LOUISE

See also:

• FLORENCE
• FLORENCE (Ital. Firenze, Lat. Florentia)

FLORENCE PETRONILLE TARDIEU

See also:

• LOUISE FLORENCE PETRONILLE TARDIEU EPINAY

EPINAY  D'ESCLAVELLES D' (1726-1783), French writer, was born at Valenciennes on the 11th of March 1726 . She is well known on account of her liaisons with Rousseau and Baron von Grimm, and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach and other French men of letters . Her father, Tardieu d'Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when she was nineteen; and she married her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live . d'Epinay, who was made a collector-general of taxes . The marriage was an unhappy one; and Louise d'Epinay believed that the prodigality, dissipation and infidelities of her husband justified her in obtaining a formal separation in 1749 . She settled in the chateau of La Chevrette in the valley of Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished visitors . Conceiving a strong attachment for J . J . Rousseau, she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a cottage which she named the "Hermitage," and in this retreat he found for a time the quiet and natural rural pleasures he praised so highly . Rousseau, in his Confessions, affirmed that the inclination was all on her side; but as,' after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements on this point . Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette . In 1757–1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire . In Grimm's absence from France (1775–1776), Madame d'Epinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns .

She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small

house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm -and of a small circle of men of letters . She died on the 17th of April 1783 . Her Conversations d'Emilie (1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, Emilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783 . The Memoires et Correspondance de Mme d'Epinay, renfermant un grand nombre de lettres inedites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J.-J . Rousseau, ainsi que des details, &c., was published at Paris (1818) from a MS. which she had bequeathed to Grimm . The Memoires are written by herself in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance . Madame d'Epinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and Rene is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Garner as Diderot . All the letters and documents published along with the Memoires are genuine . Many of Madame d'Epinay's letters are contained in the Correspondance de l'abbe Galiani (1818) . Two anonymous works, Lettres a mon fils (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments heureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Epinay . See Rousseau's Confessions ; Lucien Perey [Mlle Herpin] and Gaston Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme d'Epinay, les dernieres annees de Mme d'Epinay (1882–1883); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.; Edmond Scherer, Etudes sur la litterature contemporaine, vols. iii. and vii . There are editions of the Memoires by L .

Enault (1855) and by P . Boiteau (1865); and an

English translation, with introduction and notes (;897), by J . H . Freese .