pompadour

A woman's hairstyle, named after Madame de Pompadour.

— Wiktionary

Mesdames

of Madame

— Webster Dictionary

Mesdames

pl. of Madame and Madam

— Webster Dictionary

Montespan, Marquise de Montespan, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart

French noblewoman who was mistress to Louis XIV until he became attracted to Madame de Maintenon (1641-1707)

— Princeton's WordNet

Montespan, Marquise de Montespan, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart

French noblewoman who was mistress to Louis XIV until he became attracted to Madame de Maintenon (1641-1707)

— Princeton's WordNet

Montespan, Marquise de Montespan, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart

French noblewoman who was mistress to Louis XIV until he became attracted to Madame de Maintenon (1641-1707)

— Princeton's WordNet

Nee

born; -- a term sometimes used in introducing the name of the family to which a married woman belongs by birth; as, Madame de Stael, nee Necker

— Webster Dictionary

Madonna

my lady; -- a term of address in Italian formerly used as the equivalent of Madame, but for which Signora is now substituted. Sometimes introduced into English

— Webster Dictionary

Mathews, Charles James

light comedian, son of the preceding; married Madame Vestris; was a charming actor, acted with a great grace and delicacy of feeling (1803-1878).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Diamond Necklace

a necklace consisting of 500 diamonds, and worth £80,000, which one Madame de la Motte induced the jeweller who "made" it to part with for Marie Antoinette, on security of Cardinal de Rohan, and which madame made away with, taking it to pieces and disposing of the jewels in London; the swindle was first discovered when the jeweller presented his bill to the queen, who denied all knowledge of the matter; this led to a trial which extended over nine months, gave rise to great scandal, and ended in the punishment of the swindler and her husband, and the disgrace of the unhappy, and it is believed innocent, queen. See Carlyle's "Miscellanies."

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Charente-Inférieure

a maritime dep. of France, W. of the former; includes the islands of Rhé, Oléron, Aix, and Madame; capital, La Rochelle.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Chenonceaux

a magnificent château near Amboise, in, France; built by Francis I. for the Duchesse d'Etampes, afterwards the property of the Condés, and afterwards of Madame Dupont.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Montespan, Marquise de

mistress of Louis XIV.; a woman noted for her wit and beauty; bore the king eight children; was supplanted by Madame de Maintenon (q. v.); passed her last days in religious retirement (1641-1707).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Burney, Charles

musical composer and organist, born at Shrewsbury; a friend of Johnson's; author of "The History of Music," and the father of Madame d'Arblay; settled in London as a teacher of music (1726-1814).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Flaubert, Gustave

a realistic romancer, born at Rouen; author of "Madame Bovary," a study of provincial life, which became the subject of a prosecution, and "Salammbô," wonderful for its vigour and skill in description; he indulged in repulsive subjects (1821-1880).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

St. Cyr

a French village, 2 m. W. of Versailles, where Louis XIV., at the request of Madame de Maintenon, founded an institution for the education of girls of noble birth but poor, which was suppressed at the time of the Revolution, and afterwards converted into a military school by Napoleon.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Offenbach, Jacques

a musical composer, born at Cologne, of Jewish parents, creator of the opera bouffe; was the author of "La Belle Hélène," "Orphée aux Enfers," "La Grande Duchesse," "Madame Favart," &c. (1810-1880)

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Nantes, Edict Of

edict granted by Henry IV. 1598, allowing to Protestants religious liberty and political enfranchisement, and confirmed by Louis XIII. in 1614, but revoked, after frequent infringements, in the shape of dragonnades and otherwise, by Louis XIV., Oct. 23, 1685, at the instance of Madame Maintenon and Père la Chaise.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Récamir, Madame

