A Salon Hostess’s Entry into the Literary Field: Fanny de Beauharnais and the Members of the School of Dorat (~1770–80)

The space of the salon is often purported to be one in which, in eighteenth-century France, women were allowed a new kind of agency and power.¹ But far from favoring women’s integration into the public sphere, it appears to have reinforced gender norms. The idea that the salon offered women an essential influence in intellectual life, as Dena Goodman suggests,² has been revised in more recent studies, such as those by Elisabeth Harth, Carla Hesse, and Antoine Lilti, that examine the femmes du monde‘s (society women) difficult access to publishing and printing.³ Seen from this angle, salon culture was founded on a gender-based double standard: if men of letters were sought after in fashionable assemblies for their ability to enliven conversation and entertain the group, women, on the opposite, were not allowed to display literary pretensions. As Lilti notes, “the success of the salons as worldly spaces devoted to sociability and amusement, including the literary variety, … implied a refusal of pedantry and seriousness and, above all, a radical rupture with the figure of the female author.”⁴ Having internalized this restriction, women such as Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse, and Mme Necker opposed the précieuses (precious women) of the preceding century and refrained from making their writing public, with the occasional exception of their correspondence, which was seen less as literary and more as a prolongation of salon conversation. In extremely rare instances, a few salon hostesses surpassed the limits imposed on women and sought literary recognition.⁵ These women have received little attention from historians despite the manifest interest of their trajectories for understanding the effects of women’s publicity on the dynamics of sociability.⁶

Countess Fanny de Beauharnais (1737–1813) was among the first to distinguish herself as both a socialite and a prolific author. She did not see her writing practice as a pastime, but as a significant part of her social identity, which influenced her vision of women’s role in high society and, for her habitués (attendees), the stakes associated with attendance at her salon. Following in the footsteps of Mme du Boccage (1710–1802), who achieved literary and worldly notoriety in the mid-eighteenth century,⁷ de Beauharnais took a distinctive position in the fashionable salon sphere. To understand the specificity of that position, we can analyze the relationships between the countess and a group of poètes légers (light poets),⁸ headed by Claude-Joseph Dorat (1734–1780), who frequented her salon from about 1770 to 1780.⁹ Designated the “school of Dorat” by the editors of the Correspondance littéraire in 1780,¹⁰ the group included Charles-Pierre Colardeau (1732–1776), Alexandre-Frédéric Jacques Masson, Marquis de Pezay (1741–1777), Michel de Cubières (1752–1820), Antoine Bertin (1752–1790), Bernard de Bonnard (1744–1784), M.A. Laus de Boissy (1747–?), Antoine-Marin Lemierre (1733–1793), Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour (1738–1793), Nicolas-Thomas Barthe (1734–1785), and Doigni du Ponceau (1750–1830). Instead of the traditional asymmetrical protectors-protected relationship characterized by an absence of reciprocity between salon hostesses (protectors) and men of letters (protected),¹¹ de Beauharnais’s circle operated on symbolic trade: in return for the countess’s support, the school of Dorat helped construct her image as author. As emerges from her literary defense of women’s right to intellectual and literary activities, de Beauharnais’s goal in this exchange was to change the conception of the cultural functions of the femme du monde.

From Worldly Mediator to “Literary Critic”

Born on 4 October 1737 into a rich family of merchants from La Rochelle who were ennobled in 1720, Marie-Anne-Françoise “Fanny” Mouchard de Chaban lived her childhood in Paris.¹² She was the daughter of Anne-Louise Lazure and François-Abraham-Marie Mouchard de Chaban – who was successively Receveur général des Finances de la généralité de Champagne (tax collector of Champagne) and Conseiller-secrétaire du Roi (king’s counselor-secretary) – and her early years were characteristic of women’s lives in the eighteenth century. She was placed in a convent until the age of fifteen, until on 1 March 1753 she married the Count Claude de Beauharnais (1717–1784), who was twenty years older.¹³ This marriage of convenience brought her to La Rochelle, where she gave birth to three children. Around 1762, the countess asked for a separation and moved to her father’s Parisian hotel, on rue Montmartre, where she began to hold a salon. From then until her death on 2 July 1813, only the French Revolution and the Terror could stop her from gathering a selected society on a regular basis.¹⁴ Although primary sources on the first years of the countess’s circle are lacking, it is clear that she quickly made herself known to the beau monde (fashionable society): in 1764, very few years after her return to Paris, she was the model for the heroine of the Poinsinet’s satirical comedy Le cercle ou la soirée à la mode (The circle or the fashionable evening party), which can be seen as a sign of her recognition as a newly arrived hostess.¹⁵ In the beginning, the countess seems to have held a traditional salon dedicated to conversation and worldly entertainment. At the end of the 1760s, the poet and playwright Claude-Joseph Dorat, de Beauharnais’s future lover, began to attend regularly.¹⁶ Under his auspices, the salon became the favorite meeting place for many poètes légers.

