Jean François de Saint-Lambert
Encyclopedia
Jean François de Saint-Lambert (26 December 1716 – 9 February 1803) was a French poet and military officer, but he is most remembered for his involvement in two love affairs.

He was born at Nancy and raised on his parents' estate at Affracourt
Affracourt
Affracourt is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.As of 1999 the population of Affracourt is 114; inhabitants are called Affracurtiens....

, a village in Lorraine
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....

 near Haroué
Haroué
Haroué is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.-Historical Features:The Château de Haroué was constructed between 1720 and 1732 by Germain Boffrand for Prince Marc de Beauvau, Viceroy of Tuscany. The architect had to integrate into his plans the four towers and the...

, a seat of the Beauvau family
Beauvau family
The Beauvau family was a historic family originating in Anjou. The Beauvau du Rivau branch was rooted in Brittany and produced two bishops of Nantes, whilst the Beauvau-Craon branch was established in Lorraine....

, with whom he had close ties. He studied at the university at Pont-à-Mousson
Pont-à-Mousson
Pont-à-Mousson is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.Population : 14,592 . It is an industrial town , situated on the Moselle River...

, but then spent several years at home recovering from an unidentified illness. He often complained of poor health, but participated in military campaigns, led a strenuous social life, and lived to be 86 years old.

Saint-Lambert began writing poetry in his adolescence and belonged to the circle around Françoise de Graffigny
Françoise de Graffigny
Françoise de Graffigny, née d'Issembourg Du Buisson d'Happoncourt was a French novelist, playwright and salon hostess....

 in Lunéville
Lunéville
Lunéville is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in France.It is a sub-prefecture of the department and lies on the Meurthe River.-History:...

. By October 1733 he had already begun work on The Seasons, his major poetical work, which did not appear in print until 1769 (see 1769 in poetry
1769 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, The Siege of Jerusalem* Thomas Chatterton:...

). All his life, he read his works in salons
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

 and to his friends, but did not rush to publish them.

In 1739, Saint-Lambert joined the Heudicourt regiment in the Lorraine Guards, in which his boyhood friend, Charles-Just, prince de Beauvau-Craon
Charles-Just de Beauvau
Charles Juste de Beauvau , 2nd Prince of Beauvau , Marshal of France was a French scholar, nobleman and general...

, was already a colonel, despite being only 19 years old. For much of the 1740s the two men fought side by side in the Italian campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession  – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...

.

Saint-Lambert spent the winter quarter in Lunéville in 1745-46, and according to François-Antoine Devaux
François-Antoine Devaux
François-Antoine Devaux was a Lorraine poet and man of letters. He was called Panpan by his friends.-Life:...

, he became at that time the lover of the Marquise de Boufflers
Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon
Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon, marquise de Boufflers , commonly known as Madame de Boufflers, was a French noblewoman...

. She was a sister of the prince de Beauvau, and the mistress of Stanislaus Leszczynski, who had been established in 1737 as duke of Lorraine.

Over the winter of 1747-48, Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

 and his entourage took up residence in Lunéville. Saint-Lambert soon began a liaison with the great writer's mistress, Émilie du Châtelet
Émilie du Châtelet
-Early life:Du Châtelet was born on 17 December 1706 in Paris, the only daughter of six children. Three brothers lived to adulthood: René-Alexandre , Charles-Auguste , and Elisabeth-Théodore . Her eldest brother, René-Alexandre, died in 1720, and the next brother, Charles-Auguste, died in 1731...

. She was in her forties, and had had many lovers, but succumbed to a mad passion for Saint-Lambert and became pregnant with his child. The baby, a girl named Stanislas-Adélaïde Du Châtelet, was born on 4 September 1749 in what at first seemed an easy delivery; but Émilie contracted a fever and died on 10 September. The infant died in Lunéville on 6 May 1751.

Émilie was a brilliant and learned woman, known all over Europe for her translation of Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

. Her love affair and pregnancy created scandal and inspired satirical mirth; her death was a shock to everyone. Voltaire was shattered, and according to his friend Devaux, so was Saint-Lambert, who nonetheless moved to Paris around 1750 and to all appearances soon recovered from his grief.

It was at this time that he gave himself the title Marquis de Saint-Lambert, to which he had no right; it was once claimed that he was not even of noble birth, but the evidence refuting that charge was published long ago.

In 1752 he began the second of his two famous love affairs, with Sophie d'Houdetot. This relationship became noteworthy because in 1757, while Saint-Lambert was away on military duty in the Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...

, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

 suddenly conceived a mad passion for Sophie, which he wrote about in his Confessions
Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions...

. In Rousseau's mind, she became identified with a character in the great novel he was then writing, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. In the end, Sophie turned Rousseau away, saying that she loved Saint-Lambert. She and Saint-Lambert remained together as a couple until his death in 1803, spending their last years in a cordial ménage à trois
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...

with her husband.

Saint-Lambert resigned from the army in 1758 and devoted the rest of his life to literature. He wrote several articles for Diderot's Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...

, published an essay on "Luxury" in 1764, brought out an edition of The Seasons with a selection of his other poetry and some short stories in 1769, and completed a multi-volume philosophical work in 1797-98, called Principe des mœurs chez toutes les nations ou Catéchisme universel (Principle of morals among all nations, or universal catechism). He was elected to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 in 1770.

At best, Saint-Lambert's poetry is workmanlike and conventional, typical of an age that produced little memorable poetry. His writings on society, politics and moral philosophy are derivative, a pale reflection of the ideas of the Philosophes he lived among. He and Sophie outlived most of their contemporaries, however, and around 1800 members of a new generation wrote about them as relics of a legendary past. Count Louis-Mathieu Molé described the fabled lover as "a little old man dressed in a hideous cotton dressing gown with a pattern of blue stripes and red bouquets, a wispy cotton bonnet on his head, using a cane walking stick with a gold knob as tall as he was to support his wobbly steps." Chateaubriand used the couple as symbols of a discredited era, when he wrote that they "both represented the opinions and the freedoms of a by-gone age, carefully stuffed and preserved: it was the eighteenth century expired and married in its manner. It was sufficient to remain steadfast in one's life for illegitimacies to become legitimacies."
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