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SEVIGNE, MARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL, MARQUISE DE (1626-1696), French letter-writer, was born at Paris on the 5th of February 1626. The family of Rabutin (if not so illustrious as Bussy, Madame de Sevigne's notorious cousin, affected to consider it) was one of great age and distinction in Burgundy. It was traceable in documents to the 12th century, and the castle which gave it name still existed, though in ruins, in Madame de Sevigne's time. The family had been gens d'epee for the most part, though Francois de Rabutin, the author of valuable memoirs on the sixth decade of the 16th century, belonged to it. Marie's father, Celse Benigne de Rabutin, Baron de Chantal, was the son of the celebrated "Sainte" Chantal, friend and disciple of St Francis of Sales; her mother was Marie de Coulange[s]. Celse de Rabutin, a great duellist, was killed during the English descent on the Isle of Rhe in July 1627. His wife did not survive him many years, and Marie was left an orphan at the age of seven years and a few months. She then passed into the care of her grandparents on the mother's side; but they were both aged, and the survivor of them, Philippe de Coulanges (or Coulange), died in 1636, Marie being then ten years old. Fier uncle Christophe de Coulanges, abbe de Livry, was chosen as her guardian. He was somewhat young for the guardianship of a girl, being only twenty-nine, but readers of his niece's letters know how well " Le Bien Bon " for such is his name in Madame de Sevigne's little languageacquitted himself of the trust. He lived till within ten years of his ward's death, and long after his nominal functions were ended he was in all matters of business the good angel
(which was the palmy day of portraits in words) objected to her divers deviations from strictly regular beauty, such as eyes of different colours and sizes, a "square-ended" nose and a somewhat heavy jaw. Her beautiful hair and complexion, however, were admitted even by these censors, as well as the extraordinary spirit and liveliness of her expression. Her long minority, under so careful a guardian as Coulanges, had also raised her fortune to the amount of xoo,000 crownsa large sum for the time, and one which with her birth and beauty might have allowed her to expect a brilliant marriage. There had been some talk of her cousin Bussy, but fortunately for her this came to nothing. She married Henri, marquis de Sevigne, a Breton
gentleman of good family, allied to the oldest houses of that province, but of no great estate. The marriage took place on August 4, 1644, and the pair went almost immediately to Sevigne's manor-house of Les Rochers, near Vitt-6, a place which Madame de Sevigne was in future years to immortalize. It was an unfortified chateau of no great size, but picturesque, with the peaked turrets common in French architecture, and surrounded by a park and grounds. The abundance of trees gave it the repute of being damp
After her husband's death Madame de Sevigne passed the greater part of the year 1651 in retirement at Les Rochers, but she returned to Paris in November of that year. For nearly ten years little of importance occurred in her life, which was passed at Paris in a house she occupied in the Place Royale (not as yet in the famous Hotel Carnavalet), at Les Rochers, at Livry or at her own estate of Bourbilly in the Maconnais. She had, however, in 1658, a quarrel with her cousin Bussy. Notwithstanding Bussy's various delinquencies the cousins had always been friends; and the most amusing and characteristic part of Madame de Sevigne's correspondence, before the date of her daughter's marriage, is addressed to him. She had a strong belief in family ties; she recognized in Bussy a kindred spirit, and she excused his faults as Rabutinddes and Rabutinages. But a misunderstanding about money brought about a quarrel, which in its turn had a long sequel, and results not unimportant in literature. Bussy and his cousin had jointly come in for a considerable legacy, and he asked her for a loan. If this was not positively refused, there was a difficulty made about it, and Bussy was offended. A year later, at the escapade of Roissy(see Bussy), according to his own account, he improvised (according to probability he had long before written it) the famous portrait of Madame de Sevigne which appears in his notorious Histoire amoureuse, and is a triumph of malice. Circulated at first in manuscript and afterwards in print, this caused Madame de Sevigne the deepest pain and indignation, and the quarrel between the cousins was not fully made up for years, though after Bussy's disgrace and imprisonment in 1666 the correspondence was renewed. What might have been, and to some extent was, a much more serious matter