Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 10-30-08
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise
de Sevigne (1626-1696)
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"IT IS A LINK IN A CONVERSATION THAT TELLS ME ALL I WAS
MISSING."
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Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was born and raised in Paris, her parents' only surviving child. Her father (the son of Jeanne de Chantal) was of old but impoverished nobility, her mother from a wealthy bourgeois family of financiers. Marie was orphaned when she was seven, and there was a debate as to which side of her family would raise the heiress. Her mother's family won, but Marie's closest male friend would always be her cousin on her father's side, Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (1618-1693). By the time Marie was 10, her maternal grandparents were dead, and her education was supervised by a maternal uncle, the Abbe de Livry, who also acted as her mentor and financial advisor for the next fifty years.
When Marie was 18, she was married to a Breton nobleman, Henri, Marquis de Sevigne, who, like her father, had a good name but little wealth. During their six years of marriage, the couple divided their time between Paris and their Brittany home, and a daughter and a son were born. Luckily, the Abbe de Livry soon arranged a legal partition of the couple's properties; the marquis spent his money on his mistresses and in 1651 was killed in a duel over one of them.
Widowed at 26, Sevigne spent most of her time in Paris, where she became a popular member of the salons and the court, considered as a especially witty conversationalist. She became a close friend of the Comtesse de La Fayette, eight years younger but whom she had known for years. During the 1650s and 1660s, Sevigne had several offers of marriage, which she declined. Her goal was to educate and then to establish her children: to marry her daughter well, which would require a large dowry, and to spend what would be necessary to get her son a good army commission.
The letters that Sevigne wrote during these years, to friends and relatives away from Paris, reveal the wit for which she was praised, and many were saved by their recipients. Her reports on the 1664 trial of the financier (and friend) Nicolas Fouquet, are so detailed that they have become part of the historical record of the period. Her letters to her cousin Bussy --- first at war, later in exile from the court --- are perhaps more revealing of her own feelings; the cousins would frequently quarrel but always return to sharing their thoughts with one another.
By 1669, Sevigne's son, Charles, had his commission; and her daughter, Francoise, was married to the Count de Grignan, from one of the noblest family of Provence. The count was in Paris and expected to get a position at court, which is exactly what Sevigne had planned. She always understood that a son in the army would have to go away, but she assumed that her daughter would remain near her. In this assumption, she was wrong: Louis XIV appointed Grignan as Lieutenant Governor of Provence, an honor, but an expensive one --- and one that would require him and his wife to live far from Paris.
In early 1671, Francoise and her infant daughter left for Provence, and the letters that would make up the largest bulk of Sevigne's correspondence (68% of her extant letters) began. Francoise visited Paris and Sevigne visited Provence, but always they were again separated. So for the next 25 years, Sevigne wrote to her daughter whenever they were apart --- at least weekly, sometimes more frequently --- giving her court news (valuable to the Grignans, far from the center of power), Parisian gossip, advice (usually unwanted), and always expressions of her love.
By 1673 Sevigne's letters, to Bussy and others, were being copied and circulated, as were the less personal parts of the letters to Francoise. So Sevigne knew that they were semi-public documents and crafted them accordingly; they are not merely sentimental effusions. But they reveal an exceptional ability to express their author's feelings.
There is as yet no English translation of the fullest edition of the over 1100 extant letters, but an older collection and some selections give quite a bit of Sevigne's conversation with her world.
On this page you'll find:
Links to hekpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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1. Excerpts in English:
(a) Passages from five letters to Francoise, from 1671 to 1684, translated by Violet Hammersley (Les Rochers was the Sevigne home in Brittany).
(b) On the 1671 suicide of a steward during a visit by Louis XIV to the Prince de Conde; the French original is also given.
(c) In an essay on the letters, several brief passages, translated by Leonard Tancock.
(d) Use your browser's search function to go to the second use of "Madame" for brief passages from 1671 and 1676 letters to Francoise, keeping her up to date on innovations in hair style and dress.
