Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet

French literary patron

• Born: 1588
• Birthplace: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)
• Died: December 27, 1655
• Place of death: Paris, France

Arguably the greatest of the Parisian salonnières, or salon hostesses, of the seventeenth century, the marquise de Rambouillet contributed greatly to the amelioration of French mores and manners and to the reformation of French language and literature with her salon, the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

Early Life

Catherine de Vivonne-Savelli, the marquise de Rambouillet (mawr-keez deh rahm-bew-yay), was the daughter of Jean de Vivonne, the marquis de Pisani and French ambassador to the Holy See, and Giulia Savelli, daughter of Clara Strozzi and Cristofo Savelli and a relative of Catherine de Médicis. Few documents survive relating to the marquise’s childhood, but it is said that, while in Rome, the five-year-old Signorina Caterina was often seen in diplomatic circles at the side of her mother, a Roman princess. In Rome, she acquired many of the social skills that were to serve her so well and to make her a cultural icon in her adult life. There, too, she met many of the influential people she would later receive in her salon at the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris.

When the marquise was seven years old, the family left Rome for Paris. They first lived on the rue du Plâtre in the Marais; then, her father bought a home on the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, which would become the Hôtel de Rambouillet after the marquise’s marriage. While living in Paris, her father introduced her to the Valois court and to the previous generation of salonnières, giving the marquise the chance to hear discussions between her father and such scholarly friends as Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Pierre Pithou, and Étienne Pasquier. She probably knew and was influenced by Claude-Catherine de Clermont, a distant relative and hostess at the Hôtel de Dampierre, and by Marguerite of Valois, wife of King Henry IV of France, whose salon was at the Hôtel du Quai Malaquais.

Life’s Work

The marquise’s father died on October 7, 1599, and the following January, she was married at the age of twelve to Charles d’Angennes of Le Mans, who was then twenty-three years old. The couple lived with the marquise’s mother until she died in 1606, when the marquise was eighteen. In 1607, Julie-Lucine was born, the marquise and Charles’s first child of seven. Julie-Lucine would come to play an integral part in the future life of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

As a young wife in a noble family, the marquise took her place in the court of King Henry IV, but she soon extricated herself from court life. This may have been as much because of her fragile health, which impelled her to display her vivacious temperament in the comfort of her own home, as to her revulsion at the coarseness of manners and low intrigues at Henry’s dissolute court. She established her own minicourt, which reflected the greater refinement of the Roman court circles where her father had been ambassador. Here, in her own world, the emphasis was on sophistication, refinement, courtesy, and propriety, within a setting that balanced intellectual and artistic achievements with lighthearted literary games—such as acrostics, anagrams, and conceits—and the performance of literary and musical works, including the fabled singing of Angélique Paulet. The marquise, known as Arthénice from an anagram that poet François de Malherbe made from her given name, Catherine, created an atmosphere of féerique—an enchanted fairyland—far removed from the vulgarities of the royal court.

The marquise de Rambouillet received her “titled” name after her husband inherited the title “marquis de Rambouillet” in 1611, upon the death of his father. From this point on, the house on the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, formerly the Hôtel de Pisani, became known as the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and was thereafter associated with its gracious and intelligent hostess. It would remain one of the most significant centers of French culture during her lifetime.

The marquise renovated the hotel according to her own architectural design. She enlarged the windows so that they extended from floor to ceiling, allowing as much light as possible to pour in and thus highlight the numerous crystal vases she had filled with elaborate flower arrangements. She moved the central staircase to the side of the grand salon and created a series of reception rooms to facilitate intimate conversation. Most celebrated was her chambre bleue (blue room), built so that she could distance herself from the fireplace. The heat from the fire caused her physical distress, but, wanting to participate in the conversations, she had to have the room built. She also used the room to rest and to read for hours on end, for she was a voracious reader. At other times, she would have small gatherings of intimate friends. The chambre bleue became fashionable and soon was emulated by other salonnières, including the French queen Anne of Austria.

Many of the great names of seventeenth century literary France were associated with the Hôtel de Rambouillet, including playwright Pierre Corneille and the poets Paul Scarron, Malherbe, and Vincent Voiture, the hotel’s “poet-in-residence.” Also visiting the salon were several founding members of the Académie Française, established in 1635 by France’s chief minister, Cardinal de Richelieu, including Jean Chapelain, Louis-Guez de Balzac, Voiture, and Claude Favre, seigneur de Vaugelas and author of Remarques sur la langue françoise (1647), a book on the French language. The phrase parler Vaugelas came to signify the act of speaking elegantly.

