Adélaïde Filleul

Entry by Francesco Schiariti, 2006

Second daughter to Irène de Buisson de Longpré and Charles Filleul, the future Mme de Souza was born on the 14th of May 1761. Her father was appointed Secretary to the King and moved to Paris. Their elder daughter married the Marquis de Marigny, who was the brother of Mme de Pompadour. In his Mémoires, Marmontel praised Mme Filleul and her eldest daughter. Yet, he mentions nothing about a discreet husband, who, ruined, committed suicide in 1772, five years after the death of his wife. Sent to a convent where she was given rather basic education, their second daughter, Adélaïde, found herself with no means of support. In 1779, Mme de Marigny arranged her marriage to Alexandre de Flahaut, comte de la Billiarderie. A former serviceman, he became intendant of the King’s gardens in 1788. They set up house in the district of the Old Louvre, and the young Adelaïde opened a salon, where she was able to bring together a circle of cosmopolitan friends, including, among others, friends from Narbonne and from Lauzun, the Comte de Ségur, the Comte de Guibert, Condorcet, Dellile, the Countess of Albany (who became her intimate friend), and Governor Morris, whose Journal serves as the greatest testament to this time in the life of Mme de Flahaut. According to him, as a supporter of the constitutional monarchy, she exerted a great influence in certain social circles at the time of the Revolution. In 1792, when Mme de Filleul decided to emigrate to London with her son Charles, whose real father was Talleyrand, her husband did not follow them. In 1794, he was sent to the guillotine. At this time, his widow published a novel, Adèle de Senage, which brought her some financial relief. On her journey as an emigrant, the novelist was, at one point, companion to Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. During this time, she met Baron de Souza-Bothelho, a Portuguese diplomat, whom she met again upon her return to France in 1797. They were married in 1802 and lived an idyllic life as a couple. She shared with her book-loving husband a taste for literature and, under Imperial Rule, ran a salon attended by Morrelet, Suard and Sisimondi. When the Bourbons returned to power, Charles de Flahaut, an ardent Bonapartist, sought exile in England. His mother, once again widowed in 1825, enjoyed a peaceful old age dedicated to writing and to the education of her grandson, future Duke of Morny and son of Charles and Queen Hortense of Holland. Adélaïde died in Paris on the 16th of April 1836.

The majority of Adélaïde de Filleul’s novels are set during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. So it is that Eugène de Rothelin, one of her most appreciated texts, describes life in high society pre-1789, through both sensitive and delicate characters. Besides, her work Émilie et Alphonse sets the scene for a character who is the equivalent of the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons. However, Mme de Souza was unable to depict evil in her work. Indeed, she shows herself to be more comfortable when describing events that take place within the inner circle of a family. This setting forms the intrigue of her works Eugénie et Mathilde, Charles et Marie, Adèle de Sénange and Eugène de Rothelin. The themes she explores in her novels are recurring ones: that of family, of education (Charles et Marie features the same theme as Eugénie et Mathilde, in that the author draws a parallel between three different upbringings), and of the pleasures of being virtuous. Furthermore, her choice of literary form is very often always the same. Mme de Souza writes mainly epistolary novels, from monodic, with a single narrator (Adèle de Sénange) to polyphonic, with many narrators (Émilie et Alphonse) or semi-autobiographical novels, such as Eugène de Rothelin. These works highlight the importance of subjectivity. This is a concept which the author masters spectacularly well. This deep sense of coherence, which can also be explained by the fact that the author is very often inspired by her own experience (she describes her life as an immigrant in Eugénie et Mathilde and makes the convent where she grew up the setting for a number of her texts) does not prevent her works from being subject to many different sources of influence. On the one hand, she makes use of the novels of Fanny Burney as inspiration for her novel Charles et Marie. On the other, she is influenced by the trend in gothic literature when writing Émilie et Alphonse. The aristocratic and literary career led by Mme de Souza was exemplary, in that she avoided as far as possible the label of the ‘learned woman’ as much as she did that of the ‘loose woman’. Truly negative opinions about her are very rare, even if she served as the model for Mme d’Arbigny, the manipulative French woman in Mme de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807). Most often, she is described as the symbol of commitment to the Old Regime. Today, her works are seldom published, and her rarely commented on, with the exception of her novel Adèle de Sénange.

