She was
born at the Chateau of Chamrond near Charolles (département
of Saône-et-Loire) of a noble family. Educated at a convent
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 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)
to have been for a short time the mistress of the regent, the
duke of Orleans. 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, but their regular correspondence
dates only from 1736.
She
spent much time at Sceaux, at the court of the duchesse du Maine,
where she contracted a close friendship with the president Hénault.
In Paris she was the rival of Madame Geoffrin, but the members
of her salon were drawn from aristocratic society more than from
literary circles. There were exceptions: Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Fontenelle and Madame de Staal-Delaunay were among the habitués.
When Hénault introduced D'Alembert, 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 would
receive visitors for an hour before the appearance of her patron.
When
this was discovered, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was dismissed
(1764), and the salon was broken 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 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
Correspondance inédite 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 in 1810.
The
standard edition of her letters is the Correspondance complète
de la marquise du Deffand ... by M. de Lescure (1865); the Correspondence
inédite with M. and Mme de Choiseul and others was edited
in 1859 and again in 1866 by the marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. Other
papers of Madame du Deffand obtained at the breaking up of Walpole's
collection are in private hands. Madame du Deffand returned many
of Walpole's letters at his request, and subsequently destroyed
those which 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.
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