A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/L'Enclos, (Anne de)
L'ENCLOS (ANNE DE), called Ninon De L'enclos; died 1705, aged 90 and 5 months.
Her father was a gentleman of Touraine. He made her early acquainted with the best authors, and taught her himself to play upon the lute, which she did to perfection. Being a man of pleasure, he inspired her with the same taste, yet did not omit giving her lessons of probity and honour. Her mother was a religious woman, and used to take her to church; but she always contrived to carry some amusing book with her, which she read during service. This extraordinary woman appears to have been inimitable for the charms of her person and manners; Her mind was highly polished; yet with powers of reasoning to make her respected by the sage; she knew how to blend refinement with gaiety, candour and sensibility with acknowledged looseness of principle and life. During a long life, she was the admiration of the world around her, and amidst all the changes of fashion and time maintained her influence. The distinguished, whether for birth or talents, sought her society for the gratification it afforded them; the young and aspiring, in hopes of being thereby polished and instructed.
Voltaire says, that her father was a player upon the lute, and that cardinal Richelieu was her first admirer, and settled on her a pension of 2000 livres, no small sum at that time. Others say, it was the young Coligny, duke de Chatillon, who was a Calvinist, and with whom Ninon would argue for hours to detach him from that faith, which most likely she thought prejudicial to his interest. He abjured Calvinism accordingly in 1694. They had at first sworn eternal fidelity; but finding the sentiment die in her heart, Ninon for the future determined that in friendship only it was necessary to be faithful.
As she was not rich, she permitted her guests to bring with them their separate dishes to her suppers, which were frequented by the first wits of the age. This was not an unusual custom in France. Amongst the wits who obtained this privilege was St. Evremond, who wrote a verse under her picture, signifying, that wise and indulgent nature had formed her heart with the principles of Epicurus, and the virtue of Cato.
She was called the modern Leontium, from her philosophical knowledge, which received additional charms from her wit. At the age of twenty-two, she had a fit of illness, which was believed mortal; and when her friends lamented that she should be thus snatched away in the prime of life, she exclaimed—"Ah! I leave only dying people in the world!" A gentleman who was deeply enamoured of her, not being able to inspire any return, in his indignation wrote some lines, in which he said, he without trouble renounced his love, which had lent her charms she did not in reality possess. Ninon immediately wrote an answer in the same measure, saying, that if love lent charms, why did he not borrow some?
With her friend, Marion de Lormes, Ninon thus led a licentious life; but the death of her mother, who was a virtuous and pious woman, with her entreaties and advice, seemed to change her heart all at once. She fled to a convent, to expiate her errors by penitence; but the good impression she had imbibed vanished with her grief, and she came back to the world, which received her with new admiration.
After the death of Richelieu and Louis XIII. the first years of the regency were marked by every species of dissipation; according to the description of St. Evremond, the friend of Ninon, "error was no longer called evil, and vice was named pleasure." Yet the queen at one time had an intention of shutting her up in a convent, but her numerous friends prevented it; and the troubles which soon arose in Paris, induced her to leave it with the Marquis de Villarceaux, with whom she retired to a seat distant from Paris, and remained three years, to the astonishment of every body. At the end of the civil war they returned, and Ninon found her father dying, who tried to strengthen those principles he had first instilled into her mind, saying he only regretted that he had enjoyed so few pleasures in proportion to what he might have had. He advised her, on the contrary, not to be scrupulous in the number, but the choice of them. The security in which he appeared to die, was a consolation to his daughter, and she arranged her little patrimony with great prudence, sinking the principal, so that she had 7 or 8000 livres annually. One motive for doing this was, the resolution she had made never to marry.
The poet Scarron was in the number of her friends, and because his infirmities kept him at home, and poverty made people slight him, she would often stay at his house several days together, by which means it was filled with the polite and the learned. She now found him married to Mademoiselle D'Aubigné, with whom she commenced an intimate friendship, although the latter robbed her of the heart of de Villarceaux.
One of her lovers having left Paris, confided to Ninon 10,000 crowns, and the like sum to a penitentiary, famous for the austerity of his manners. On his return to reclaim it, the latter affected not to understand him, saying they received money only as gifts for the poor. When the young man came to Ninon, she cried out, "I have had a misfortune in your absence." He supposed she was going to announce to him the loss of the money, but she continued, "I am sorry for you, if you still love me, for I no longer love you; but there is the money you confided to me." They then vowed an eternal friendship. Once when a gentleman was recounting his own good qualities, to court her favour, she answered, "Heavens! how many virtues you make hateful to me."
Moliere was introduced to the acquaintance of Ninon, by Chapelle. Rediscovered in her, as he said, the essence of all talents, and the knowledge of all ages, and regarded her taste for ridicule as the most perfect he had ever met with. But, amidst the adoration of lovers and the praise of wits, Ninon was not every where triumphant. Wishing to draw all that were distinguished or great into her toils, she wanted to captivate a celebrated preacher, and pretending to be ill, sent for him as if for spiritual consolation; but, on his arrival, he found her attired with elegance, and surrounded by luxury. She practised all her graces; but to the truly good man they appeared contemptible, and to her confusion, he said: "I see that your malady is in your heart and mind, in person you appear in perfect health; I beseech the Great Physician of souls to cure you!" and left her covered with shame and confusion.
When she was past sixty, a more serious evil befel her. A son of hers had been educated under the name of the chevalier de Villiers, without being made acquainted with his birth. To finish his education, his father introduced him into her society, to learn those inimitable graces, and that charm which she alone possessed. The unhappy young man became her admirer; and, when she was thus forced to reveal to him who he was, he rushed from her, into the garden, and either struck with horror at himself, or mortified at the discovery of his dishonourable birth, fell upon his sword. Ninon saw him expiring, and would have destroyed herself, had she not been prevented. She had another son, who died 1723, at Rochelle, where he was commissary of Marines.
After this accident, she began to change her manner of life. She laid aside the familiar name of Ninon, and purchased a new house in the Rue des Tournelles, near the Place Royal, where her company was sought by the most respectable and brilliant of her own sex, as well as the other, amongst whom was Madame de Sévigné, La Fayette, and de Sabliere, &c. who preferred her company to the most brilliant societies. Amongst the men were Rochefoucault and St. Evremond, who said of her, that "nature had begun to shew it was possible not to grow old." Though at the common age of decrepitude, she had none of its ugliness—she had still all her teeth, and almost all the fire of her eyes; so that in her last years you might read her history in them.
She always remained the same, an Epicurean by principle, though she preserved more correct outward manners, and frequented the church. Madame de Maintenon, in her elevation, did not forget her old friend, and offered her, if she would become seriously devout, apartments at Versailles; but Ninon was satisfied with her present fortune, and said it was too late in life for her to learn to dissemble. Yet, to gratify the king, who wished to see her, she went one day to the royal chapel.
Some of her letters are in St. Evremond's collection; but others were published, which were not genuine.
She predicted the future fame of Voltaire, and left him a little legacy to buy books.
The abbé de Chateauneuf made an epitaph upon her, of which this is a translation:
There is nothing which death does not conquer.
Ninon, who more than an age has served love,
Now submits to his power;
She was the honour and the shame of her sex.
Inconstant in her desires,
Refined in her pleasures,
A faithful and wise friend,
A tender, but capricious lover;
Delicacy and gallantry both reigned in her heart, and
showed the power of a combination of the charms
of Venus, and the sense of an angel.