Along with hospitality, the hostess’s main functions in the community corresponded to the femme du monde‘s traditional missions: she served her protégés’ careers by facilitating their access to aristocratic support and royal patronage and by activating networks of influential protectors in their favor. The epistolary campaigns she launched to try to have Dorat enter the Académie Française,¹⁷ her efforts to guarantee the poets’ entry into well-known salons that could boost their worldly reputation,¹⁸ and her own material donations are good examples of these interventions.

To help the members of the school of Dorat acquire legitimacy in the literary and social worlds of the ancien régime, the countess also adopted the position of “literary critic” within her circle, even though bienséance (decorum) forbade society women from criticism. Parisian salons often held oral readings and theatrical representations, making them important diffusion centers for literature. de Beauharnais used this practice to offer the poets’ productions a circle of publicity and critical feedback. In the États généraux du Parnasse (Estates general of Mount Parnassus), published in 1791, Michel de Cubières recalls the evenings when the hostess used to make editorial recommendations to Colardeau, Bonnard, Pezay, and Dorat: “C’est là que je les ai entendus vous lire tour à tour leurs écrits ingénieux & les embellir en les corrigeant d’après vos critiques plus ingénieuses encore.”¹⁹ (That is where I heard them read to you their ingenious writings one after the other, embellishing them on your ever more ingenious advice.) But what was her advice? Though there are no precise accounts on the matter, two testimonials evoke the double nature of it. The first is a dedicatory preface in the second edition of Dorat’s 1774 tragedy Adélaïde de Hongrie:

Souffrez aussi, Madame, que je m’applaudisse de vous avoir prise pour le premier juge de l’ouvrage que je vous présente. S’il a quelque mérite, je le dois à vos conseils. Ce que votre goût prescrit, vos graces le persuadent. C’est dans vos entretiens aussi intéressans qu’utiles, qu’on apprend à développer les charmes d’un caractère honnête, l’expression des vertus, & les délicatesses du sentiment.

(Accept as well, Madam, that I congratulate myself for having taken you as the first judge of the work I am presenting to you. If it has any merit, I owe it to your advice. That which your taste prescribes, your graces persuade. It is in your conversation, as interesting as it is useful, that one learns to develop the charms of an honest character, the expression of virtues, and the delicacies of feeling.)²⁰

This excerpt demonstrates that it was in her capacity of femme du monde that the countess performed the function of literary critic for the poets of her society. Dorat invokes the “taste” and “honest character” that were distinctive criteria for membership in the elite class. Raised as a leading moral and social paradigm in the seventeenth century, the courtier ideal of the honest man remained exemplary in the age of the Enlightenment.²¹ Likewise, the notion of taste, understood as the aptitude to discern beauty, was a major mark of social distinction.²² As this preface shows, de Beauharnais guided the men of letters of her circle in their creation process firstly as a socialite and bearer of aristocratic values. However, she did not limit her suggestions to inculcating the aesthetics and moral norms of fashionable society. In a letter dated 30 November 1781 recommending de Beauharnais’s reception at the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Lyon, Mathon de La Cour wrote:

S’il se fait chez elle une lecture, les observations les plus justes et les plus fines sur le langage et sur les vrais principes de la littérature, celles qui concernent l’expérience la plus consommée dans l’art d’écrire sont toujours celles qu’elle fait elle-même. Je viens de l’éprouver à l’occasion de la Vie de Montausier. Ce n’est cependant pas peu de chose que de l’emporter en sagacité et en justesse sur les personnes qui se rassemblent chez elle.

(If a reading is done at her place, the most accurate and subtle observations on the language and on the true principles of literature, the ones that concern the most complete experience in the art of writing are always the ones she makes herself. I just experienced it with the Vie de Montausier. It is not a little thing to prevail over the persons gathering at her home in terms of sagacity and accuracy.)²³

It is significant that the countess’s experience as an author might have benefited the poets of her community. Unlike the other worldly ladies, de Beauharnais could position herself as a skilled judge in literary matters. In exchange for the countess’s help and advice, the members of the school of Dorat supported her reputation as a writer, thus establishing a new principle of reciprocity between a hostess and her habitual attendees.

The Salon as a Springboard for the Hostess’s Literary Ambitions

It was not unusual for women to produce fugitive poetry or theatrical plays in the framework of worldly sociability. This practice was even encouraged, as long as it remained a private exercise. What distinguishes de Beauharnais is that hers did not: she was determined to go public and to be an author. From 1772, when she published her first fugitive poetries, until 1811, when she published her last book, La cyn-achantide ou le voyage de Zizi et d’Azor (The Cyn-Achantid or the journey of Zizi and Azor), she produced dozens of poems, many narrative tales of fiction, a comedy, and a pamphlet. She can be regarded as one of the most productive women writers of the time.²⁴ The salon’s attendees served her literary ambitions, as they gave her material and symbolic help, by weaving publishing networks for her writings and promoting her authorship in their own works.

