Madeleine Angélique Neufville de Villeroy

Madeleine-Angélique Neufville de Villeroy (born October 1707 in Paris ; died January 24, 1787 there ) was a French salonnière .

Life

She was the granddaughter of François de Neufville, 2nd Duke of Villeroy and daughter of Louis Nicolas VI. de Neufville, 3rd Duke of Villeroy (1663–1734) and his wife Marguerite Le Tellier de Louvois (1678–1711), daughter of the Marquis de Louvois . Her parents married on April 23, 1694, and she grew up with two older brothers and an older sister.

Madeleine-Angélique Neufville married Joseph Marie, Duke of Boufflers (1706–1747), a year older than Joseph Marie, at the age of just fourteen on September 15, 1721 . From the marriage the son Charles (1731–1751) emerged, who became Duke of Boufflers. During this time as Duchesse de Boufflers she was said to have had many affairs; their social activities were perceived as scandalous by Versailles standards. She had a malicious tongue and knew how to respond quickly to hostility. According to a contemporary characterization, she was “beautiful and without self-doubt […] She has spirit and exhilaration, is constant in obligations, loyal to her friends, truthful, discreet, helpful, generous; she would be perfect if only men were less ridiculous or if she were not so perceptive herself. ”According to a popular mockery at court, however, she was“ the mother of love ”who tried to satisfy everyone:

"Quand Boufflers parut à la cour,
On crut voir la mère d'amour:
Chacun s'empressait de lui plaire,
Et chacun l'avait à son tour. »

- attributed to: Louis-Élisabeth de la Vergne de Tressan

After the death of her husband in 1747, she married the second marriage on June 29, 1750, Charles François II. De Montmorency-Luxembourg (1702–1764), Marshal of France and one of her most prominent lovers. This marriage caused quite a stir, but as “Marshal of Luxembourg” she radically changed her lifestyle. After 1750 she ran a reputable and highly exclusive salon both in Paris and in Montmorency , in which the Grande Dame herself resided like a queen. Sometimes she gave pure men's salons because she thought the women were not very entertaining. Here she had to contend with prejudices about her past, but in her salon, which took place regularly between 1774 and 1787, Talleyrand , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Voltaire , La Harpe , among others , frequented her ; it was later mentioned frequently in correspondence and memoirs and in 1775 was one of the ten most frequented salons for diplomatic circles.

The marshal and her husband repeatedly sheltered Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom they helped to escape according to his novel Emile , published in 1762 . Rousseau wrote that her beauty coupled with the reputation of her spite made him shudder, but that she had convinced him of her naturalness and honesty in conversation. He declined her offer to recommend him for the Académie française . In 1760, Rousseau also described her granddaughter and future heir Amélie de Boufflers (1751–1794, daughter of Charles de Boufflers), who spent a lot of time in Montmorency in the presence of her grandmother.

literature

• Hippolyte Buffenoir: La maréchale de Luxembourg (1707–1787). Paris 1924.
• Stéphanie Félicité Genlis: Les soupers de la Maréchale de Luxembourg dédiés à mr. le Vicomte de Larochefoucauld. Paris 1828.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Family tree on Geneanet
2. ^ ^{A b} Maurice Cranston: The Noble Savage. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Chicago 1991. p. 158 ff.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Émile Laurent: Ruelles, salons et cabarats. Histoire anecdotique de la littérature française . tape 2 . Primento, 2015, ISBN 2-335-04800-7 ( preview in Google Book Search).
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures. Sebastian Lux Verlag, Munich 1963, p. 304.
5. ^ Antoine Lilti: Le monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIII ^e siècle. 2005. ISBN 2-213-65182-5 . Pp. 40, 54 ff.