Madame du Deffand
Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (25 September 1696[1] – 23 September 1780) was a French hostess and patron of the arts.
Life
Madame du Deffand was born at the Château de Chamrond,
Madame du Deffand is said by
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
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 also was entrusted with her papers. Of her innumerable witty sayings the best known is her remark on the
Correspondence
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 in the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, vols. 9–10, edited by Wilmarth S. Lewis.
Notes
- ISBN 978-1-135-61670-0.
- ^ The Château de Chamrond is now in ruins; its dovecote remains standing.[citation needed]
- ^ Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, edited by Wilmarth S. Lewis (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1937-1983.
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Deffand, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 928. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Le Marquis du Deffand et sa famille, Bulletin de la Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de l'Yonne, 94:77-116
External links
- Works by Madame du Deffand at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- "Archival material relating to Madame du Deffand". UK National Archives.