The poets, playwrights, and novelists of the school of Dorat were also deeply involved in the Parisian journalistic and publishing milieu, which at that time was in full expansion.²⁵ An overview of the close links between the poètes légers and this sphere will suggest how de Beauharnais could benefit from their resources. Although Colardeau and Dorat had sporadically collaborated with Fréron’s Année littéraire (The literary year) from the end of the 1750s, journalism was not yet the main activity of any member of the group. A turning point was reached in June 1764, when Mathon de la Cour was designated the editor of the Journal des Dames (The ladies’ magazine) under the official direction of Mme de Maisonneuve (?–1774?).²⁶ Responsible for the publication until January 1769 – the journal was afterwards censored and shut down for five years²⁷ – he asked Dorat, Lemierre, and Claude Sautereau de Marsy (1740–1815), a man of letters close to the school of Dorat, to work with him. Contented by the success of their partnership, the four decided to found an annual periodical dedicated to fugitive poetry. First released in 1765 from the presses of Nicolas-Augustin Delalain, the Almanach des Muses (Almanac of the muses) became the major place of dissemination for the school of Dorat.²⁸ The community could also rely on acquaintance with the contributors of the Journal de Paris, the first French daily newspaper, which was first published in January 1777, thanks to Sautereau de Marsy who was its salaried editor until 1789. Dorat took up again the direction of the Journal des Dames, renamed Mélanges littéraires ou Journal des Dames (Literary miscellanea or the ladies’ magazine), from March 1777 to June 1778, when it shuttered for good. In 1780, de Boissy participated as well in the periodical market by becoming editor for the Journal de Nancy, a post he remained in for seven years. Some of the school of Dorat poets occasionally wrote in the Mercure de France as well.

Significantly, the Almanach des Muses was the first to print de Beauharnais’s verses in 1772. Between then and 1780, she submitted no less than forty pieces of her fugitive poetry to the collection, ranking her among its most prolific contributors. Still in 1780, her poems also filled the columns of the Journal de Paris and the Journal de Nancy.²⁹ The diffusion networks of the school of Dorat not only allowed de Beauharnais to publish her verses, but also her books. As a regular publisher of the poets, Delalain agreed to edit her Mélange de poésies fugitives et de prose sans consequence (Miscellaneous pieces of fugitive poetry and insignificant prose) (1776).³⁰ The countess’s first novel, Lettres de Stéphanie roman historique en trois parties (Letters of Stephanie, historical novel in three parts), appeared in part serially between March and July 1777 in the Mélanges littéraires ou Journal des Dames before it was released on its own in 1778 from the same presses.³¹ Her second novel, L’Abailard supposé ou le sentiment à l’épreuve (The presumed abelard or the sentiment put to the test), was issued in 1780 under Dorat’s name in his Œuvres completes (Complete works), probably to benefit from the poet’s visibility in the literary field.³² Thus, until Dorat’s death in 1780, the hostess’s publishing systems and written productions were all marked by his school.

In addition to facilitating the countess’s entry into the literary field, her network also fostered her writing career by discursive representation. In the Almanach des Muses and the Journal de Paris, they published verses that praise de Beauharnais as an author. Far from complying with the misogynistic discourse of the times against women writers, the poets launched a collective campaign in de Beauharnais’s favor. Standing against Rousseau, who argued that “women, in general, do not like any art, know nothing about any, and have no Genius,” Cubières, Dorat, Lemierre, and Doigni du Ponceau produced poems that lauded the countess’s literary “Gloire” and “Génie,” two eminently masculine titles that women could not claim.³³ For example, in the following few lines Cubières compares de Beauharnais’s writing abilities to the works of Dorat, recognizable behind Ovid/Orphea:

Sous la couronne du Génie,
Je vois l’aimable Beauharnais.

A ses genoux, un autre Ovide
Modeste, quoique sans rivaux,
Parcouroit d’une main rapide
Un luth qu’il vola dans Paphos.

Cette jeune & brillante Fée
S’embrâsoit à ses doux transports,
& par d’ingénieux accords,
Surpassait le nouvel Orphée.