Frenchwoman, born at Lyons; became at 15 the wife of a rich banker In Paris thrice her own age; was celebrated for her wit her beauty, and her salon; was a friend of Madame de Staël and Châteaubriand, whom she soothed in his declining years, and a good woman (1777-1849).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Bartoloz`zi, Francesco

an eminent engraver, born at Florence; wrought at his art both in England and in Portugal, where he died; his chief works, "Clytie," after Annibale Caracci, the "Prometheus," after Michael Angelo, and "Virgin and Child," after Carlo Dolci; he was the father of Madame Vestris (1725-1815).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Gréville, Henry

the pseudonym of Madame Alice Durand (née Fleury), novelist, born at Paris; her works, which are numerous, contain lively pictures of life in Russia, in which country, in St. Petersburg, she spent 15 years of her life (1857-72), and married Émile Durand, a French professor of Law; since 1872 she has lived in France; b. 1842.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Espinasse, Clare Françoise

a wit and beauty, born at Lyons, illegitimate child of the Countess d'Albon; went to Paris as companion to Madame du Deffand, with whom she quarrelled; set up a salon of her own, and became celebrated for her many attractions; D'Alembert was devoted to her; many of her letters to her lovers, the Marquis de Mora and M. de Guilbert in particular, have been published, and display a charming personality (1732-1776).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Terray, Abbé

"dissolute financier" of Louis XV.; "paying eightpence in the shilling, so that wits exclaim in some press at the play-house, 'Where is Abbé Terray that he might reduce it to two-thirds!'"; lived a scandalous life, and ingratiated himself with Madame Pompadour; he held his post till the accession of Louis XVI., and fell with his iniquitous colleagues (1715-1778).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Roland de la Platière, Jean Marie

husband of Madame Roland, was Inspector of Manufactures at Lyons; represented Lyons in the Constituent Assembly; acted with the Girondists; fled when the Girondist party fled, and on hearing of his wife's fate at Rouen bade farewell to his friends who had sheltered him, and was found next morning "sitting leant against a tree, stiff in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart" (1732-1793).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Grimm, Baron

a German littérateur and critic, born at Ratisbon; a man of versatile powers and vast attainments; settled in Paris and became acquainted with Rousseau and the leading Encyclopédists and Madame d'Epinay; on the breaking out of the Revolution he retired to the court of Gotha and afterwards to that of Catharine II. of Russia, who made him her minister at Hamburg; his correspondence is full of interest, and abounds in piquant literary criticism (1723-1807).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Garcia, Manuel

a noted singer and composer, born at Seville; in 1808 he went to Paris with a reputation already gained at Madrid and Cadiz; till 1824 he was of high repute in London and Paris as an operatic tenor; and in the following year visited the United States; when on the road between Mexico and Vera Cruz he was robbed of all his money; he spent his closing years in Paris as a teacher of singing, his voice being greatly impaired by age as well as fatigue; his eldest daughter was the celebrated Madame Malibran (1775-1832).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Schlegel, August Wilhelm von

German man of letters, born at Hanover; studied theology at first, but turned to literature and began with poetry; settled in Jena, and in 1798 became professor of Fine Arts there; was associated in literary work with Madame de Staël for 14 years; delivered "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature" at Vienna in 1708, and finished with a professorship of Literature at Bonn, having previously distinguished himself by translations into German of Shakespeare, Dante, &c.; he devoted himself to the study of Sanskrit when at Bonn, where he had Heine for pupil (1767-1845).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Louvois, Marquis of

War Minister of Louis XIV., born in Paris; was a man of great administrative ability in his department, but for the glory of France and his own was savage for war and relentless in the conduct of it, till one day in his obstinate zeal, as he threatened to lay the cathedral city of Trèves in ashes, the king, seizing the tongs from the chimney, was about to strike him therewith, and would have struck him, had not Madame de Maintenon, his mistress, interfered and stayed his hand; he died suddenly, to the manifest relief of his royal master (1641-1691).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

La Fayette, Madame de

novelist, born in Paris; is credited with being the originator of the class of fiction in which character and its analysis are held of chief account; she was the daughter of the governor of Havre, and contracted a Platonic affection for La Rochefoucauld in his old age, and was besides on intimate terms with Madame Sévigné and the most eminent literary men of the time; her "Princess de Clèves" is a classic work, and the merit of it is enhanced by the reflection that it preceded by nearly half a century the works both of Le Sage and Defoe (1634-1693).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Maintenon, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de

born in the prison of Niort, where her father was incarcerated as a Protestant; though well inoculated with Protestant principles she turned a Catholic, married the poet Scarron in 1652, became a widow in 1660; was entrusted with the education of the children of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan; supplanted the latter in the king's affections, and was secretly married to him in 1684; she exercised a great influence over him, not always for good, and on his death in 1715 retired into the Convent of St. Cyr, which she had herself founded for young ladies of noble birth but in humble circumstances (1635-1719).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Scarron, Paul

