Marie De Rabutin-Chantal Sevigne

Madame de Grignan.

The bulk of Madame de Sevigne's letters are addressed to her daughter, who married in 1668 Francois d'Adhemar, comte de Grignan, a Provencal, of one of the noblest families of France. 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. In 1669 M. de Grignan, who had previously been lieutenant-governor of Languedoc, was transferred to Provence. The governor-in-chief was the young duke of Vendome. But at this time he was a boy, and he never really took up the govern ment, so that Grignan for more than forty years was in effect viceroy of this important province. His wife liked the part of vice-queen ; but their peculiar situation threw on them the ex penses without the emoluments of the office, so that the Grignan money affairs hold a larger place in Madame de Sevigne's letters than might perhaps be wished.

1671-1691.

Madame de Sevigne lived in Paris from 1677 onwards in the Hotel de Carnavalet, but she spent part of the year usually on her estate at Les Rochers. She was there when the estates of Brittany were convoked at Vitre in 1671, and she was there in 1675 when the province was being punished for its resistance to illegal taxation. Occasionally she was able to enjoy her daughter's society. She spent a year with the de Grignans in Provence in 1672-3, and the whole Grignan family paid a long visit to the Hotel de Carnavalet in 1677. Between 168o and 1688 the Grignans were in Paris for a great part of their time. The bulk of the letters from Madame de Sevigne to her daughter therefore belong to the period before 1677.

In 1679 Madame de Sevigne lost La Rochefoucauld, the most eminent and one of the most intimate of her close personal friends and constant associates. In 1684 Charles de Sevigne married a young Breton lady, Jeanne Marguerite de Mauron, who had a considerable fortune. In the arrangements for this marriage Madame de Sevigne practically divided all her fortune between her children (Madame de Grignan of course receiving an unduly large share), and reserved only part of the life interest. In 1687 the Abbe de Coulanges died. In the same year Madame de Sevigne was present at the Saint-Cyr performance of Esther, and some of her most amusing descriptions of court ceremonies and experiences date from this time. 1689 and 1690 were almost entirely spent by her at Les Rochers with her son; and on leaving him she went across France to Provence. 1691 was passed at

Grignan and other places in the south, but at the end of it Madame de Sevigne returned to Paris, bringing the Grignans with her; and her daughter stayed with her till Last Years.—The year 1693 saw the loss of two of her oldest friends—Bussy Rabutin, her faithless and troublesome but in his own way affectionate cousin, and Madame de la Fayette, her life-long companion, and on the whole perhaps her best and wisest friend. Another friend almost as intimate, Madame de Lavardin, followed in 1694. Madame de Sevigne spent but a few months of this latter year alone, and followed her daughter to Provence. She never revisited Brittany after 1691.

During an illness of her daughter Madame de Sevigne 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. Charles de Sevigne 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 or died unmar ried, the family, already bankrupt in fortune, was extinguished in the male line by Grignan's own death in 1714, at a great age.

The Letters.—Madame de Sevigne was a member of the strong and original group of writers—Retz, La Rochefoucauld, Corneille, Pascal, Saint-Evremond, Descartes and the rest—who 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 occa sionally 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 excelled 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.