Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné

Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan (10 October 1646 – 13 August 1705), was a French aristocrat, remembered for the letters that her mother, Madame de Sévigné, wrote to her.

Life

Françoise-Marguerite was born in Paris, France, on 10 October 1646, in the fashionable Place des Vosges. She was the first child of Henri de Sévigné and his young wife, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal. Two years later, at the family's Château des Rochers-Sévigné in Brittany, her brother, Charles de Sévigné, was born. In 1651, Henri was killed in a duel over his mistress, Madame de Gondran. Now a widow, the Marquise de Sévigné took her children back to Paris where they came to live with her uncle, l'abbé de Coulanges, in the Marais district.

After her mother became well-established in the royal court of Louis XIV, 17-year-old Françoise-Marguerite made her court debut in the Royal Ballets des Arts, dancing a lead role as a shepherdess alongside Louis, himself, as a shepherd. She was a sensation. Isaac de Benserade referred to Mademoiselle de Sévigné as "A dazzling young beauty". The Marquis de Tréville wrote that she was "a beauty to set the world afire".

Matrimonial prospects presented themselves, but it is likely she repulsed all advances. In a madrigal, made light of the situation: "And so the world is just too small / To find in it anyone at all / Who could be deemed worthy of her. / And the belle, knowing it well, / Disdains all, finds none acceptable."

When Françoise-Marguerite reached the relatively advanced age of 23 without a husband, her mother began to despair of ever marrying off her daughter. However, on 4 December 1668, Madame de Sévigné wrote to her cousin Bussy, "At long last, the prettiest girl in France is marrying – not the prettiest boy – but one of the most honest men in the kingdom: he is Monsieur de Grignan".

François Adhémar de Monteil, comte de Grignan, 36 years old and twice a widower, from a Provençal family, was ugly (his ugliness being a frequent family joke), yet tall, graceful, athletic, and charming. By all indications, he and Mademoiselle de Sévigné had fallen in love. They married in Paris on 27 January 1669.