This is Ninon de Lenclos, French letter writer and woman of letters, author of the Letters of Ninon de Lenclos to the Marquis de Sévigné.
Queen of the Parisian salons, this courtesan was famous for her independent spirit and her great generosity. She beamed in Le Marais with its famous “five to nine” where the Parisian intellectual elite flocked every day.
It was her father, Henri de Lenclos, a libertine and cultured gentleman from Tours, who, against her mother's wishes, gave her a thorough education, far removed from that typically provided to girls of the time. At the age of twelve, Ninon lost this steadfast supporter. Implicated in an adultery case that resulted in a duel in which his opponent was killed, her father was forced to flee. Since duels were outlawed, the king seized his property.
From then on, Ninon accompanied her mother to the salons of the Marais district, where she quickly became a sensation. A true child prodigy, she quoted the great authors and mastered the thought of Montaigne as well as excelling in playing the lute or harpsichord and speaking Italian and Spanish. Literature, dance, the arts, and the sciences held no secrets for her.
Her white complexion, her deep black eyes, her gestures, her voluptuousness were praised but it was her spirit that was most celebrated.
At sixteen her mother, although bigoted, guided her towards "gallantry" and left her free to live in Le Marais, towards the Place royale, current Place des Vosges.
Later, she settled in the Hôtel de Sagonne located at 36, rue des Tournelles, where she lived for forty-eight years. In this modest private mansion in the Marais, which still exists today, this independent spirit became the darling of the Marais and of Paris by holding the most fashionable literary salon of her time where, from five o'clock until nine, but sometimes ten o'clock in the evening, some of the finest minds of her time gathered : Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Maintenon, Molière, François de la Rochefoucault, Corneille, Saint-Simon, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Charles Perrault, Jean Racine, Jean de la Fontaine, Paul Scarron, Nicolas Boileau, etc.
In addition to being an “influencer” Ninon de Lenclos symbolized the freedom of morals current in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. Reputed to be a friend as faithful and devoted as an inconstant and frivolous mistress, she had many lovers including the great Condé (general, first cousin of Louis XIV and peer of France), the soldier and diplomat Marshal d'Estrées, the the astronomer Christian Huygens, the diplomat and literary abbot of Chateauneuf, Nicolas Gédoyn, canon of Sainte-Chapelle and member of the French academy…
She died in 1705 in this same residence.
Text: Katia Barillot
28.01.19
