Reading Lives "à la manière des romans de Crébillon"

Abstract

Reading Lives "à la manière des romans de Crébillon" Joan Hinde Stewart Aimez donc toujours Crébillon, puisque c'est votre folie. Marie du Deffand to Horace Walpole, 1777 The intense dislike ofMarie de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand, fornovelistClaude Crébillon has neverbeen adequately accountedfor. Crébillon epitomizes lucidity and sarcasm—attitudes, after all, dear to the Marquise. But something about his writings was profoundly antipathetic to her, or perhaps more exactly, antipathetic to her fondness for Horace Walpole.1 Du Deffand and Walpole met in Paris in 1765. She was sixty-nine and widowed, a ruthless, chronically bored insomniac who had been blind for a dozen years and was afraid of draughts. He was forty-eight, a bibliophile , antiquary, man of fashion, and confirmed bachelor on a visit to the Continent. Until her death about fifteen years later, they carried on a voluminous correspondence, from which over 900 letters have been preserved : 840 are by Du Deffand (for the most part written in the hand ofher secretary, Jean-François Wiart), and the rest, mostly fragments (and writ1 This essay is indebted to Teaka Davis for her essential research and editorial assistance, and to Jean Sgard for invaluable comments and for the loan of some of the volumes cited here. I am also grateful to William Edmiston, English Showalter, and Janet Whatley for helpful suggestions. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, volume 13, numéros 2-3, janvier-avril 2001 416 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION ten in excellent French), are by Walpole.2 They chronicle Du Deffand's passion for Walpole and his embarrassment (despite a fondness for dowagers ) at finding himself the object of her untimely affections. Back home at Strawberry Hill, he worried about becoming an international laughingstock and insisted on secrecy: except for Wiart, no one was supposed to know what he wrote to her (30 April 1766; 1:24). He tried to prescribe the terms of the relationship and the terms in which they should write, and forbade her to behave in a manner that might be viewed as "romanesque," forbade her too to use the word amour. So she wrote in the first extant letter : "Votre billet m'a serré le cœur, et a augmenté en moi ce mot que vous m'avez interdit" (April 1766; 1:1). In other letters she repeatedly denied— sometimes irately, sometimes humorously—thinking, feeling, or behaving in any way that could be considered romantic, extravagant, or novelistic: "Revenons aux emportements romanesques: moi, l'ennemie déclarée de tout ce qui y a le moindre trait, moi qui lui ai toujours déclaré la guerre, moi qui me suis fait des ennemis de tous ceux qui donnaient dans ce ridicule , c'est moi qui en suis accusée aujourd'hui!" (21 April 1766; 1:7). Or, "je ne vous aime pas aujourd'hui comme un roman, mais cependant je pense toujours à vous" (2 May 1766; 1:27). Or again, "je suis plus éloignée que personne d'idées romanesques" (9 August 1767; 1:336). Du Deffand and Walpole quarrelled continually: over her feelings and herexpression thereof; over his interpretation ofherfeelings and epistolary conduct; overwhat was allowable and what was not. What interests me here is one particular subject oftheir quarrels, namely Walpole's admiration for Claude Crébillon and his attempts to interpret Du Deffand's conduct by reference to Crébillon's novels. Some fifteen such allusions sprinkle their correspondence over a period of a little more than ten years. They illuminate one ofthe most astonishing ofeighteenth-century relationships—highly "romanesque"—while they also teach us something about prevailing representations of ageing and old age; about how two thoroughly literate people read novels and lives in the late eighteenth century; and about the pitfalls of reading lives through novels. I will begin here by reviewing the 2 Some of Walpole's letters were destroyed by Du Deffand, at his request; most of the remaining ones were destroyed after his death by his first editor, Mary Berry—again according to his wishes. It was Berry who in 1810 published die first edition of Du Deffand's letters to Walpole (and to Voltaire). References by date, volume, and page...