(e) At Amelia Gere Mason's 1891 The Women of the French Salons, go to Chapters 3, 4, and 7, for Mason's translation of Sevigne's comments on Madeleine de Scudery, on the Duchess of Montpensier, and on Madame de la Fayette; at each chapter, go to the uses of "Sevigne." In addition, all of Chapter 6 is on Sevigne; it includes further passages from her letters and an excerpt of La Fayette's 1659 pen-portrait of her.
(f) In this section of a 1910 collection, The World's Greatest Books, go to "Sevigne" for extracts from various letters (some passages from different letters are joined together without any ellipses), including a description of the 1676 execution of the Marquise de Brinvilliers as a poisoner.
(g) In this chapter of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, go to "Sevigne" for passages from two 1675 letters on rebellion in Brittany.
(h) Five brief quotations from various letters, translated by Sarah Josepha Hale.
2. A link to the text of an 1846 edition of the French Lettres de Mme de Sevigne, which gives 318 letters written between 1655 and 1696, and which is preceded by Madame de la Fayette's 1659 pen-portrait of Sevigne and by a description of Sevigne by Bussy that was found among his papers. You can also download the work as a PDF file.
2. French from other sources:
(a) Links to 21 letter excerpts, each followed by the commentary of Roger Duchene.
(b) Excerpts from 12 letters written between 1671 and 1695, speaking about Francoise's chateau at Grignon.
(c) Two letters, from 1676 and 1680, on two women convicted as poisoners: the first on the aftermath of the Marquise de Brinvilliers' death, the second on the execution of Catherine Montvoisin, accused of being a witch.
(d) An original of a page from one of the letters, and a link to the letter's address page.
3. Essays, etc.:
(a) A 2004 biography of Sevigne, by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith.
(b) George Saintsbury's entry on Sevigne in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica; although later research has called a few of his statements into question, Saintsbury gives a detailed biography and a description of some of her letters. And, at Wikipedia, entries on her son, Charles, and on her daughter, Francoise (which includes a line from a 1668 letter from Sevigne to Bussy).
(c) A link to the text of Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie's 1881 biography, Madame de Sevigne; again, some information is outdated, but extensive excerpts from the letters are given in translations by Ritchie and others. You can also download the book as a PDF file.
(d) "Fouquet's Trial in the Letters of Madame de Sevigne" (1982), by Albert Borowitz, describes Sevigne's reaction to (and attempted intervention in) the 1665 trial of her friend and admirer, Nicolas Fouquet; passages from the letters are given in the translation of Henry Thomas Barnwell.
(e) Virginia Woolf's "Madame de Sevigne," from the 1942 posthumous collection, The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays; Woolf sees Sevigne as ""one of the great mistresses of the art of speech."
4. A review by Francine du Plessix Gray of Frances Mossiker's 1983 Madame de Sevigne: A Life and Letters; elsewhere, another review, this by Patricia Blake (for excerpts from Mossiker, see below, under "In print").
5. Portraits of Sevigne:
(a) A 1662 painting by Claude Lefebvre.
(b) From before 1678, a pastel by Robert Nanteuil.
6. For historical background, in Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture (1993), by Jonathan Dewald, see Chapter 6, "The Meanings of Writing," in which Dewald (although most of his examples are of male writers) discusses the reasons for and the effects of the writing --- both published and merely circulated --- done by members of the nobility like Sevigne.
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[Leonard Tancock's has translated about 10 percent of Sevigne's extant letters, the "canon of obvious ones... important for subject-matter, form and style" (p. 14); in each case he gives the full letter. Tancock provides a useful introduction and a detailed "cast of characters." Unfortunately, the book has no index. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Selected letters / Madame de Sevigne; translated with an introduction
by Leonard Tancock (Penguin classics). Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
England; New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 1982. (319 p.)
LC#: PQ1925 .A27 1982; ISBN: 014044405X
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[Frances Mossiker's biography of Sevigne includes many letters (given wholly or in part) that are not given in Tancock's selection. An appendix gives Madame de la Fayette's 1659 pen-portrait of Sevigne. The bibliography covers all early editions of the letters, and the index is useful. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Mossiker, Frances. Madame de Sevigne: a life and letters.
New York: Knopf, 1983. (xviii, 538 p., [8] p. of plates: ill.,
ports.)
