Valentine de Laborde

Biography

Grand-daughter of the famous financier, the marquis Jean-Joseph de Laborde, girl of the count Alexandre de Laborde (1773 - 1842), politician and archeologist, author of the picturesque Voyage and history in Spain , and of Therese Sabatier de Cabre (1780 - 1854), Valentine de Laborde married, on June 1st 1824, Gabriel Delessert (1786 - 1858), resulting from the famous dynasty of bankers and which was Prefect of police of Paris of 1836 with 1848. They had two children:

Edouard Delessert (1828 - 1898), painter, archeologist and pioneer of photography;
Cecile Delessert (1825 - 1887), which married the count Alexis of Small valley (1818 - 1851), archeologist and traveller, then colonel Sigismond of Pouget de Nadaillac.

The February 16th 1836 with Chartres, where her husband was prefect, it became the mistress of Prosper Mérimée, then general inspector of the historic buildings, and which courted it for a long time. The writer was very enthusiast: “I am largely and seriously in love”, he with his friend Stendhal wrote. “I am in love insane pearl with the women, happy because I am loved, very unhappy because I then not to prove my love as often as I would like. ” It was extasiait in front of this “woman having the thirty-six physical qualities recommended by Brantôme and of morals qualities that this pig could not appreciate” During six years this connection, posted with considering and with known of all-Paris, metamorphosed the writer, bachelor confirmed, who did not have of cease to improve to be worthy of his mistress. He dedicated several of his parts to him and was inspired some for some by its characters, like Mrs. de Pienne in Arsène Guillot .

Mérimée introduced to Delessert the countess of Montijo. The countess of Laborde, mother of Valentine, dealt with her two daughters, the future duchess of Alba and future the empress Eugenie, when their mother was absent and served to them as corresponding throughout their study to the Sacred Heart.

In 1845, Valentine de Laborde broke with Mérimée to become the mistress of the writer and traveller Maxime Of the Camp, which it was not long in leaving for the politician Charles de Rémusat.

Under the Monarchy of July, it held a prestigious living room, receiving in its hotel of Passy (street Low-of-Passy), the principal figures of the romantic generation: François-Rene de Chateaubriand, Adolphe Thiers, Eugene Delacroix, Emile of Girardin, Alfred de Musset, Charles de Montalembert, Minghetti, Marie d' Agoult and, later, the countess of Castiglione, which became his/her best friend.

Under the Second Empire, become widowed, it preserved an eminent fashionable position, close friend of the Eugenie empress and referee of the family quarrels between Bonapartists and orleanists. First woman to enter, in 1846, at the Company of the French bibliophiles, painter of talent, friend of arts, esthète and cultivated, it was at it that the type-setter Ernest Reyer interpreted with the piano, for the first time at Paris, of works of Richard Wagner. One day, with the Palate of Tileries, it had impertinence to answer Napoleon III which required of him what it was necessary to make to protect arts: “Lord, it should be liked. ”

Gustave Flaubert, friend of Maxime Of the Camp, took as a starting point Valentine de Laborde for the character of Mrs. Dambreuse in sentimental Education . It inspired in Maxime Of the Camp the character of Viviane in the lost Forces .

References

Sources

François d' Ormesson and Jean-Pierre Thomas, Jean-Joseph de Laborde, banker of Louis XV, patron of the Lights , Paris, Perrin, 2002 - ISBN 2-262-01820-0

External bonds

Note on Valentine de Laborde on www.merimee.culture.fr

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