Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand

Marie de Vichy - Chamrond (ou Champrond ), marquise du Deffand ( born September 25, 1697 Castle Chamrond at Charolles; † August 23, 1780 in Paris ), known as Marquise du Deffand was a French salonière in the Age of Enlightenment.

Life and work

Marie comes from a French aristocratic family, her father was Gaspard de Vichy, Comte de Champrond (* 1665), Capitaine Lieutenant of Gendarmes of the Duc de Berry and his wife Anne Brûlart (* 1670 ). Your school education she received in a monastery. As a young girl fell here already her wit and audacity that the helpless nuns Bishop Massillon einbestellten, which, however, very enjoyed the conversation with the pretty girls.

In 1718 she married the Marquis du Deffand officer ( 1688-1750 ), they but soon left to go to the court of the Duke of Orléans. For a short time it was said to be mistress of the regent. After her divorce, she opened in Paris a salon that was frequented by social and intellectual equal sizes. With Charles -Jean -François Hénault, who was a widow since 1728, she began an enduring partnership in 1731.

She stood in the avid correspondence with the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and D' Alembert, who, like most of the encyclopedist, wrong in her salon.

In 1753, she became blind and took her niece Julie de Lespinasse as a shareholder to be, but both fell out ten years later and opened Lespinasse, supported by Madame Geoffrin, a private salon. The majority of the clientele of the Marquise took it with right away, and thus the salon of Madame du Deffand lost its appeal almost completely. You embittered, but fell nearly 70 -year-old in the writer Horace Walpole, with whom she was in from 1766 to correspondence and also helped her from a financial emergency.

Your clever, culturally and historically valuable letters were received not only in the history of literature, but they have also found to be one of the most astute minds of their century.

Works

• Lettres. Slatkine Edition, Geneva, 1971 ( Repr.d. Ed Paris 1876)
• Anecdotes and judgments of strange people German translation of the letter of Meta Forkel love child. In: Morning Journal for educated booths No. 199, S. 795, No. 200, pp. 799 f, No. 201, p 803

And No. 202, S. 806, born 1812