A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Epinay, Louise d'
EPINAY, LOUISE D'
Celebrated for her connection with Rousseau, was the daughter of M. Sardieu Desclavelles, who lost his life in Flanders, in the service of Louis the Fifteenth, and left his family in moderate circumstances. She married M. Delalive de Bellegarde, who received the office of farmer-general. The extravagance of M. Delalive soon disturbed their happiness, and his indifference to the conduct of his wife was equalled by his own dissolute life, and no doubt influenced hers. She gathered around her a distinguished circle, which though neither brilliant nor renowned, was free and natural. Here the man of learning consented to doff his philosophical armour, through which posterity has found it so difficult to discern his real features; and here authors, artists, and men and women of the world, met without restraint. Possessed of judgment and penetration, Madame d'Epinay had neither originality nor imagination. Her mind was of that plastic order which led her to yield to the opinions of those in whose intimacy she lived; and she never attempted to exercise over her circle a control for which her good sense told her she was little adapted. Hume, Diderot, D'Holbach, and Grimm, were habitués of her society. It is to her connection with Rousseau, however, that she owes the interest attached to her name, and the attention she excited in her own time. The details of their intimacy and quarrel for some time occupied all Paris, Madame d'Epinay was constantly engaged in some literary labour. In 1783, she wrote "Les Conversations d'Emilie," which obtained the prize offered by Monthieu for useful works of that kind, in preference to the "Adèle et Theodore" of Madame de Genlis. She also wrote "Lettres a mon Fils," and "Mes Moments Heureux." An abridgment of her letters and correspondence, shewing her relations with Duclos, Rousseau, Grimm, Holbach, Lambert, etc., appeared in Paris, in 1818. Madame d'Epinay died in 1783