(Under the crown of Genious,
I see the kind Beauharnais.
At her knees, another Ovid,
Modest, though having no rivals,
Was playing with a fast hand
A lute he had stolen in Paphos.
This young and brilliant Fairy
Was impassioned by his sweet transports,
And with ingenious chords,
Surpassed the new Orphea.)³⁴

Besides celebrating her talents, these compositions also give her credit for the works she published (semi-)anonymously. Such was, for instance, Dorat’s purpose when in the 1779 Almanach des Muses he printed an “Épitre à madame la comtesse de Beauharnais, auteur des Lettres de Stéphanie” (Epistle to the countess of Beauharnais, author of the Letters of Stephanie) that revealed her identity unequivocally. Although eager to achieve the status of writer, de Beauharnais indeed complied for a long time with the dominant aristocratic tradition that considered it immodest, especially for women, to sign a literary text. Before 1787, the year in which she started to sign all of her texts, most of them were printed with no name or with a traditional “Madame la comtesse de B**.”³⁵ Through her literary community, de Beauharnais could avoid contravening worldly bienséance without the risk of losing credit for her works.

The poètes légers also supported their hostess’s aspirations by writing eulogistic reviews of her books in the periodicals to which they contributed. Even though the extremely positive reviews of de Beauharnais’s books in the Année littéraire,³⁶ the Journal de Paris,³⁷ and the Mercure de France³⁸ were all published with no signature or with initials only, it is reasonable to postulate that some were written by her salon attendees. In its March 1780 edition, the Mercure de France published a flattering critique from “M.D.,” likely Dorat, regarding L’Abailard supposé: “Le comble de l’art dans cet Ouvrage est d’avoir su tirer d’un fond si gai au premier aspect, le développement d’une ame honnête, delicate & sensible: cette idée, absolument neuve, distinguera à jamais ce roman, & le place à côté de nos plus agréables productions.” (The height of art in this book was to bring out of a content so cheerful at first glance, the development of an honest, delicate and sensitive soul: this idea, absolutely new, will distinguish this novel forever and place it alongside our most enjoyable productions.)³⁹ Likewise, in its July 1781 edition, the journal published a review of de Beauharnais’s third novel, L’Aveugle par amour (1781), whose authorship is more certain. In fact, le chevalier de Cubières is easily identified behind the signature “Chevalier de C… .” Cubières, like Dorat and many other authors of his time, contributed to the Mercure de France by writing book critiques. His review of L’Aveugle par amour was particularly glowing, and concludes: “Nos plus jolis Romans ont été écrits par des femmes; mais aucune de celles qui ont le mieux écrit en prose n’a composé des vers aussi agréables. Mde la Comtesse de B… est la première qui réunisse ce que la Nature semble avoir divisé.” (Our prettiest novels were written by women; but none of the ones who have written so well in prose have composed such agreeable verse. M de la Countess of B… is the first to join together what Nature seems to have separated.)⁴⁰ The goal of these contributions was probably to increase commercial success for the reviewed books, but also to make de Beauharnais’s works appear unmissable. Such promotion was a major step in the countess’s strategy for the recognition of her legitimacy as a writer. Her position in the worldly sphere was also related to the ideology she defended in her works regarding women.

Fanny de Beauharnais, Author: The Case of À tous les penseurs, salut

The few academic studies dedicated to de Beauharnais tend to separate her actions as an author from her actions as a salon hostess.⁴¹ This distinction is not only reductive, but also counterproductive: it does not allow the historian to grasp the specific dynamics of her circle. de Beauharnais’s productions highlight her vision of women’s role in society and, therefore, point to why the ideal behavior of the femme du monde – modest, discrete, and pretending ignorance – could not please her.⁴² Her emblematic 1773 pamphlet À tous les penseurs, salut (Thinkers, you’ve been warned), later republished three years after its initial appearance in the 1776 collection Mélange de poésies fugitives et de prose sans consequence under the title “Moins que rien, ou rêveries d’une marmotte” (Less than nothing or a Marmot’s daydream),⁴³ is revealing of her thoughts on the woman question. This short polemical harangue marks de Beauharnais’s involvement in the querelle des femmes (women’s quarrel), a long-standing textual dispute between detractors and defenders of the female cause. Initiated in the thirteen century, the quarrel was particularly vivid in the eighteenth century and was then focused on women’s access to education and knowledge production. In À tous les penseurs, salut, de Beauharnais stood in favor of her gender. In the form of a literary persiflage (raillery), she confronted the penseurs (thinkers) who tended to take over the intellectual field by excluding women in an abusive way. Defined by Élisabeth Bourguinat as an offensive practice of laughter peculiar to eighteenth-century high society, the persiflage involved mocking someone “en lui adressant d’un air ingénu des paroles … qu’il prend dans un autre sens” (by addressing naively to him or her speech … that he or she understands in another way).⁴⁴ The frame-text of the pamphlet is a first-person rhetoric based on antiphrasis, in which the countess pretends to concur with the principle of men’s supremacy in an age devoted to the cult of reason. However, it is quickly apparent that the statements it contains must not be taken literally. The resulting “écart entre le message littéral et le message vrai” (gap between the literal message and the true message), as Beda Allemann phrases it, implies that the reader should adopt a critical distance to defend against sexist prejudices.⁴⁵ Through this posture, de Beauharnais denounced the relegation of women to the private sphere in the second half of the eighteenth century. Rousseau contributed greatly to the spread of this bourgeois ideology that prevailed under the French Revolution and the Empire, asserting “there are no good morals for women outside of a withdrawn and domestic life.”⁴⁶ In her work, the countess looked back on this evolution and wrote, with an ironic tone: “On dit qu[e les femmes] ont des prétentions, comme si l’on pouvait avoir une existence, quand on disserte peu, qu’on n’entend pas un mot de latin, & qu’on n’écrit qu’à ses amis.” ([Women] are said to have pretensions, as if one could have an existence when one discourses so little, doesn’t understand a word of Latin and writes only to friends.)⁴⁷ She also wrote: “Une femme raisonnable doit parfiler, médire, causer avec son médecin, instruire son perroquet, & se coiffer avec goût, pour qu’on ait bonne opinion d’elle.” (A reasonable woman must parfiler, slander, chat with her doctor, instruct her parrot, and style her hair with taste, so as to give a good opinion of herself.)⁴⁸ The aim of such containment, as de Beauharnais understands it, was to forbid women from any intellectual activity. The gradual feminization of the private sphere indeed went along with the masculinization of the space of knowledge, to such an extent that women were even refused the right to reason. On literary matters, for instance, they were only allowed to judge certain productions, considered of lower importance, while men exclusively could discuss productions of higher importance:

