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Adelaide Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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ADELAIDE FILLEUL, MARQUISE DE SOUZA-BOTELHO (1761-1836), French writer, was born in Paris on the 14th of May 1761. Her mother, Marie Irene Catherine de Buisson, daughter of the seigneur of Longpre, near Falaise, married a bourgeois of that town named Filleul. It was reported, though no proof is forthcoming, that Mme Filleul had been the mistress of Louis XV. Her husband became one of the king's secretaries, and Mme Filleul made many friends, among them Marmontel. Their eldest daughter, Julie, married Abel Francois Poisson, marquis de Marigny (1727-1781); Adelaide married in 1779 Alexandre Sebastien de Flahaut de la Billarderie, comte de Flahaut, a soldier of some reputation, who was many years her senior. In Paris she soon gathered round her a salon, in which the principal figure was Talleyrand. There are many allusions to their liaison in the diary of Gouverneur Morris. In 1785 was born her son Auguste Charles Joseph de Flahaut, who was generally known to be Talleyrand's son. Mme de Flahaut fled from Paris in 1792 and joined the society of emigres at Mickleham, Surrey, described in Mme d'Arblay's Memoirs. Her husband remained at Boulogne, where he was arrested on the 29th of January 1793 and guillotined. Mme de Flahaut now supported herself by writing novels, of which the first, Adele de Senange (London, 1794), which is partly autobiographical, was the most famous. She presently left London for Switzerland, where she met Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans. She travelled in his company to Hamburg, where she lived for two years, earning her living as a milliner. She returned to Paris in 1798, and on the 17th of October 1802 she married Jose Maria de Souza-Botelho Mourao e Vasconcellos (1758-1825), Portuguese minister plenipotentiary in Paris. Her husband was recalled in 1804, and was offered the St Petersburg embassy; but in the next year he resigned, to settle permanently in Paris, where he had many friends, among them the historian Sismondi. He spent his time chiefly in the preparation of a beautiful edition of the Lusiads of Camoens, which he completed in 1817. Mme de Souza lost her social power after the fall of the First Empire, and was deserted even by Talleyrand, although he continued his patronage of Charles de Flahaut. Her husband died in 1825, and after the accession of Louis Philippe she lived in comparative retirement till her death on the 19th of April 1836. She brought up her grandson, Charles, duc de Morny, her son's natural son by Queen Hortense. Among her later novels were La Comtesse de Fargy (1822) and La Duchesse de Guise (1831). Her complete works were published in 1811-1822.

See Baron A. de Maricourt, Madame de Souza et sa famille (1907); Lettres inedites de J. C. L. de Sismondi. .. et de Madame de Souza (Paris, 1863), ed. St Rene Taillandier; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de femmes (1844)

and for Mme de Filleul, MM. de Goncourt, Les Mattresses de Louis XV. (1860) and J. F. Marmontel (1804).