occurred in 1661 at the downfall of the Superintendent Fouquet. It was announced on indubitable authority that communications from her had been found in the coffer where Fouquet kept his love letters. She protested that the notes in question were of friendship merely, and Bussy (one of the not very numerous good actions of his life) obtained from Le Tellier, who as minister had examined the letters, a corroboration of the protest. But these letters were never published, and there have always been those who held that Madame de Sevigne regarded Fouquet with at least a very warm kind of friendship. It is certain that her letters to Pomponne describing his trial are among her masterpieces of unaffected, vivid and sympathetic narration. During these earlier years Madame de Sevigne had a great affection for the establishment of Port Royal, which was not without its effect on her literary work. That work, however, dates in its bulk and really important part almost entirely from the last thirty years of her life. Her letters before the marriage of her daughter, though by themselves they would suffice to give her a very high rank among letter-writers, would not do more than fill one moderate-sized volume. Those after that marriage fill nearly ten large volumes in the latest and best edition. We do not hear very much of Mademoiselle de Sevigne's early youth. For a short time, at a. rather uncertain date, she was placed at school with the nuns of Sainte-Marie at Nantes. But for the most part her mother brought her up herself, assisted by the Abbe de la Mousse, a faithful friend, and for a time one of her most constant companions. La Mousse was a great Cartesian, and he made Mademoiselle de Sevigne also a devotee of the bold soldier of Touraine. But she was bent on more mundane triumphs than philosophy had to offer. Her beauty is all the more incontestable that she was by no means generally liked. Bussy, a critical and not too benevolent judge, called her " la plus jolie fine de France, " and it seems to be agreed that she resembled her mother, with the advantage of more regular features. She was introduced at court early, and as she danced well she figured frequently in the ballets which were the chief amusement of the court of Louis XIV. in its early days. If, however, she was more regularly beautiful than her mother she had little or nothing of her attraction, and like many other beauties who have entered society with similar expectations she did not immediately find a husband. Various projected alliances fell through for one reason or another, and it was not till the end of 1668 that her destiny was settled. On January 29 in the next year she married Francois d'Adhemar, comte de Grignan, a Provencal, of one of the noblest families of France, and a man of amiable and honourable character, but neither young, nor handsome, nor in reality rich. He had been twice married and his great estates were heavily encumbered. Neither did the large dowry (300,000 livres) which Madame de Sevigne, somewhat unfairly to her son, bestowed upon her daughter, suffice to clear encumbrances, which were constantly increased in the sequel by the extravagance of Madame de Grignan as well as of her husband.Charles de Sevigne was by this time twenty years old. He never appears to have resented his mother's preference of his sister; but, though thoroughly amiable, he was not (at any rate in his youth) a model character. Nothing is known of his education, but just before his sister's marriage he volunteered for a rather harebrained expedition to Crete against the Turks, and served with credit. Then his mother bought him the commission of guidon (a kind of sub-cornet) in the Gendarmes Dauphin, in which regiment he served for some years. But though he always fought well he was not an enthusiastic soldier, and was constantly and not often fortunately in love. He followed his father into the nets of Ninon de 1'Enclos, and was Racine's rival with Mademoiselle Champmesle. The way in which his mother was made confidante of these discreditable and not very successful loves is characteristic both of the time and of the country. In 1668 M. de Grignan, who had previously been lieutenant-governor of Languedoc