Rentrons dans la médiocrité qui nous fut prescrite. Il ne nous appartient pas d’envahir les places que nos maîtres ont tant de peine à garder. Ils nous défendent d’être solides; tâchons de leur devenir agréables … Voyez leur indulgence; que nous raisonnions de l’Opéra comique; ils le veulent bien … Mais apprécier un ouvrage de morale, juger une pièce de théâtre; admirer l’écrivain éloquent, le poète sublime, leur trouver du génie, quoique nous les comprenions, voilà ce qui nous fait tort.

(Let us return in the mediocrity we have been prescribed. It is not up to us to invade the places our masters have so much trouble to keep. They forbid us to be solid, let us try to be pleasant … See their indulgence; they accept us to reason on the Opéra comique … But to appreciate a moral work, judge a play, admire the eloquent writer, the sublime poet, see their genius, even though we understand them, here is what is detrimental to us.)⁴⁹

Behind an oblique discourse, de Beauharnais stood against the moralists, doctors, and philosophers of her times, who all agreed to claim that the beau sexe (fair sex) had a weak physiological constitution that justified their confinement to the domestic realm and their exclusion from, for instance, literary initiatives.⁵⁰ After 1773, de Beauharnais abandoned the ironic tone of À tous les penseurs, salut, and wrote instead with direct recognition of women’s value and direct condemnation of the increasing separation of men’s and women’s spaces. By considering her ideology through the lens of her role as a hostess, one better understands that she might have regarded her salon as way to put her progressive thinking into practice.

Conclusion

Symptomatic of the hostess’s bipartite identity, de Beauharnais’s salon had a dual purpose: both to practice the worldly functions of hospitality, mediation, and entertainment, and also to build up and reinforce the countess’s position as an author. The circle reveals a new form of sociability, emerging at the end of the eighteenth century, in which the hostess could depend on her networks to claim a place in the literary field. But such a contravention to the elementary precepts of worldliness did not go unopposed. The countess was subject to fierce criticism. Her authorship was frequently denied; see, for instance, Lebrun’s epigram “Of Chloe, fair and a poet, we may two faults rehearse: / While she makes up her features, others make up her verse.”⁵¹ Her worldly ambition was also often contested. The editors of the Mémoires secrets (The secret memoirs) described her circle as Paris’s main “literary coterie” and as “the most accredited bureau d’esprit”⁵² (office for the wit), phrases that serve to reduce it to a paradigm of literary sociability and so to deny it any worldly value.⁵³ Furthermore, in 1789, Gouverneur Morris depreciated de Beauharnais’s gatherings because of her “unfeminine” preoccupations: “regular hours cannot be expected in a house where the mistress is occupied more with the intellectual than the material world.”⁵⁴ Social pressure was heavy on women who wanted to play by their own rules. The oblivion into which historiographical tradition plunged de Beauharnais and her circle proves that her adversaries partly succeeded in their task of depreciation.

