Arvor, Les femmes illustres de la France : Madame de Condorcet (1764-1822), Paris, P. Boulinier, Librairie Moderne, 1897
- Thierry Boissel, Sophie de Condorcet, femme des Lumières, 1764-1822, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1988
- Antoine Guillois, La marquise de Condorcet: sa famille, son salon, ses amis, 1764-1822, Paris, P. Ollendorff, 1897
- Charles Léger, Captives de l'amour, d'après des documents inédits; lettres intimes de Sophie de Condorcet, d'Aimée de Coigny et de quelques autres cœurs sensibles, Paris, C. Gaillandre, 1933
- Jules MicheletJules MicheletJules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
, Les Femmes de la Révolution available from Project Gutenberg - Henri Valentino, Madame de Condorcet; ses amis et ses amours, 1764-1822, Paris, Perrin, 1950
In English
- Barbara Brookes, The Feminism of Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy, 189 Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 297-361 (1980).
- Karin Brown, "Sophie Grouchy de Condorcet on Moral Sympathy and Social Progress" (Dissertation, City University of New York, 1997).
- Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848. The Johns Hopkins University Press (March 8, 2004)
- Karin Brown, "Sophie de Grouchy, Letters on Sympathy (1798)." Letters translated by James McClellan. American Philosophical Society 98, pt. 4.
Sophie de Condorcet
- Sophie's biography
- Bibliography on Sophie.
- http://sophiecondorcet.canalblog.com/archives/2006/11/30/3307136.html a full description of Sophie's childhood and encouragement to study, in French. (The same history can also be viewed here and here)
- A portrait of Sophie de Condorcet
- Sophie de Condorcet's comment to Napoleon on the role of women in politics http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article753320.ece?token=null&offset=12
Condorcet
- Account of Condorcet's life, months in hiding, etc from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- Account of Condorcet's last months and death in French.
Cultural references
- Sophie Gay, 1776–1852, Ellenor in two volumes, published 1854: volume 1 and volume 2 from Project Gutenberg. A fictional work that mentions Madame de Condorcet and her family and circle several times.
- Marge PiercyMarge PiercyMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...
. City of Darkness, City of Light. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996. ISBN 0-449-91268-X LCCN 96-24748. Describes Sophie's salon, her husband's political views, and their strong relationship.