The marquise’s personality, a model of taste and refinement, informed the life of her salon from its inception. Her salon was a sort of tribunal, where the apposite use of language—le mot juste, appropriate vocabulary and usage—and literary merit were evaluated and judged. One of the attributes that differentiated the Hôtel de Rambouillet from other salons before, during, and after its time was that the marquise valued individuals not for their rank in society but for their intelligence and talents and for their ability to engage in polite conversation, which she raised to an art form that would become an enduring element of French culture.

The life of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, like that of the marquise, fell into three distinct phases, the first extending from its inception to the death of Malherbe in 1628. During this first phase, many salon participants were Italian and Spanish guests of her mother, Giulia Savelli, whose interests ranged beyond purely literary topics to the world of politics and diplomacy.

The second period, called the glorious years, ran from 1628 to 1645 and was cohosted by the marquise’s daughter Julie-Lucine. There were three kinds of gatherings during this second phase. First were the large crowds in the grand salon, then medium-sized groups, which included Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry, Marshall Bassompierre, Madame de Sablé, Madame de La Fayette, and Madame de Motteville. The third group was the most intimate circle, which the marquise received in the alcove of her chambre bleue: Voiture, the princess of Condi; Charles de Montausier (Julie’s future husband); Chapelain, le comte de Guiche; Angélique Paulet; Chaudebonne; Conrart; Godeau; and Madame de Clermont and her daughters.

Julie married Montausier on July 4, 1645, after a thirteen-year courtship. Although the match was encouraged by the marquise and most habitués of the hotel, as well as at court by Richelieu and the queen, the marriage changed the character of the hotel, for it took Julie out of its daily life. Julie’s marriage inaugurated the third period, in which the hotel was affected by the so-called “sonnet controversy” between Isaac de Benserade’s poem “Sonnet sur Job” and Voiture’s “L’Amour d’Uranie avec Philis,” in which Voiture’s supporters gained the upper hand amid vituperative debate. Another event that affected the hotel during this third phase was the bitter faction-fighting of the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1653), setting friends and relatives against each other. By this time, the marquise had experienced many bereavements. She had already lost one son, the vidame of Le Mans, as a seven-year-old, and lost her other son, Léon-Pompée, at the Battle of Nordlingen in 1645. Salon member Voiture died in 1648. In 1652, the marquise lost her husband of more than fifty years.

Arthénice, the legendary hostess, continued maintaining her much-diminished salon until her death in 1665. She had provided an environment that saw the flourishing of conversations among eminent founders of the Académie Française and other habitués regarding the reformation of the French language. She lived long enough, however, to see other salons devolve into précieuse affectation, satirized in Moliere’s Les Précieuses ridicules (pr. 1659, pb. 1660; The Affected Young Ladies, 1732), although it is often forgotten that members of the Hôtel de Rambouillet assisted in its first production.

Significance

Although the marquise de Rambouillet left no literary legacy of her own, she nonetheless played a critical part in the development and success of seventeenth century French letters and culture. Her Hôtel de Rambouillet received and accepted creative people of all backgrounds and social stations. Her salon was a place of gaiety, witnessing the birth of the art of French conversation and the refinement of the French language, letters, and mores. Numerous salons existed after her time, but the marquise de Rambouillet came to be known as the vraie précieuse (truly precious), the quintessential embodiment of the French salonnière.

Bibliography

Aronson, Nicole. Madame de Rambouillet: Ou, La Magicienne de la chambre bleue. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1988. A good modern biography. Little is available in English on the career of the marquise de Rambouillet, but readers of French should consult this work and others listed here.

Cousin, Victor. Société française au XVIIe siècle d’après le Grand Cyrus de Mlle de Scudéry par M Victor Cousin. 2 vols. Paris: Didier et Cie, 1858. An important nineteenth century source.

Keating, Louis Clark. Studies on the Literary Salon in France, 1550-1615. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941. Keating provides background on earlier French salons.

Livet, Charles-Louis. Précieux et précieuses: Caractères et mœurs littéraires du XVIIe siècle. Reprint. Coeuvres-et-Valsery, France: Ressouvenances, 2001. A discussion of seventeenth century literary morals.

Lougée, Carolyn C. Le Paradis de Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. This work provides a social perspective on salons.

Magné, Émile. Voiture et l’Hôtel Rambouillet. 2 vols. Paris, 1912, 1929-1930. A rare in-depth discussion of Voiture’s involvement with the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

Vincent, Leon H. Hôtel de Rambouillet and the Précieuses. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900. A conversational account of the marquise’s Paris salon.

Winn, Colette H., and Donna Kuizenga, eds. Women Writers in Pre-Revolutionary France: Strategies of Emancipation. New York: Garland, 1997. A 454-page collection that explores how women used writing as a means to gain rights, in the years before the eighteenth century. Includes analysis of women and salon culture.