1. All translations from French are mine unless otherwise stated. [↩]
2. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). [↩]
3. Elisabeth Harth, “The Salon Woman Goes Public… Or Does She?,” in Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, ed. Elisabeth Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 179–93; Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 31–42; Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 45–9. [↩]
4. Lilti, World of the Salons, 46. [↩]
5. For instance, Mme du Boccage (1710–1802), Mme de Genlis (1746–1830), Mme de Staël (1766–1817), and Mme de Salm (1767–1845). [↩]
6. For information on the sociological notions of “literary field” and “social trajectory,” see Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Seuil, 1992); Alain Viala, La naissance de l’écrivain: Sociologie de la littérature à l’âge classique (Paris: Minuit, 1985). [↩]
7. When Mme du Boccage died in 1802, de Beauharnais wrote a eulogy in which she highlighted her double facet of author and salon hostess. Fanny de Beauharnais, À la mémoire de madame Dubocage ([Paris]: Imprimerie Richard, [1802]). [↩]
8. Dorat and his community have frequently been described as poètes légers since the end of the eighteenth century, e.g., “M. Dorat tiendra toujours un rang parmi les Poëtes legers qui feront honneur à notre langue” (M. Dorat will always hold a position among the light poets who honour our language), Annales politiques, civiles et littéraires du dix-huitième siècle 8 (1780): 503. This expression was often used without explanation in contemporary dictionaries, and had two connotations. In one use, it was pejorative and associated with frivolity: “nos Poëtes legers & faciles dont les productions frivoles ne portent ni dans notre Cœur ni dans notre âme ces sentimens délicats ou ces vérités de sentimens sans lesquels la poésie n’est qu’un vain art” (our light and easy poets whose frivolous productions bring neither to our heart, neither to our soul these delicate feelings and those truths of feelings without which poetry is a vain art). Journal Encyclopédique 8 (1774): 247–8. In the other use, it was positive, as used in the following: “Un de ces Poëtes legers, ingénieux & facile” (One of these light poets, ingenious and easy). Antoine Sabatier de Castres, Les trois siècles de notre littérature ou Tableau de l’esprit de nos écrivains depuis François Ier jusqu’en 1772 (Paris: Gueffier, 1772), 3: 260. In the sixth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1835), “poésie légère” is defined in the entry for “léger” as follows: “Poésie dont les sujets sont peu importants, et dont le principal caractère est la facilité, l’abandon” (Poetry of which the themes are of little importance and whose main characteristics are facility and abandon). [↩]
9. In 1780, the demise of Colardeau and Pezay had already affected the group. Dorat’s death on 29 April 1780 dissolved it. [↩]
10. La correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, ed. Maurice Tourneux (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1880), 12: 384–5. [↩]
11. Antoine Lilti, “Sociabilité mondaine et réseaux intellectuels,” in Réseaux de l’esprit en Europe des Lumières au XIXe siècle, ed. Vladimir Berelowitch and Michel Porret (Paris: Droz, 2008), 94–04. [↩]
12. For reliable information regarding de Beauharnais’s biography, see Frederick K. Turgeon, “Fanny de Beauharnais,” PhD diss, Harvard University, 1929; Erick Noël, Les Beauharnais: Une fortune antillaise (1756–1796) (Genève: Droz, 2003). [↩]
13. Claude de Beauharnais was the uncle of Alexandre de Beauharnais (1760–1794), first husband of Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, better known as Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763–1814). Through her marriage, Fanny was related to the first wife of the Emperor Napoléon. [↩]
14. From October 1789 to October 1790, de Beauharnais lived in Lyon and Rome, before returning to Paris where she hosted assemblies until the September Massacres of 1792. She then left again the French capital for nearly three years, likely staying in Lyon. In July 1795, she finally reopened her Parisian salon. [↩]
15. The editors of the Mémoires secrets clearly identify the heroine as de Beauharnais. See Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des lettres en France, depuis 1762 jusqu’à nos jours, ed. Christophe Cave and Suzanne Cornand (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), 1: 375 (Additional Notice of 8 September 1764). [↩]
16. An unpublished letter from Dorat indicates he was already frequenting the countess’s salon in May 1770. Claude-Joseph Dorat to Claude-Joseph Vernet, 20 May 1770, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, BR 19.774-811 Mus. [↩]