LC#: PQ1925 .M64 1983; ISBN: 0394414721
Includes index. Bibliography: p. 525-528
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[This 7-volume translation of 1927, the "Carnavalet" edition, is based on an 1806 French edition, with some additions of previously unknown letters. It contains 1079 letters from and to Sevigne (and a few written by friends after her death). The notes are minimal and there is no index:]
The letters of Madame de Sevigne, with an introduction by
A. Edward Newton. Philadelphia, J.P. Horn & Company, 1927.
(7 v. illus., ports., fold. facsims)
LC#: PQ1925 .A24 1927
Carnavalet edition, newly re-edited, revised and corrected, including
over three hundred letters not previously translated into English.
The period covered is from March 15, 1647 to May 23, 1696. Vol.
1 contains Editor's preface and Biographical sketch by P. A.
Grouvelle (1757-1806)
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"...the abyss in which M. de Sevigne had left me."
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[Sevigne seldom spoke of her husband in her letters; the most specific reference is this to her cousin Bussy, in 1687, on the recent death of her uncle, the Abbe de Livry, who had guided her throughout her life:]
I owed him [the Abbe] all the sweetness and repose of my life....
Without him we should never have laughed together, you owe him all my gaiety, my good humour and vivacity,... the intelligence that made me understand what you had said and guess what you were about to say, in a word, the good Abbe, rescuing me from the abyss in which M. de Sevigne had left me, restored me to what I was, to what you see me, worthy of your esteem and friendship. [Tancock, p.275]
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"...a very pretty composition."
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[Bussy was often away from Paris, first by choice and after 1659 through exile; he was one of Sevigne's most frequent correspondents and the first to praise her letter-writing ability. To Bussy, with the king's army in Flanders in 1655:]
I see plainly that my letter has never reached you, and I am extremely vexed at it; for, besides its being written with becoming affection, it was in my opinion a very pretty composition....
[After giving many reasons why earlier letters had not reached Bussy:]
This is my justification; another perhaps would have expressed the same thing in fewer words; you must bear with my imperfections, in consideration of my friendship; everyone has his particular style; mine, as you see, is by no means laconic. ["Carnavalet," pp.12-13]
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"In things of this nature, mothers have no voice."
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[After the 1665 publication of a work in which Bussy had included an unflattering pen-portrait of Sevigne, his cousin did not write to him for two years. By July 1668, he had made an apology and she had accepted it. Now Sevigne shared with him her concerns about a daughter still unmarried at the age of 22, and a son gone abroad to engage in a possible war:]
The prettiest girl in France sends her compliments to you. This title is due to her; I am. however, weary of doing the honours of it. She is more worthy than ever of your esteem and friendship.
You do not know, I believe, that my son has gone to Candia.... He consulted M. de Turenne, Cardinal de Retz, and M. de La Rochefoucauld upon this: most important personages! and they all approved it so highly, that it was fixed upon, and rumoured abroad, before I knew anything of the matter. In short, he is gone. I have wept bitterly, for it is a source of great grief to me. I shall not have a moment's rest during his voyage. I see all its dangers, and terrify myself to death: but, alas, I am wholly out of the question; for, in things of this nature, mothers have no voice. ["Carnavalet," p.54]
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"I have heard no wit equal to yours."
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[In January 1669, on the planned marriage of Francoise. As the senior male of the Rabutin family, Bussy should have been present for the arrangements, but he was again in exile at his home in Burgundy, where he would remain for most of the rest of his life:]
I am glad you approve of M. de Grignan: he is a good man, and very gentlemanly; has wealth, rank, a high office, and is much esteemed and respected by the world. What more is necessary?
...[B]e assured, my dear cousin, that if it depended on me, you should be first at the entertainment. How admirably well you would act your part! Since you left us, I have heard no wit equal to yours, and I have said to myself a thousand times, "Good heavens, what a difference!" ["Carnavalet," pp.58-59]
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"Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break."
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[In the summer of 1670, Sevigne wrote an angry letter to Bussy (he had criticized the financial arrangements for Francoise's marriage). Three days later, she wrote again, this time to apologize:]
I hasten to write to you, in order to efface from your mind as speedily as possible the vexation which my last letter occasioned you. I had no sooner written it, than I repented having done so.