a French humourist, writer of the burlesque, born, of good parentage, in Paris; entered the Church, and was for some years somewhat lax-living abbé of Mans, but stricken with incurable disease settled in Paris, and supported himself by writing; is chiefly remembered for his "Virgile Travesti" and "Le Roman Comique," which "gave the impulse out of which sprang the masterpieces of Le Sage, Defoe, Fielding, and Smollett"; married in 1652 Françoise d'Aubigné, a girl of fifteen, afterwards the famous Madame de Maintenon (q. v.); was a man who both suffered much and laughed much (1610-1660).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Tallien, Jean Lambert

a notable French Revolutionist, born in Paris; a lawyer's clerk; threw in his lot with the Revolution, and became prominent as the editor of a Jacobin journal, L'Ami des Citoyens; took an active part in the sanguinary proceedings during the ascendency of Robespierre, notably terrorising the disaffected of Bordeaux by a merciless use of the guillotine; recalled to Paris, and became President of the Convention, but fearing Robespierre, headed the attack which brought the Dictator to the block; enjoyed, with his celebrated wife, Madame de Fontenay, considerable influence; accompanied Napoleon to Egypt; was captured by the English, and for a season lionised by the Whigs; his political influence at an end, he was glad to accept the post of consul at Alicante, and subsequently died in poverty (1769-1820).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Quietism

the name given to a mystical religious turn of mind which seeks to attain spiritual illumination and perfection by maintaining a purely passive and susceptive attitude to Divine communication and revelation, shutting out all consciousness of self and all sense of external things, and independently of the observance of the practical virtues. The high-priest of Quietism was the Spanish priest Molinos (q. v.), and his chief disciple in France was Madame de Guyon, who infected the mind of the saintly Fénélon. The appearance of it in France, and especially Fénélon's partiality to it, awoke the hostility of Bossuet, who roused the Church against it, as calculated to have an injurious effect on the interests of practical morality; indeed the hostility became so pronounced that Fénélon was forced to retract, to the gradual dying out of the fanaticism.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Joubert, Joseph

author of "Pensées," born in Montignac, Périgord; educated in Toulouse, succeeded to a small competency, came to Paris, got access to the best literary circles, and was the most brilliant figure in the salon of Madame de Beaumont; his works were exclusively pensées and maxims, and bear at once on ethics, politics, theology, and literature; "There is probably," Professor Saintsbury says, "no writer in any language who has said an equal number of remarkable things on an equal variety of subjects in an equally small space and with an equally high and unbroken excellence of style and expression;... all alike have the characteristic of intense compression; he describes his literary aim in the phrase 'tormented by the ambition of putting a book into a page, a page into a phrase, and a phrase into a word'" (1754-1824).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de

French novelists, born, the former at Nancy, the latter at Paris; a habit of elaborate note-taking whilst on sketching tours first drew the brothers towards literature, and inoculated them with the habit of minute and accurate observation which gave value to their subsequent writings; their first real venture was a series of historical studies, designed to reproduce with every elaboration of detail French society in the later half of the 18th century, including a "History of French Society during the Revolution"; later they found their true province in the novel, and a series of striking works of fiction became the product of their joint labours, works which have influenced subsequent novelists not a little; "Les Hommes de Lettres" (1860) was the first of these, and "Madame Gervaisais" (1869) is perhaps their best; their collaboration was broken in 1870 by the death of Jules; but Edmond still continued to write, and produced amongst other novels "La Fille Élisa"; the "Journal" of the brothers appeared in 1888 in six vols. (Edmond, 1822-1888; Jules, 1830-1870).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Bos`suet, Jacques Bénigne

bishop of Meaux, born at Dijon, surnamed the "Eagle of Meaux," of the see of which he became bishop; one of the greatest of French pulpit orators, and one of the ablest defenders of the doctrines of the Catholic Church; the great aim of his life the conversion of Protestants back to the Catholic faith; took a leading part in establishing the rights of the Gallican clergy, or rather of the Crown, as against the claims of the Pope; proved himself more a time-server than a bold, outspoken champion of the truth; conceived a violent dislike to Madame Guyon, and to Fénélon for his defence of her and her Quietists; and he is not clear of the guilt of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; wrote largely; his "Discourse on Universal History" is on approved lines, and the first attempt at a philosophy of history; his Funeral Orations are monuments of the most sublime eloquence; while his "Politique founded on Holy Scripture" is a defence of the divine right of kings. "Bossuet," says Professor Saintsbury, "was more of a speaker than a writer. His excellence lies in his wonderful survey and grasp of the subject, in the contagious enthusiasm and energy with which he attacks his point, and in his inexhaustible metaphors and comparisons.... Though he is always aiming at the sublime, he scarcely ever oversteps it, or falls into the bombastic or ridiculous.... The most unfortunate incident of his life was his controversy with Fénélon" (1627-1704).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Theosophy

