Madame de Graffigny : Correspondance. Tome X. 26 avril 1749–2 juillet 1750. Lettres 1391–1569 (review)

'Tout m'effray et me boulverse' (p. 38). The letters of the first few months covered in this volume show Mme de Graffigny in one of her states of distress. Despite her new celebrity as the author of the Péruvienne (1747), poverty, domestic tensions and her highly strung temperament continue to combine to adverse effect. But then circumstances change. The death of her beloved Mme de Montigny brings her a cash legacy and a guaranteed if modest rentier income. Her repeated solicitations with the former court of Lorraine produce the promise of a tripling of her pension. For the first time since her arrival in Paris ten years before, she is able to arrange an independent stay in the countryside, renting for two months a cottage at Thiais. There she walks in the fields, drinks Seine water (Paris is downstream), cooks game pies and joins in the fruit-picking, contrives to catch a glimpse of the King at nearby Choisy, and writes quite lyrically of her rural surroundings. Her contentment is actually increased by news of the death in adulterine childbirth of Mme du Châtelet, whom she has long seen as her 'ennemie declarée' (p. 197). Back in Paris, beset by visitors and commissions, she is less at ease again.

Graffigny's most notable expressions of literary enthusiasm here are for the libretti of Metastasio (p. 237), and - in the French translation by La Place - Fielding's Tom Jones. The latter she finds, despite its diffuseness and coarseness, 'le roman le mieux fait que j'aye jamais vu', likening its everyday truth to that of Chardin (p. 368). Her own principal undertakings are two plays. Le Temple de la vertu she composes for performance at and by the Vienna court. The larger project, which she takes up again with the encouragement of her 'Prince Protecteur' Clermont, is the sentimental drama finally entitled Cénie. Repeatedly revising it, she tries it out on members of her circle — who respond with a few criticisms, many tears and great enthusiasm. The cooler reaction of one aristocrat she dismisses on the grounds that a 'talon rouge' cannot know nature; though she proclaims equally that her style is 'noble' (pp. 431, 444). But she is reluctant to allow the play to be submitted for public performance, fearful of being seen as a vulgarly self-promoting author like Mme du Boccage or Voltaire, or being drawn into rivalries and subjected to lampoons. Fascinatingly informative about the complex process and politics of getting a play staged at the Comédie française, her letters eventually celebrate its huge success. But what matters, she affirms, is not literary but personal reputation (which includes '[l]es propos du public'). As she tells Panpan, with her customary flourish, 'Je donnerois un milion en genie pour dix mille franc d'estime personnelle, et je crois etre de l'avis de toutes les ames honnetes' (p. 348). The present volume, like those before it in this series, is admirably edited, annotated, illustrated and indexed. References to reviews of previous volumes can be found in French Studies 60 (2006), 516.