M. de Corbinelli would have prevented my sending it; but I was not willing that it be lost, naughty as it was; and I thought I should not lose you by it, as you did not lose me when your offense was still greater. We cannot destroy kindred; our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break....
It is true, I was in an ill humour. My spirit was high, and I could not make it bend. I dipped my pen in gall, and I composed a foolish bitter letter, for which I beg a thousand pardons. If you had entered my room an hour afterward, I should have joined you in laughing at my folly. ["Carnavalet," pp.63-64]
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"We understood each other at half a word."
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[In December of the same year:]
Adieu, Comte; it is a great pity fate should have separated us. We were intended to inhabit the same city; it seems to me as if we understood each other at half a word. I do not enjoy myself without you, and if I ever laugh, it is only a forced laugh. ["Carnavalet," p.80]
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"It is of a good sort, and is rooted in our bones."
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[A month later, in January 1671. Sevigne will continue to write to Bussy, but from now on the chief destination of her letters will be to "that hateful Provence":]
Once more, I very much approve your intention of writing a little history of our family. To you, I wish the continuance of your philosophy, and to myself, the continuation of your friendship. The latter cannot be destroyed, let us do what we will: it is of a good sort, and is rooted in our bones.
My daughter sends you a thousand remembrances and adieus. She is going to that hateful Provence. I am inconsolable at the separation. ["Carnavalet," pp.86-87]
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"...the way one should think of God."
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[After her daughter had gone to Provence, Sevigne was indeed inconsolable. Her devotion to the absent Francoise was intense; she and her friends wondered if it was too intense. In February 1671, four days after Francoise had left Paris, Sevigne wrote to her:]
But if you think of me, my dear, rest assured that I think constantly of you. It is what the devout call an "habitual thought" --- the way one should think of God, if one were devout. Nothing can distract me from my thought of you. I am constantly with you in thought. [Mossiker, p.75]
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"I set you up as an idol in my heart."
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[At the end of April she visited the Jansenist Robert Arnauld d'Andilly, 82 years old and a family friend since Sevigne's childhood. She tells Francoise:]
...[T]he nearer he draws to death the holier he becomes. He scolded me very seriously and in an access of zeal and affection for me said I was mad not to think of coming back to a Christian way of life, that I was a fine old pagan, that I set you up as an idol in my heart, that this kind of idolatry was as dangerous as any other, although it might appear less criminal to me, in fact that I should think about myself.
He said all this so vehemently that I was quite silenced. [Tancock, pp.100-101]
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"---my heart so incapable of any other love---"
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[Arnauld d'Andilly's words must have stayed with Sevigne; four years later, she wrote to her daughter:]
As a matter of fact, I found myself so wholly preoccupied with thoughts of you --- my heart so incapable of any other love --- that I was denied permission to take the sacrament at Pentecost. [Mossiker, p.181]
[And when her daughter laughed at the idea:]
You laugh, my bonne, about that poor love of mine, You think that it is to do it too much honor to consider it an obstacle to devotion. It could hardly be seen as a roadblock to salvation, but I think it qualifies as a sin if it wholly occupies the heart, and whatever it may be that possesses us, it is more than enough to make us unfit to receive communion. [Mossiker, p.502]
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"What if I did once overshadow you?"
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[Because we have only one side of the correspondence between Sevigne and her daughter (Francoise's letters are lost), it is impossible to know what their relationship actually was, but Sevigne says a few things that suggest some serious problems. In February 1671:]
But what I do not like to hear you say is that I was a curtain which concealed you, cut you off from view. What if I did once overshadow you? You were simply all the more dazzling when the curtain was drawn aside, and you stood revealed. You must be in full view to appear in your full perfection, as we have said a thousand times.
[And a month later:]
You tell me that you are happy to hear that I am persuaded of your love for me, that you had no such assurance when we were together. Alas, my bonne, with no intention of reproaching you, I must say that all the fault was not on my side. How highly I always prized the least sign of your affection! Did not each one fill me with delight? And how dismayed I was at evidence to the contrary! [Mossiker, p.77]
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"Let us not give our love the appearance of hatred and dissension."