a mystic philosophy of very difficult definition which hails from the East, and was introduced among us by Madame Blavatsky, a Russian lady, who was initiated into its mysteries in Thibet by a fraternity there who professed to be the sole custodiers of its secrets as the spiritual successors of those to whom it was at first revealed. The radical idea of the system appears to be reincarnation, and the return of the spirit to itself by a succession of incarnations, each one of which raises it to a higher level until, by seven stages it would seem, the process is complete, matter has become spirit, and spirit matter, God has become man, and man God, agreeably somewhat to the doctrine of Amiel, that "the complete spiritualisation of the animal element in us is the task of our race," though with them it seems rather to mean its extinction. The adherents of this system, with their head-quarters at Madras, are numerous and wide-scattered, and form an organisation of 300 branches, having three definite aims: (1) To establish a brotherhood over the world irrespective of race, creed, caste, or sex; (2) to encourage the study of comparative philosophy, religion, and science; and (3) to investigate the occult secrets of nature and the latent possibilities of man. The principal books in exposition of it are, "The Secret Doctrine," "Isis Unveiled," "The Key to Theosophy," by Mme. Blavatsky; "Esoteric Buddhism," "The Occult World," &c., by Sinnett; "The Ancient Wisdom," "The Birth and Evolution of the Soul," &c., by Annie Besant.

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Louis XV.

Bien-Aimé (i. e. Well-Beloved), great-grandson of the preceding, and only five at his death, the country during his minority being under the regency of Philip, Duke of Orleans; the regency was rendered disastrous by the failure of the Mississippi Scheme of Law and a war with Spain, caused by the rejection of a Spanish princess for Louis, and by his marriage to Maria Lesczynski, the daughter of Stanislas of Poland; Louis was crowned king in 1722 and declared of age the following year; in 1726 Cardinal Fleury, who had been his tutor, became his minister, and under him occurred the war of the succession to Poland, concluded by the treaty of Vienna, and the war of the Austrian succession, concluded by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; with the death of his minister Louis gave way to his licentious propensities, and in all matters of state allowed himself to be swayed by unworthy favourites who pandered to his lusts, the most conspicuous among them being Madame de Pompadour and Dame de Barry, her successor in crime; under them, and the corrupt court they presided over, the country went step by step to ruin, and she was powerless to withstand the military ascendency of England, which deprived her of all her colonies both in the East and in the West; though Choiseul, his last "substantial" minister, tried hard by a family compact of the Bourbons to collect her scattered strength; the situation did not trouble Louis; "it will last all my time," he said, and he let things go; suffering from a disease contracted by vice, he was seized with confluent smallpox, and died in misery, to the relief of the nation, which could not restrain its joy (1710-1774).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de

great French "persifleur" and "Coryphæus of Deism," born in Paris, son of a lawyer; trained to scoff at religion from his boyhood, and began his literary career as a satirist and in the production of lampoons which cost him twice over imprisonment in the Bastille, on his release from which he left France in 1726 and went to England, where he stayed three years, and got acquainted with the free-thinking class there; on his return to Paris he engaged in some profitable commercial speculations and published his "Charles XII.," which he had written in England, and retired to the château of Cirey, where he lived five years with Madame du Châtelet, engaged in study and diligent with his pen, with whom he left France and went to Poland, after her death paying his famous visit to Frederick the Great, with whom before three years were out he quarrelled, and from whom he was glad to escape, making his head-quarters eventually within the borders of France at Ferney, from which he now and again visited Paris, where on his last visit he was received with such raptures of adulation that he was quite overcome, and had to be conveyed home to die, giving up the ghost exactly two months after. He was a man of superlative adroitness of faculty and shiftiness, without aught that can be called great, but more than any other the incarnation of the spirit of his time; said the word which all were waiting to hear and who replied yea to it—a poor word indeed yet a potent, for it gave the death-blow to superstition, but left religion out in the cold. The general, the great offence Carlyle charges Voltaire with is, that "he intermeddled in religion without being himself in any measure religious; that he entered the Temple and continued there with a levity which, in any temple where men worship, can beseem no brother man; that, in a word, he ardently, and with long-continued effort, warred against Christianity, without understanding, beyond the mere superficies, what Christianity was" (1694-1778).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

