bron: Greig’s Letters:<\/p>\n
Hippolyte de Saujeon, Comtesse de Boufflers (for the ‘Rouverel’ was generally omitted), must be distinguished both from the Duchesse de Boufflers, a member of the Luxembourg family, and from the Marquise de Boufflers, mother of the celebrated chevalier of that name. All contemporary records are agreed in describing her as singularly beautiful in youth and middle age. When David Hume met her first, in 1763, she was thirty-nine, looked thirty, and had all the freshness of complexion of a girl of twenty. She had then been married since the year 1745. But we hear nothing of her husband till he died, in 1764. In 1751, Louis-Fran\u00e1\u00a7ois de Bourbon (1717-76), Prince de Conti, had taken her as his principal mistress, and although this relationship had not endured many years, she still retained his friendship and still acted as his hostess in the Temple, his official residence in Paris, and at l’Isle Adam, his country house.
\np xxiv
\nIn addition to her beauty, she was noted for her wit, learning, literary judgement, and love of paradox. She read, wrote, and spoke English, and she led the Anglophiles in Paris. The public voice ascribed to her the authorship of two books, De l’amiti\u00e9 and Des passions. She denied this.\u2020\u00a01 There is no doubt, however, that she wrote plays, which she kept in manuscript and showed to special friends.
\np xxiv
\n‘She is two women, the upper and the lower,’ says Horace Walpole. ‘I need not tell you that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just and pleasing–but all is spoiled by an unrelaxing attention to applause. You would think she was always sitting for her picture to her biographer.’\u2020\u00a02
\np xxiv
\nWith this should be compared her own statement: ‘Je veux rendre \u00e1\u00a0 la vertu par mes paroles ce que je lui \u00e1\u00b4te par mes actions.’\u2020\u00a03
\np xxiv
\nIt will be seen from Letter 1 in Appendix E that it was she who made the first approach in the friendship that grew up between her and David Hume. After corresponding intermittently for two and a half years, they met when Hume arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1763. Then ensued a relationship which is nearly as difficult to define as that between Horace Walpole and the old, blind and sharp-tongued Marquise du Deffand. That it passed the bounds of mere friendship is, I think, beyond doubt. Mme de Verdelin reported Hume ‘amoureux fou de Mme de B.’.\u2020\u00a01 Be that true or false, there are signs that at one time Mme de Boufflers tried her best to make him fall in love with her. The affair distracted, flattered, and at length frightened him; for it threatened what he cherished more than life itself–his independence. Even when under her spell, he felt it irksome; while she, for her part, enjoyed playing, now the coquette, now the femme savante, now the great lady far above him in the social scale, now the forsaken mistress, and now the humble pupil of her ‘ma\u00e1\u00aetre de philosophie et de morale’.
\np xxv
\nBy the summer of 1764 the situation had become difficult. Hume was very near surrendering completely, changing his nationality, and settling down for life in France as the acknowledged ‘friend’ of his divine countess.\u2020\u00a02 This must have been apparent to his real friends of long standing, when they met and talked with him. Hence Gilbert Elliot’s alarm in his letter of 15th September 1764 from Brussels. And Hume’s anxiety is given away by the quite unnecessary vehemence with which he answered.
\np xxv
\nAs it happened, a single unforeseen event changed the whole complexion of affairs. M. le Comte de Boufflers died. His widow then forgot everything that she had said to David Hume, and grew obsessed with one ambition–to marry her former lover, the Prince de Conti. This, it seems, helped to cure Hume of his infatuation, as it well might. For she now shamelessly made use of him as go-between. And by the time her hopes had nearly vanished–they never quite vanished till the Prince’s death in 1776–Hume was safely out of reach of her uncommon fascination.
\np xxv
\nAnd he carefully remained out of reach. Though he had promised all his friends in Paris to return, as soon as he had settled Rousseau to his mind in England, he never did return; though he said that he disliked London and expressed contempt for the ‘Barbarians’ who dwelt in that town, he invented one excuse and then another for remaining in their midst. His excuses carry no conviction. For his unavowed reason was his fear of slipping once again under the spell of the divine countess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
bron: Greig’s Letters: Hippolyte de Saujeon, Comtesse de Boufflers (for the ‘Rouverel’ was generally omitted), must be distinguished both from the Duchesse de Boufflers, a member of the Luxembourg family, and from the Marquise de Boufflers, mother of the celebrated chevalier of that name. All contemporary records are agreed in describing her as singularly beautiful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,229],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1161,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archief.somtijds.nl\/hume-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}