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[The greatest breach between mother and daughter seems to have come in 1676, after they had lived together in Paris for six months. Both were ill; each apparently felt that she was the cause of the other's illness --- and felt required to give the other unwanted advice. Finally, family and friends intervened and urged Francoise to return to Provence. Three weeks after her daughter had left, Sevigne wrote:]
Oh, my God, will we never see one another again to bask in one another's love and affection? Will we not pluck out the thorns, will we not prevent their ever saying to us again---and with a cruel barbarity to which I cannot accustom myself: "Ah, how much better off you are, 500,000 leagues apart! You see how well Mme. de Grignan is doing, now. She would be dead if she had stayed on here. You will be the death of one another." I do not know how you react to such remarks; as for me, I find them crushing....
So let us do better next time, my darling!... Let us restore our good reputation. Let us show them that we are sensible enough to live together when Providence decrees.... In short, my daughter, let us correct our fault, let us see one another again, let us not give our love the appearance of hatred and dissension. [Mossiker, pp.237-38]
[A few days later, however, Sevigne acknowledged that the disagreements were inevitable and the separation perhaps necessary:]
Oh my daughter, at the end, we had come to a point where we had no choice but to do what we did....
There, now, it has been said, once and for all. But let us make our reflections, each on her own side, so that when it pleases God for us to be reunited, we will never again come to such a pass! [Mossiker, p.238]
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"I have no right to so much."
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[But by 1690, with the mother aged 64 and the daughter 44, the relationship would become peaceful, and Sevigne would even wonder --- briefly --- if she was loved too much:]
You call them [Sevigne's letters] "your dear bonnes"; you say they "are necessary to your peace of mind." It is up to you, then, whether to consider that such an attachment is a sin. You will, nevertheless, you say, "continue to love me with all your heart, and far more than you do your neighbor whom you love only as well as you love yourself".... If you think that those words only touch my heart superficially, you are mistaken. I feel them keenly....
Indeed, it is too great, too intense --- that love of yours. It seems to me that, out of a sense of justice, I have no right to so much, because a mother's love does not ordinarily set the standard for a daughter's, but, then, you are not the ordinary daughter! Thus, I will enjoy without scruple the treasure you bestow on me. [Mossiker, pp.430-31]
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"If you do not give that pretty machine a rest...."
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[Francoise's first child, a girl, had been born in Paris in 1670, under her grandmother's careful supervision. A year later, another pregnancy, but this time in Provence, without the medical aid available in the capital. Sevigne understood the Comte de Grignan's need for a male heir, but wrote him a warning letter. (She of course did not know if the new child would be a boy, but she certainly wanted it to be, to free her daughter from future pregnancies):]
But, listen, this is the news I have for you: it is that if --- after this boy --- you do not give her some rest, I will think that you do not love her, and that you do not love me---in which case I will positively not come to Provence.... And what is more, I will take your wife away from you. Do you think I gave her to you to kill her, to destroy her health, her youth, her beauty? Nor is this said in raillery. [Mossiker, pp.126-27]
[The second child was a boy, but Grignan apparently wanted both "an heir and a spare," so the pregnancies continued until 1676 and the birth of a second son. Again, Sevigne appealed to her son-in-law:]
You say that my daughter should do nothing but have children because she acquits herself so well of that function. Oh, my Lord God, does she do anything else? But I warn you that if you do not give that pretty machine a rest --- whether you do it out of love or out of pity --- you will assuredly destroy it, and that would be a shame. [Mossiker, p.208]
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"Those wonderful fellows!"
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[Living in and for her correspondence with her daughter, Sevigne's view of the postal service varied with the quality of its service. Under Louis XIV letters were frequently intercepted and read, especially letters to the homes of those who, like the Comte de Grignan, held sensitive posts. In March 1671, Sevigne addressed both her daughter and the interceptors:]
To come back to those letters of mine which you still have not received: I am in despair. Do you think they are being opened? Do you think they are being withheld? Alas, I conjure those who are responsible to weigh the small pleasure they can find in reading our mail against the great distress they are causing us.