In 1671 Madame de Sevigne, with her son, paid a visit to Les Rochers, which is memorable in her history and in literature. The states of Brittany were convoked that year at Vitre. This town being in the immediate neighbourhood of Les Rochers, Madame de Sevigne's usually quiet life at her country-house was diversified by the necessity of entertaining the governor, the duc de Chaulnes, of appearing at his receptions and so forth. All these matters are recorded in her letters, together with much good-natured raillery on the country ladies of the neighbourhood and their ways. She remained at Les Rochers during the whole summer and autumn of 1671, and did not return to Paris till late in November. The country news is then succeeded by news of the court. At the end of the next year, 1672, one great wish of her heart was gratified by paying a visit to her daughter in her vice-royalty of Provence. Madame de Grignan does not seem to have been very anxious for this visitperhaps because, as the letters show in many cases, the exacting affection of her mother was somewhat too strong for her own colder nature, perhaps because she feared such a witness of the ruinous extravagance which characterized the Grignan household. But her mother remained with her for nearly a year, and did not return to Paris till the end of 1673. During this time we have (as is usually the case during these Provencal visits and the visits of Madame de Grignan to Paris) some letters addressed to Madame de Sevigne, but comparatively few from her. A visit of the second class was the chief event of 1674. 1675 brought with it the death of Turenne (of which Madame de Sevigne has given a noteworthy account, characteristic of her more ambitious but not perhaps her more successful manner), and also serious disturbances in Brittany. Notwithstanding these it was necessary for Madame de Sevigne to make her periodical visit to Les Rochers. She reached the house in safety, and the friendship of Chaulnes protected her both from violence and from the exactions which the miserable province underwent as a punishment for its resistance to excessive and unconstitutional taxation. No small part of her letters is occupied by these affairs. The year 1676 saw several things important in Madame de Sevigne's life. For the first time she was seriously illit would appear with rheumatic feverand she did not thoroughly recover till she had visited Vichy. Her letters from this place are among her best, and picture life at a 17th-century watering-place with unsurpassed vividness. In this year, too, took place the trial and execution of Madame de Brinvilliers. This event figures in the letters, and the references to it are among those which have given occasion to unfavourable comments on Madame de Sevigne's character. In the next year, 1677, she moved into the Hotel Carnavalet, a house which still remains and is inseparably connected with her memory, and she had the pleasure of welcoming the whole Grignan family to it. They remained there a long time; indeed nearly two years seem to have been spent by Madame de Grighan partly in Paris and partly at Livrv. The return to Provence took place in October 1678, and next year Madame de Sevigne had the grief of losing La Rochefoucauld, the most eminent and one of the most intimate of her close personal friends and constant associates. In 168o she again visited Brittany, but the close of that year saw her back in Paristo receive another and even longer visit from her daughter, who remained in Paris for four years. Before the end of the last year of this stay (in February 1684) Charles de Sevigne, after all his wandering loves, and after more than one talked-of alliance, was married to a young Breton
interest
angel
Madame de Sevigne survived these alliances but a very short time. During an illness of her daughter she herself was attacked by smallpox in April 1696, and she died on the 17th of that month at Grignan, and was buried there. Her idolized daughter was not present during her illness. But in her will Madame de Sevigne still showed her preference for this not too grateful child, and Charles de Sevigne accepted his mother's wishes in a letter showing the good-nature which he had never lacked. But the two families were, except as has been said for Madame de Simiane and her posterity, to be rapidly broken up. Charles de Sevigne and his wife had no children, and he himself, after occupying some public posts (he was king's lieutenant in Brittany in 1697), went with his wife into religious retirement at Paris in 1703, and after a time sequestered himself still more in the seminary of Sainte-Magloire, where he died on March 26, 1713, His widow survived him twenty years. Madame de Grignan had died on August 16, 1705, at a country-house near Marseilles, of the very disease which she had tried to escape by not visiting her dying mother. Her son, who had fought at Blenheim, had died of the same malady at Thionville the year before. Marie Blanche, her eldest daughter, was in a convent, and, as all the Comte de Grignan's brothers had either entered the church sr died unmarried, the family, already bankrupt in fortune, was extinguished in the male line by Grignan's own death in 1714, it a great age. Madame de Simiane, whose connexion with the stistory of the letters is important, died in 1737. The chief subjects of public interest
Chantilly