(translated by Dominique Mason)

Works

- 1788? : Adèle de Sénange ou Lettres de Lord Sydenham, Londres, Debrett, Hookham, Edwards, De Boeffe, 1794 -- dans Romans de femmes du XVIIIe siècle, éd. Raymond Trousson, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1996, p.567-672.
- 1799 : Émilie et Alphonse, ou le danger de se livrer à ses premières impressions, Paris, Pougens.
- 1802 : Charles et Marie, Paris, Maradan.
- 1808 : Eugène de Rothelin, Paris, H. Nicolle.
- 1811 : Eugénie et Mathilde, ou Mémoires de la famille du comte de Rével, Paris, F. Schoell.
- 1820 : Mademoiselle de Tournon, Paris, Firmin Didot.
- 1821 : La Comtesse de Fargy, Paris, A. Eymery, 1823 (le titre du t.III porte la date de 1822).
- 1821? : Aglaé, dans OEuvres complètes, Paris, A. Eymery, 1821-1822.
- 1831 : La Duchesse de Guise, ou Intérieur d'une famille illustre pendant la Ligue (drame en 3 actes), Paris, C. Gosselin, 1832.
- 1832-1836? : Louis XII, inachevé et inédit.

Selected bibliography

- Fassioto, Marie-Josée, «La comtesse de Flahaut et son cercle. Un exemple de salon politique sous la Révolution», dans Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 303, 1992, p.344-348.
- Louichon, Brigitte, «Lire Adèle de Sénange de Madame de Souza: point de vue masculin, point de vue féminin», dans Féminités et masculinités dans le texte narratif avant 1800. La question du«gender», dir. Suzan van Dijk, Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau, Louvain/Paris, Peeters, 2002, p.403-415.
- Maricourt, André de, Madame de Souza et sa famille, Paris, Émile-Paul Éditeur, 1903.
- Trousson Raymond, «Introduction à Adèle de Sénange», dans Romans de femmes du XVIIIe siècle, éd. R. Trousson, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1996, p.553-566.
- Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin de, «Madame de Souza», dans Portraits de femmes, Paris, Gallimard, [1836] 1998, p.555-566.

Selected bibliography of images

- 1785 (Salon) : Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, La comtesse de Flahaut et son fils (huile sur toile) Jersey, coll. part.

Reception

- «Ce roman [Adèle de Sénange] commença et fit la réputation de son auteur. Il parut dans le temps où nous étions inondés de ces sombres productions des romanciers anglais, qui croient plaire avec des spectres et des horreurs, et comme il n'a rien d'un si lugubre appareil, comme tous les ressorts en sont simples, il reposa agréablement de ces compositions tristes et convulsives. Mais il ne dut pas le grand succès qu'il obtint à ce seul contraste; il le dut surtout à l'intérêt de l'action, à l'ingénuité des caractères, à la légèreté du style, l'art des développements, enfin à la découverte de ces nuances fines, de ces sentiments délicats, de ces expressions du coeur qu'une femme seule sait trouver» (Gabriel Legouvé, Le Mérite des femmes et autres poésies, Paris, A. Renouard, 1809, p.51 [note de la p.19]).
- «Les romans de madame de Flahaut, aujourd'hui madame de Souza, se distinguent par une grâce qui leur est particulière. [...] Ces jolis romans n'offrent pas, il est vrai, le développement des grandes passions; on ne doit pas y chercher non plus l'étude approfondie des travers de l'espèce humaine; on est sûr au moins d'y trouver partout des aperçus très fins sur la société, des tableaux vrais et bien terminés, un style orné avec mesure, la correction d'un bon livre et l'aisance d'une conversation fleurie, l'usage du monde [...], des sentiments délicats, des tours ingénieux, des expressions choisies, l'esprit qui ne dit rien de vulgaire, et le goût qui ne dit rien de trop» (Marie-Joseph Chénier, Tableau historique de la littérature française, Paris, Maradan, 1817, p.230-231).
- «Madame de Souza est un esprit, un talent qui se rattache tout à fait au dix-huitième siècle. Elle en a vu à merveille et elle en a aimé le monde, le ton, l'usage, l'éducation et la vie convenablement distribuée. Qu'on ne recherche pas quelle fut sur elle l'influence de Jean-Jacques ou de tel autre écrivain célèbre [...]. Madame de Flahaut était plus dix-huitième siècle que cela, moins vivement emportée par l'enthousiasme vers des régions inconnues. Elle s'instruisit par l'usage, par le monde, elle s'exerça à voir et à sentir dans un horizon tracé» (Charles-Augustin de Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de femmes, Paris, Garnier frères, [1836] 1886, p.50).