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Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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DE (1588-1665), a lady famous in the literary history of France, was born in 1588. She was the daughter and heiress of Jean de Vivonne, marquis of Pisani, and her mother Giulia was of the noble Roman family of Savelli. She was married at twelve years old to Charles d'Angennes, vidame of Le Mans, and afterwards marquis of Rambouillet. The young marquise found the coarseness and intrigue that then reigned in the French court little to her taste, and after the birth of her eldest daughter, Julie d'Angennes, in 1607, she began to gather round her the circle afterwards so famous. She established herself at the Hotel Pisani, called later the Hotel de Rambouillet, the site of which is close to the Grands Magasins du Louvre. Mme de Rambouillet took great trouble to arrange her house for purposes of reception, and devised suites of small rooms where visitors could move easily, and could find more privacy than in the large reception rooms of the ordinary house. The hotel was rebuilt on these lines in 1618. It maintained its importance as a social and literary centre until 1650. Almost all the more remarkable personages in French society and French literature frequented it, especially during the second quarter of the century, when it was at the height of its reputation. There is abundant testimony to Mme de Rambouillet's beauty, though no portrait of her is known to exist. Her success as a hostess was due to many causes. Her natural abilities had been carefully trained, but were not extraordinary. Many people were, however,' like herself, disgusted with the intrigues at court, and found the comparative austerity of the Hotel de Rambouillet a welcome change. The marquise had genuine kindness and a lack of prejudice that enabled her to entertain on the same footing princes and princesses of the blood royal, and men of letters, while among her intimate friends was the beautiful Angelique Paulet. The respect paid to ability in her salon effected a great advancement in the position of French men of letters. Moreover, the almost uniform excellence of the memoirs and letters of 17th-century Frenchmen and Frenchwomen may be traced largely to the development of conversation as a fine art at the Hotel Rambouillet, and the consequent establishment of a standard of clear and adequate expression. Mme de Rambouillet was known as the "incomparable Arthenice," the name being an anagram for Catherine, devised by Malherbe and Racan.

XXII. 28 a Among the more noteworthy incidents in the story of the Hotel are the sonnet war between the Uranistes and the Jobistespartisans of two famous sonnets by Voiture and Benserage - and the composition by all the famous poets of the day of the Guirlande de Julie, a collection of poems on different flowers, addressed in 1641 to Julie d'Angennes, afterwards duchesse de Montausier. Julie herself was responsible for a good deal of the preciosity for which the Hotel was later ridiculed. Charles de Sainte Maure, who become in 1664 duc de Montausier, had been wooing her for seven years when he conceived the idea of the famous garland, and she kept him waiting for four years more.

The Precieuses, who are usually associated with Moliere's avowed caricatures and with the extravagances of Mlle. de Scudery, but whose name, it must be remembered, Madame de Sevigne herself was proud to bear - insisted on a ceremonious gallantry from their suitors and friends, though it seems from the account given by Tallemant des Reaux that practical jokes of a mild kind were by no means excluded from the HOtel de Rambouillet. They especially favoured an elaborate and quintessenced kind of colloquial and literary expression, imitated from Marini and Gongora, and then fashionable throughout Europe. The immortal Precieuses ridicules of Moliere was no doubt directly levelled not at the HOtel de Rambouillet itself, but at the numerous coteries which in the course of years had sprung up in imitation of it. But the satire did in truth touch the originators as well as the imitators, - the former more closely perhaps than they perceived. The Hotel de Rambouillet continued open till the death of its mistress, on the 2nd of December 1665, but the troubles of the Fronde diminished its influence.

The chief original authorities respecting Madame de Rambouillet and her set are Tallemant des Reaux in his Historiettes, and Antoine Baudeau de Somaize in his Grand Dictionnaire des Precieuses (1660). Many modern writers have treated the subject, notably Victor Cousin, La Societe francaise au xvii e siecle (2 vols., 1856), and C. L. Livet, Precieux et Precieuses.. . (1859). There is an admirable edition (1875) of the Guirlande de Julie by O. Uzanne.