Almost all writers of literary letters since Madame de Sevigne's days, or rather since the publication of her correspondence, have imitated her more or less directly, more or less consciously, and it is therefore only by applying that historic estimate upon which all true criticism rests that her full value can be discerned. The charm of her work is, however, so irresistible that, read even without any historical knowledge and in the comparatively adulterated editions in which it is generally met with, that charm can hardly be missed. Madame de Sevigne was a member of the strong. and original group of writersRetz, La Rochefoucauld, Corneille, Pascal, Saint-Evremond, Descartes and the restwho escaped the influence of the later 17th century, while they profited by the reforms of the earlier. According to the strictest standard of the Academy her phraseology is sometimes incorrect, and it occasionally shows traces of the quaint and affected style of the Precieuses; but these things only add to its savour and piquancy. In lively narration few writers have ex-celled her, and in the natural expression of domestic and maternal affection none. She had an all-observant eye for trifles and the keenest possible appreciation of the ludicrous, together with a hearty relish for all sorts of amusements, pageants and diversions, and a deep though not voluble or over-sensitive sense of the beauties of nature. But with all this she, had an understanding as solid as her temper was gay. Unlike her daughter, she was not a professed blue-stocking or philosophess. But she had a strong affection for theology, in which she inclined (like the great majority of the religious and intelligent laity of her time in France) to the Jansenist side. Her favourite author in this class was Nicole
Great part of her purely literary merit lies in the extraordinary vividness of her presentation of character. But her own has notunited quite such a unanimity of suffrage as her ability in writing. In her own time there were not wanting enemies who maintained that her letters were written for effect, and that her affection for her daughter was ostentatious and unreal. But no competent judge can admit this view On the other hand, her excessive affection for Madame de Grignan, her blindness to anything but her daughter's interest; her culpable tolerance of her son's youthful follies on the one hand and the uneven balance which she held in money matters between him and his sister on the other; the apparent levity with which she speaks of the sufferings of Madame de Brinvilliers, of galley slaves, of the peasantry, &c; and the freedom of language which she uses herself and tolerates from others,have all been cast up against her. Here the historic estimate sufficiently disposes of some of the objections, a little common sense of others and a very little charity of the rest. If too much love felt by a mother towards a daughter be a fault, then Madame de Sevigne was one of the most offending souls that ever lived; but it will hardly be held damning. The singular confidences which Madame de Sevigne received from her son and transmitted to her daughter would even at the present day be less surprising in France than in England. They are only an instance, adjusted to the manners of the time, of the system of sacrificing everything to the maintenance of confidence between mother and son. Here too, as well as in reference to the immediately kindred charge of crudity of language, and to that want of sympathy with suffering, especially with the sufferings of the people, It is especially necessary to remember of what generation Madame de Sevigne was and what were her circumstances. That generation was the generation which Madame de Rambouillet endeavoured with only partial success to polish and humanize, to which belong the almost in-credible yet trustworthy Historiettes of Tallemant, and in which Bussy Rabutin's Histoire amoureuse did not make him lose all caste as a gentleman and man-of honour. It is absurd to expect at such a time, and in private letters, the delicacy proper to quite different times and circumstances, It is not true that Madame de Sevigne shows no sympathy with the oppression of the Bretons, though her incurable habit of humorous expressionof Rabutinage, as she says-makes her occasionally use light phrases about the matter. But it is in fact as unreasonable to expect modern political sentiments from her as it is to expect her to observe the canons of a loth-century propriety. On the whole she may be as fairly and confidently ac-quitted of any moral fault, as she may be acquitted of all literary faults whatsoever. Her letters are wholly, what her son-in-law said well of her after her death, compagnons delicieux; and, far from faultless as Madame de Grignan was, none of her faults is more felt by the reader than her long visits to her