Gentlemen, take the trouble, at least, to reseal those letters so that they will eventually reach their destination! [Mossiker, p.93]
[And that summer, from her home in Brittany:]
And can you imagine what happened to those dear letters which I await and receive with such great joy? The postal authorities went to the pains of forwarding them on to Rennes because my son was there!... You can well imagine what a scene I made at the post office! [Mossiker,, p.119]
[But a few days later, more letters arrived and all was forgiven:]
...I cannot but wonder at the diligence of those gentlemen --- the postillions --- who spend their lives galloping back and forth to carry our mail. There is not a day in the week, not an hour in the day when they are not on the road. Those wonderful fellows!... I am sometimes tempted to write to thank them.... [Mossiker, p.120]
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"You don't know who is to blame."
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[Eighteen year later, in 1689, delivery problems in Brittany continued, but Sevigne was now more resigned:]
At last I have that letter of 1st September, my dear. It had gone to Rennes, a journey my letters do sometimes take. They put in one bag what should go in the other, and you don't know who is to blame. Anyway, here it is, I should have been very sorry to lose it, for it is a link in a conversation that tells me all I was missing. [Tancock, p.308]
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"...this questionable position which brings... questionable
confidences."
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[Sevigne's letters to Francoise don't tell much about her son, Charles (one assumes the brother and sister kept up their own correspondence), but what she does write of him says much about their relationship. In the spring of 1671, the 23-year-old Charles was reporting to her all the intimate details of his sexual experiences --- the latest his having been spurned by a woman, Ninon de Lenclos, who had been one of his father's mistresses:]
A word of two about your brother, He has been sent packing by Ninon.... I was very glad about this separation. I had always breathed a word to him about God, reminded him of his former virtue and begged him not to stifle the Holy Spirit in his heart.
Had it not been that he let me put in a word or two now and again I would not have agreed to receive his confidences in this way for I didn't want them. [Tancock, p.86]
[And two weeks later:]
We get on very well together. I am in his confidence, and I keep this questionable position which brings me such questionable confidences, so as to have the right to tell him what I think about everything. He believes as much as he can and asks me to put him right, which I do like a friend. [Tancock, pp.91-92]
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"I am the most wicked."
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[Thirteen years later, in 1684, her son married and settled down with a vengeance. From the Sevigne home in Brittany, of which he was now master:]
Your brother has become extremely devout. He is a learned man, he is constantly reading saintly works, he is deeply touched by them; he is a convert.... His wife shares his convictions. I am the most wicked, but not enough so to be considered contraband. [Mossiker, p.343]
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"She has some good qualities, at least I think so."
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[And on her first impressions of her daughter-in-law:]
She has some good qualities, at least I think so, although now, in the beginning, I do not find myself disposed to praise her except in the negative: she is not "this"; she is not "that." Later, perhaps, I shall actually come to say, "she is thus and so."
She sends you a thousand pretty greetings. She would like to be loved by us, but she is in no hurry about it --- no hurry, at all. This is my impression of her up to now. [Mossiker, p.339]
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"We both have a pronounced taste for liberty."
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[Five years later, Sevigne has come to at least respect her son's wife. When Francoise asks why she is taking long walks in Brittany alone:]
What? You find it strange that --- having gone to Mass together, having dined together, having worked or talked together until five --- we should not have two or three hours to ourselves? She would be annoyed, as would I. She is a very bright woman; we get along well together, but we both have a pronounced taste for liberty, and for meeting later. [Mossiker, p.400]
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"My training and the good instructors I had make me a good
teacher."
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[Reading had always been a part of Sevigne's life; in her daughter's absence it became even more precious. In Brittany in 1671, she describes herself teaching a priest who had been her daughter's tutor:]
We read a lot here. La Mousse begged to be allowed to read Tasso with me. I know it well because I learned it well; it amuses me. His Latin and his good mind will make him a good student, while my training and the good instructors I had make me a good teacher.
My son reads us frivolous things, comedies which he acts out a la Moliere --- poetry, novels, history. He is very amusing; he has wit and understanding; he carries us along with him and has kept us from the serious reading we had intended to do. [Mossiker, p.117]
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"...good conversation, fables and examples."