a celebrated French philosopher, and one or the great prose writers of French literature, born in Geneva, the son of a watchmaker and dancing-master; was apprenticed to an engraver, whose inhuman treatment drove him at the age of 16 into running away; for three years led a vagrant life, acting as footman, lackey, secretary, &c.; during this period was converted to Catholicism largely through the efforts of Madame de Warens, a spritely married lady living apart from her husband; in 1731 he took up residence in his patroness's house, where he lived for nine years a life of ease and sentiment in the ambiguous capacity of general factotum, and subsequently of lover; supplanted in the affections of his mistress, he took himself off, and landed in Paris in 1741; supported himself by music-copying, an occupation which was his steadiest means of livelihood throughout his troubled career; formed a liaison with an illiterate dull servant-girl by whom he had five children, all of whom he callously handed over to the foundling hospital; acquaintance with Diderot brought him work on the famous Encyclopédie, but the true foundation of his literary fame was laid in 1749 by "A Discourse on Arts and Sciences," in which he audaciously negatives the theory that morality has been favoured by the progress of science and the arts; followed this up in 1753 by a "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality," in which he makes a wholesale attack upon the cherished institutions and ideals of society; morosely rejected the flattering advances of society, and from his retreat at Montlouis issued "The New Héloïse" (1760), "The Social Contract" (1762), and "Émile" (1762); these lifted him into the widest fame, but precipitated upon him the enmity and persecution of Church (for his Deism) and State; fled to Switzerland, where after his aggressive "Letters from the Mountains," he wandered about, the victim of his own suspicious, hypochondriacal nature; found for some time a retreat in Staffordshire under the patronage of Hume; returned to France, where his only persecutors were his own morbid hallucinations; died, not without suspicion of suicide, at Ermenonville; his "Confessions" and other autobiographical writings, although unreliable in facts, reflect his strange and wayward personality with wonderful truth; was one of the precursive influences which brought on the revolutionary movement (1712-1778).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia

Gibbon, Edward

eminent historian, born at Putney, near London, of good parentage; his early education was greatly hindered by a nervous complaint, which, however, disappeared by the time he was 14; a wide course of desultory reading had, in a measure, repaired the lack of regular schooling, and when at the age of 15 he was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, he possessed, as he himself quaintly puts it, "a stock of erudition which might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy might have been ashamed"; 14 months later he became a convert to Roman Catholicism, and in consequence was obliged to quit Oxford; in the hope of reclaiming him to the Protestant faith he was placed in the charge of the deistical poet Mallet, and subsequently under a Calvinist minister at Lausanne; under the latter's kindly suasion he speedily discarded Catholicism, and during five years' residence established his learning on a solid foundation; time was also found for the one love episode of his life—an amour with Suzanne Curchod, an accomplished young lady, who subsequently became the wife of the French minister M. Neckar, and mother of Madame de Staël; shortly after his return to England in 1758 he published in French an Essay on the Study of Literature, and for some time served in the militia; in 1774, having four years previously inherited his father's estate, he entered Parliament, and from 1779 to 1782 was one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations; in 1776 appeared the first volume of his great history "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," the conception of which had come to him in 1764 in Rome whilst "musing amongst the ruins of the Capitol"; in 1787 his great work was finished at Lausanne, where he had resided since 1783; modern criticism, working with fresh sources of information, has failed to find any serious flaw in the fabric of this masterpiece in history, but the cynical attitude adopted towards the Christian religion has always been regarded as a defect; "a man of endless reading and research," was Carlyle's verdict after a final perusal of the "Decline," "but of a most disagreeable style, and a great want of the highest faculties of what we would call a classical historian, compared with Herodotus, for instance, and his perfect clearness and simplicity in every part"; he, nevertheless, characterised his work to Emerson once as "a splendid bridge from the old world to the new" (1737-1794).

— The Nuttall Encyclopedia