mother, during which the letters ceased.The bibliographic history of Madame de Sevigne's letters is of considerable interest in itself, and is moreover typical of much other con-temporary literary history. From Madame de Sevigne herself we know that her own letters were copied and handed about, sometimes under specified titles, as early as 1673. None of them, however, was published until her correspondence with Bussy Rabutin appeared In his Memoirs and Correspondence, partly in the year of her death, partly next year. The remainder were not printed in any form for thirty years. Then between 1725 and 1728 appeared seven unauthorized editions, containing more or fewer additions from the copies which had been circulated. privately. The bibliography of these must be sought in special works (see especially the Grands Ecrivains edition, vol. xi.). They have interest, however, cjliefly because they stirred up Madame de Simiane, the writer's only living representative, to give an authorized version. This appeared under the care of the Chevalier de Perrin in 6 vols. (Paris, 1734-1737). It contained only the letters to Madame de Grignan, and these were subjected to editing rather careful than conscientious, the results of which were never thoroughly removed until recently. In the first place, Madame de Simiane, who possessed her mother's replies, is said to have burnt the whole of these from religious motives; this phrase is ex. plained by Madame de Grignan's Cartesianism, which is supposed to have led her to expressions alarming to orthodoxy. In the second, scruples partly having to do with the susceptibilities of living persons, partly concerning Jansenist and other prejudices, made her insist on numerous omissions. Thirdly, and most unfortunately, the change of taste seems to have required still more numerous alterations of style and language, such as the substitution of " Ma Fille " for Madame de Sevigne's usual and charming " Ma Bonne," and many others. Perrin followed this edition up' in 1751 with a volume of supplementary letters not addressed to Madame de Grignan, and in 1754 published his last edition of the whole, which was long the standard (8 vols., Paris). During the last half of the 18th century numerous editions of the whole or parts appeared with important additions, such as that of 1756, giving for the first time the letters to Pomponne on the Fouquet trial; that of 1773, giving letters to Moulceau; that of 1775, giving for the first time the Bussy letters separate from his memoirs, &c. An important collected edition of all these fragments, by the Abbe de Vauxcelles, appeared in 18oi (Paris, An IX.) in to vols.; five years later Gouvelle (Paris, 18o6, 8 vols.) introduced the improvement of chronological order; this was re.-printed in 12 vols. (Paris,.1819) with some more unpublished letters which had separately appeared meanwhile. In the same yeas. appeared the first edition of M. de Monmerque. From that data continual additions of unpublished letters were made, in great part by the same editor, and at last the whole was remodelled on manuscript copies (the originals unfortunately are available for but few) in the edition called Des Grands Ecrivains, which M. de Monmerque began, but which owing to his death had to be finished by MM. Regnier, Paul Mesnard and Sommer (Paris, 1862-1868). This, which supersedes all others (even a handsome edition published during its appearance by M. Silvestre de Sacy), consists of twelve volumes of text, notes, &c., two volumes of lexicon and an album of plates. It contains all the published letters to and from Madame de Svigne, with the replies where they exist, with all those letters to and from Madame de Simiane (many of which had been added to the main body) that contain any interest. To it must be added two volumes (printed uniformly) of Lettres inidites, published by M. Ch. Capmas in 1876 and containing numerous variants and additions from a MS. copy discovered in an old curiosity shop at Dijon. Of less elaborate and costly editions that in the collection Didot (6 vols., Paris v.d.) is the best, though, in common with all others except the brands Ecrivains edition, it contains an adulterated text. Works on Madame de Sevigne are innumerable. Besides essays by nearly all the great French critics from Sainte-Beuve (Portraits de femmes) to M. Brunetiere (Etudes critiques), the work of F. Combes, Madame de Sevigne, historien (1885), and G. Boissier's volume in the Grands Ecrivains Francrais (1881), should be consulted. The biography by Paul Mesnard is nearly exhaustive, but the most elaborate biographical book is that of Walckenaer (3rd ed., Paris, 1856, 5 vols.), to which should be added the remarkable Histoire de Mme de Sevigne of Aubenas (Paris and St Petersburg
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