17. de Beauharnais sought protectors to back Dorat’s candidacy at least twice. On 20 June 1771, she wrote to Voltaire to ask for his support. In 1775, the Correspondance littéraire secrete mentions that the countess was once again mobilizing her networks to guarantee the poet’s nomination. See Letter D17254, in Voltaire, Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. Theodore Besterman (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1968), 37: 444; Correspondance littéraire secrète 50 (1775): 2. Unfortunately, Dorat had criticized the august institution and its members too often to ever enter it. See Gustave Desnoiresterres, Le chevalier Dorat et les poètes légers du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1887), 331–3. [↩]
18. Count Buffon’s affection for Fanny allowed her, for instance, to introduce Michel de Cubières into the prestigious Sunday receptions of the jardin du roi, held by the naturalist who took Cubières under his wing. See Letter CXCVII from Buffon to Michel de Cubières, 31 January 1774, in Buffon, Correspondance inédite, ed. Henri Nadault Buffon, http://www.buffon.cnrs.fr. [↩]
19. Dorat-Cubières, Les états généraux du Parnasse, de l’Europe, de l’Église et de Cythère (Paris: L.P. Couret, 1791), 12. [↩]
20. Claude-Joseph Dorat, Adélaïde de Hongrie (Paris: Au bureau du Journal des Dames, 1778), 26. [↩]
21. See Gregory Brown, A Field of Honor: Writers, Court, Culture and Public Theater in French Literary Life from Racine to the Revolution (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2005), http://www.gutenberg-e.org/brg01/frames/authorframe.html. [↩]
22. See Jean-Bertrand Barrère, L’idée de goût de Pascal à Valéry (Paris: Klincksieck, 1972), 57–76. [↩]
23. Charles-Joseph Mathon de La Cour to Marc Antoine de La Tourette, 30 November 1781, Archives de l’Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Lyon, MS PA 268, vol. 4, fol. 85; La Vie de Montausier is a work from Mathon de La Cour himself, probably written for the French Academy prize competition, which was dedicated in 1781 to eulogies of Charles de Saint-Maure, Duke of Montausier. This work was never printed [↩]
24. In fact, Adeline Gargam classifies de Beauharnais among the (only) nine assidues hyperproductives (assiduous ultra-productive) women writers of the eighteenth century. Adeline Gargam, Les femmes savantes, lettrées et cultivées dans la littérature française des Lumières ou la conquête d’une légitimité (1690–1804) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2013), 1: 191–5. [↩]
25. Unless otherwise stated, the information in this paragraph comes from the following sources: Jean Sgard, ed., Dictionnaire des journaux (1600–1789) (Paris/Oxford: Universitas/Voltaire Foundation, 1991); Jean Sgard, ed., Dictionnaire des journalistes (1600–1789) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999). [↩]
26. On the Journal des Dames, see Nina Gelbart, Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Regime France: “Le Journal des Dames” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). [↩]
27. According to Nina Gelbart, the suppression of the journal might be due to Mathon de La Cour’s political positions: in the confrontation between the monarchy and the parliaments that occurred at the end of the 1760s, Mathon was in favor of the latter when René-Nicolas de Maupeou was made Chancellor in September 1768 and began his repression against parliamentarians. It is only in the last year of Maupeou’s chancellery that the Journal des Dames could start again in January 1774. It was then under the supervision of the Baroness of Princen (1736–1812). See Gelbart, Feminine and Opposition, 168–9. [↩]
28. The Almanach des Muses was one of the most successful almanacs of the second half of the eighteenth century. It ceased publication in 1833. [↩]
29. For a complete list of de Beauharnais’s verses published in the Almanach des Muses and the Journal de Paris, see Morgane Guillemet, “Marie-Anne Françoise Mouchard de Chaban,” in Dictionnaire des femmes de l’ancienne France (SIEFAR, 2005), http://www.siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr. For the pieces edited in the Journal de Nancy, see Journal de Nancy 2, (178): 61–4, 285–6. [↩]
30. Madame la comtesse de B**, Mélange de poésies fugitives et de prose sans conséquence (Paris: Delalain, 1776). [↩]
31. [Fanny de Beauharnais], Lettres de Stéphanie, roman historique en trois parties (Paris: Dériaux/Au bureau du Journal des Dames, 1778). [↩]
32. Claude-Joseph Dorat, Œuvres complètes, vol. 9, L’Abailard supposé (Neufchâtel: Imprimerie de la Société typographique, 1780); [Fanny de Beauharnais], L’Abailard supposé ou le sentiment à l’épreuve (Paris: P. Fr. Gueffier, 1780). [↩]
33. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert, and Writings for the Theater, trans. and ed. Allan Bloom, Charles Butterworth, and Christopher Kelly (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004), 327; Michel de Cubières, “Stances à Madame la comtesse de B**,” Almanach des Muses, 1774: 141–2; Claude-Joseph Dorat, “À Madame la comtesse de B**, sur la notice de ses ouvrages, faite par un gazetier très-malin,” Almanach des Muses, 1777: 217; Claude-Joseph Dorat, “Épitre à madame la comtesse de Beauharnais, auteur des Lettres de Stéphanie,” Almanach des Muses, 1779: 195; Antoine-Marin Lemierre, “Réponse de M. Lemière, aux vers de madame la comtesse de B**,” Journal de Paris, 1780: no. 351 (16 December 1780), 1429; Doigni du Ponceau, “Vers à madame la comtesse de B**,” Almanach des Muses, 1774: 181; Huguette Krief, “Le génie féminin: Propos et contre-propos au XVIIIe siècle,” in Revisiter la ‘querelle des femmes’: Discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des sexes, de 1750 aux lendemains de la Révolution, ed. Eliane Viennot and Nicole Pellegrin (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2012), 61–76. [↩]
34. Michel de Cubières, “Stances à Madame la comtesse de B**,” 142. [↩]
35. Before 1787, a few works were published with her complete name, specifically the poems in the Almanach des Muses (1779), the second edition of the Lettres de Stéphanie (Liège: Lemarié, 1779), and the third edition of L’Abailard suppose (Liège: Lemarié, 1782). It is difficult to establish whether the countess or a publisher decided to link her name with these works. [↩]
36. For 1770–80, three critiques of de Beauharnais’ books were published in the Année littéraire. See Année littéraire 8 (1773): 265–76; 5 (1776): 217–36; 4 (1778): 179–204. [↩]
37. For 1770–80, two critiques of de Beauharnais’ books were published in the Journal de Paris. See Journal de Paris no. 104 (14 April 1778): 413–14; no. 66 (6 March 1780): 273. [↩]
38. For 1770–80, two critiques of de Beauharnais’s books were published in the Mercure de France. See Mercure de France, September 1776: 55–73; May 1778: 63–76; March 1780: 150–8. [↩]
39. Mercure de France, March 1780: 158. [↩]
40. Mercure de France, July 1781: 117. [↩]
41. Turgeon, “Fanny de Beauharnais”; G. Castel-Çagarriga, “Fanny de Beauharnais et ses amis: Documents inédits,” Revue des deux mondes (August 1959): 700–13; Philippe Havard de la Montagne, “Fanny de Beauharnais, inspiratrice de Rétif de la Bretonne,” Études rétiviennes 34 (December 2002): 69–82; Magali Fourgnaud, “Fanny de Beauharnais (1738–1813), une conteuse des Lumières: De la guerre des sexes à la quête de l’harmonie universelle,” in Femmes des Lumières et de l’ombre: Un premier féminisme (1774–1830), ed. François Le Guennec (Orléans: Vaillant, 2013), 29–37. [↩]
42. Antoine Lilti, “La femme du monde est-elle une intellectuelle? Les salons parisiens au XVIIIe siècle,” in Intellectuelles: Du genre en histoire des intellectuels, ed. Nicole Racine and Michel Trebitsch (Paris/Bruxelles: IHTPS-CNRS/Complexe, 2004), 85–100. [↩]
43. Madame la comtesse de B**, À tous les penseurs, salut (n.p.: [1773]); Ead., “Moins que rien, ou rêveries d’une marmotte,” in Mélange de poésies fugitives, 1: 139–56. The pamphlet was then rewritten and integrated in larger works, published as “La Marmote au bal,” in Les Amans d’autrefois (Paris: Couturier-Lesclapart, 1787), 2: 101–210, and, finally, appeared under the title “La Marmote philosophe ou la philosophie en domino,” in La Marmote philosophe ou la philosophie en domino (Paris: Guillaume, 1811), 2: 9–161. [↩]
44. Élisabeth Bourguinat, Le siècle du persiflage (1734–1789) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998), 7. [↩]
45. Beda Allemann, “De l’ironie en tant que principe littéraire,” Poétique 36 (1978): 395. [↩]
46. Jean Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert, 311. [↩]
47. Madame la comtesse de B**, À tous les penseurs, salut, 5. [↩]
48. Ibid., 10. In eighteenth-century high society, parfiler was an “amusement that consisted of unwinding bobbins of gold thread to make braided decorations.” Antoine Lilti, World of the Salons, 158. [↩]
49. Madame la comtesse de B**, À tous les penseurs, salut, 9. [↩]
50. See Lieselotte Steinbrügge, The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). [↩]
51. The translation is borrowed from Ernest John Knapton, Empress Josephine (New York: Harvard University Press, 1963), 42. [↩]
52. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des Lettres en France, depuis 1762 jusqu’à nos jours (Londres: John Adamson, 1777–89), 18: 178 (Notice of 6 December 1781); 20: 67 (Notice of 2 February 1782). Contrary to what this source would have us believe, de Beauharnais’s circle was a worldly salon and not the ersatz of an academy of letters. Aristocrats (Le comte de Lagrange, le comte de Wargemont and le duc de Nivernais), scientists (Buffon, Jérôme de Lalande), and prestigious foreigners passing through Paris (Franz von Hartig) were also part of her society, which was governed by the rules of aristocratic civility. [↩]
53. The many expressions of this criticism against salon hostesses with intellectual pretensions were analyzed in Antoine Lilti, World of the Salons, 45–9. [↩]
54. Gouverneur Morris, Diary and Letters, ed. Anne Cary Morris (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench and Co., 1889), 1: 31. [↩]