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[And in 1690, giving advice on what her 16-year-old granddaughter
should be reading:]
As for Pauline, that devourer of books, I would rather she swallowed bad ones than not like reading at all. Novels, plays,... are all soon exhausted.... After that there is history; if it is necessary to pinch her nose to make her swallow I am sorry for her. As for the fine books of devotion, if she doesn't like them it is her loss, for we know all too well that even without any religious feeling you can find them delightful.
With regard to the moralists,... it is early days for them. Real morality, at her age, is what is learned from good conversation, fables and examples; I think that is enough. If you give her a little of your time for talk it is really what would be the most useful. [Tancock, p.312]
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"I will not expose myself to humiliation or ridicule."
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[Sevigne had spent almost all of her wealth on her daughter's dowry and later debts and on establishing her son. By 1690, when all of France was in financial difficulty, she could not see her way to leaving Brittany for Paris, with that city's higher cost of living. Her views on being in debt were much different from those of her daughter, who had urged her to go to the capital:]
You want me to go to Paris, and have me borrow money from this one and that, including the Abbe Charrier. That, my dear bonne, is what I positively cannot do, and I implore you not to say a word to him about it. I know his affairs.... The poor man has trouble keeping himself going.
As for my Paris friends, ah! my dear bonne, please forget all that and do me the favor of rejecting all their propositions.... Anyone who returns from Brittany after an extended absence and borrows horses and money would strike me as the kind of person who rises from the dinner table and dies of hunger. That is not what one would expect from people who have just returned from their estates. I will not expose myself to humiliation or ridicule....
To sum it up, I positively do not want to borrow money. [Mossiker, pp.437-38]
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"That is the thought of someone who wants me."
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[By 1694, northern France was suffering from famine and disease. At 68, Sevigne prepared to make what would be her last trip to Provence, where she would stay with her daughter for the two years before her death. She wrote to a friend about Francoise's arrangements for the visit:]
That is the thought of someone who wants me, and since I also love the Grignan country, the chateau and the environs, and the repose I find there, I am determined to go to take cover there for some time, at least until the storm which strikes at us from all sides here has passed.
I lost my two best friends, Mme de La Fayette and Mme de Lavardin. I leave others here whom I love and esteem, but since it is not to the same degree, and since they have other friends beside me, I leave them with a bearable regret. [Mossiker, p.462]
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[The section of Roland Racevskis' study that deals with Sevigne shows how constraints of time --- the vagaries of the postal service, unending social obligations, political uncertainty --- affected both Sevigne's thoughts and style. Racevskis gives the original and his translations of parts of many of the letters to Francoise and to others. The notes are useful in summarizing earlier French critical studies. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Racevskis, Roland. Time and ways of knowing under Louis XIV:
Moliere, Sevigne, Lafayette (The Bucknell studies in eighteenth-century
literature and culture). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press;
London: Associated University Presses, c2003. (216 p.: col. ill.)
LC#: PQ245 .R33 2003; ISBN: 0838755194
Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-209) and index
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[Michele Longino Farrell's study presents the letters as Sevigne's way of organizing her world and creating a persona. The focus is on the letters to her daughter, but the chapter, "Sevigne's Apprenticeship" discusses the correspondence with Bussy. Farrell gives the original and her own translation of all cited passages. The notes are detailed:]
Farrell, Michele Longino. Performing motherhood: the Sevigne
correspondence. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,
c1991. (viii, 302 p.)
LC#: PQ1925 .F37 1991; ISBN: 087451536X
Includes bibliographical references and index
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[Jeanne A. Ojala and William T. Ojala have written a useful biography of Sevigne, along with a detailed chronology and genealogical chart. The book's bibliography includes secondary sources through the 1980s:]
Madame de Sevigne: a seventeenth-century life / Jeanne A.
Ojala and William T. Ojala (Berg women's series). New York: Berg.
Distributed exclusively in the US and Canada by St. Martin's
Press, 1990. (xi, 221 p., [8] p. of plates: ill.)
LC#: PQ1925 .O33 1990: ISBN: 0854961690
Includes bibliographical references (p. 208-216) and index
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Updated 10-30-08