Mademoiselle De
Launai, &c. i.e. Letters of Mademoiselle De Launai (Madame De Staal) to the Chevalier De Ménil, to the Marquis
De Silly, and to A.
M. D'Hericourt; to which are added those of M. De Chaulieu to Mademoiselle De Launai, and a Portraiture of the Dutchess Du
Maine. 2 Vols. 12mo. Paris. 1806. Imported by De Conchy, London. 1
In order to obtain some information respecting the author of these letters, the
reader is referred to the Memoirs of Madame de Staal, as published in 2 vols. in 1783.—We there learn that Mademoiselle de Launai, by one of the many whimsical incidents which constituted her motley destiny,
found herself at an early period a prisoner in the Bastile; to which very interesting confinement (as it ultimately proved) she
was introduced by her patroness the Duchess Du Maine:
who, having quarreled with the French Court, applied for redress to the Spanish
Government; a measure which so irritated the Regent of France, M. D’Orléans, that he ordered her dispatches to be seized,
and the Duchess to be sent to the Citadel of Dijon; while Mademoiselle de Launai, her protégée, for having assisted in destroying
some tell-tale manuscripts, was conveyed to the Bastile. To this event, however
unpromising in speculation, Mlle.
de Launai appears to have owed the most endearing pleasures of her life. Love, who seems
never to have lost sight of her for a moment, provided a resource against that ennui
which is so notoriously irksome to the captive, that we are not without examples of
the most ingenious devices employed by the solitary inmates of a prison to “whip the
lagging moments into speed.” We have heard of a man cultivated an acquaintance with
a
spider, and extracted a kind of pleasure even from
his society. How fortunate, then, may we pronounce Mademoiselle de Launai who found something so much better than even Arachne herself, in the form of a
handsome knight, the Chevalier De Menil, who had been
sent to the same prison for his devotion to the Duke Du
Maine. To this intercourse, for they had never previously said a word to[Page 542] each other, we are indebted for the greatest part of the letters
contained in the two volumes before us.
Correspondence between lovers immured in a prison we must admit to be invaluable
to
the Pyramus and Thisbe themselves: they could, no doubt, repeat the same tale,
decorate with the same glowing language the same sentiments, and never tire each
other: but the reader, if not in love, sickens at the platitude of the cooing pens of poor captives, the locality of whose
situation necessarily precluded all communication with the world at large. Hence,
the
scanty occurrences of the Bastile furnished Mademoiselle de Launai with no subjects of intelligence but such as love supplied. We have a sanction
for our remarks in the description of these letters given in an extract from Madame de Staal's memoirs, affixed to this publication, where she thus speaks of them
herself:
The little incidents which they contain form the substance of this adventure;
they are the actual events which attest their truth, and the sources in which I
have recovered some circumstances that had escaped me. They will supply the place
of our conversations, always disturbed by fear, abridged by prudence, more short
and less continued than our epistolary correspondence, and almost entirely effaced
from my memory.
Our confinement, in a place in which we had no employment, occasioned the
production of a countless multitude of letters. That passion, which I believed
myself capable of cherishing without offering any outrage to reason or virtue, I
expressed without offering any outrage to a reason or virtue, I expressed without
any reserve. I spoke to a person to whom I considered myself as already united by
the most sacred ties, waiting only for the termination of our captivity in order
to render our enjoyment legal and indissoluble.
Notwithstanding this want of general interest, and of novelty, the letters possess
much merit. The language is correct and elegant; the sentiments are dignified and
moral; and though occasionally impassioned, they are always delicately chaste, and
apparently dictated by good sense and amiable dispositions.
The correspondence of Mademoiselle
de Launai with the Marquis De Silly, and with Monsieur D’Héricourt when she had become Madame de
Staal, equally deserves our approbation on the same ground of merit; and we are
indebted to the editor who obliges us with these posthumous credentials of the genius
which we formerly admired.
In a note, we meet with a sort of biographical table, which may be considered as an
useful memorandum, and we shall therefore copy it:
[Page 543]
| Mesdames | La Suzè | born | 1618 | died | 1673 |
| Villedieu | — | 1640 | — | 1683 | |
| De Motteville | — | 1615 | — | 1689 | |
| De Montpensier | — | 1627 | — | 1693 | |
| La Fayette | — | 1634 | — | 1693 | |
| Deshoulieres | — | 1638 | — | 1694 | |
| Sévigné | — | 1626 | — | 1696 | |
| Scudery | — | 1607 | — | 1701 | |
| Ninon | — | 1618 | — | 1705 | |
| Maintenon | — | 1635 | — | 1719 | |
| Dacier | — | 1651 | — | 1720 | |
| De Lambert | — | 1647 | — | 1733 | |
| Duchâtelet | — | 1706 | — | 1749 | |
| De Launai | (about) | 1693 | (de Staal) |
1750 | |
| Dumaine | — | 1676 | — | 1753 | |
| De Graffigny | — | 1694 | — | 1758 | |
| Riccoboni | — | 1734 | — | 1792 |
These volumes form part of a series of epistolary works now publishing in France,
consisting of letters from celebrated French ladies in the last two centuries.