Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read, especially since Arianrhod also points out that Émilie during the 1740s was voted as an honorary member into the Academia di Bologna, where Bassi taught, and they were both in the same field of science. As for Francoise de Graffigny, here I think the same issue as with Madame Denis applies, i.e. biographers of Émilie approached the supporting cast with certain clichés in their minds and didn't look beyond that. So a younger sexual rival has to be stupid and weak-willed, and an older woman who goes from admiring to critical has to be a conventional society lady.
Having googled some more, I see that Madame Graffigny is very much worth exploring. (And another illustration why you don't want to be a woman in the 18th century.) She got married to her abusive husband at age 17; they were both from Lorraine, which is a crossover plot point later. Several dead children and much marital brutality later, due to all his gambling debts she got him to sign a document obliging him to leave Lorraine and give her authority to handle the family's finances. A few years later, she achieved a legal separation. But all the debts he'd made still were also hers, and so she was really glad to find a place at the court of...
*drumroll*
Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, Duchess Dowager of Lorraine, as in, daughter of Philippe and Liselotte, mother of Franz Stephan. (BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.) This was a happy time for her, and she also met a dashing officer named Leopold Desmarets, thirteen years her junior, whom she fell in (requited) love with. When FS gave up his dukedom so he could marry MT in 1737, this meant Madame Graffigny lost her patroness (since FS' mother, too, left Lorraine and didn't bring all her ladies-in-waiting with her) and had nowhere to go until finding a new job with the Duchesse de Richelieu in 1738 (wife of the BFF of Voltaire and Émilie). Which is how she ended up in Cirey in 1738, and the thirty-odd letters she wrote during her time there is why she ended up in the Voltaire and Émilie biographies.
Now, according to her English wiki entry, what happened was: The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.
Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.
I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble. Anyway, you can see where the later Émilie-critical descriptions came from, and it had nothing to do with Graffigny being a disapproving society matron. As for her own artistic efforts, she started out trying to write as early as 1733, but didn't go into print until 1745. By then, the Duchess had died, but Madame Graffigny had managed to establish a well-frequented salon and become the centre of a circle in Paris, and by subletting the house she'd rented to support herself. Her big bestseller "Peruvian Letters" was published in 1747, and by 1748 there were already 14 editions - it really was one of the biggest bestselling books of the time. She died peacefully in 1758, of a stroke while playing cards with three old friends.
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Re: Émilie Tripled
Date: 2020-10-17 10:13 am (UTC)Having googled some more, I see that Madame Graffigny is very much worth exploring. (And another illustration why you don't want to be a woman in the 18th century.) She got married to her abusive husband at age 17; they were both from Lorraine, which is a crossover plot point later. Several dead children and much marital brutality later, due to all his gambling debts she got him to sign a document obliging him to leave Lorraine and give her authority to handle the family's finances. A few years later, she achieved a legal separation. But all the debts he'd made still were also hers, and so she was really glad to find a place at the court of...
*drumroll*
Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, Duchess Dowager of Lorraine, as in, daughter of Philippe and Liselotte, mother of Franz Stephan. (BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.) This was a happy time for her, and she also met a dashing officer named Leopold Desmarets, thirteen years her junior, whom she fell in (requited) love with. When FS gave up his dukedom so he could marry MT in 1737, this meant Madame Graffigny lost her patroness (since FS' mother, too, left Lorraine and didn't bring all her ladies-in-waiting with her) and had nowhere to go until finding a new job with the Duchesse de Richelieu in 1738 (wife of the BFF of Voltaire and Émilie). Which is how she ended up in Cirey in 1738, and the thirty-odd letters she wrote during her time there is why she ended up in the Voltaire and Émilie biographies.
Now, according to her English wiki entry, what happened was:
The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.
Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.
I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble. Anyway, you can see where the later Émilie-critical descriptions came from, and it had nothing to do with Graffigny being a disapproving society matron. As for her own artistic efforts, she started out trying to write as early as 1733, but didn't go into print until 1745. By then, the Duchess had died, but Madame Graffigny had managed to establish a well-frequented salon and become the centre of a circle in Paris, and by subletting the house she'd rented to support herself. Her big bestseller "Peruvian Letters" was published in 1747, and by 1748 there were already 14 editions - it really was one of the biggest bestselling books of the time. She died peacefully in 1758, of a stroke while playing cards with three old friends.