Background
Sophie d'Houdetot was born on December 18, 1730 in Paris, France, the daughter of the wealthy tax-collector Louis Denis Lalive de Bellegarde and his wife Marie Josèphe Prouveur.
Sophie d'Houdetot was born on December 18, 1730 in Paris, France, the daughter of the wealthy tax-collector Louis Denis Lalive de Bellegarde and his wife Marie Josèphe Prouveur.
Sophie d'Houdetot was presented at court, an honor reserved for ladies of a certain nobility and social distinction. She mingled in literary circles in Paris, aided by her cousin and sister-in-law, Louise d'Épinay, who was in a relationship with Frédéric Melchior, baron de Grimm, editor of the handwritten literary journal in which Diderot circulated much of his work. Mme d'Épinay often helped with editorial work and was part of the coterie around Diderot, Grimm and the Baron d'Holbach. Sophie took an interest in the newly independent American colonies, and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, received Benjamin Franklin into her home, and became friends with Saint-John de Crèvecœur. After the French Revolution, the Houdetots and Saint-Lambert moved to Sannois, where they created a society of men of letters from the pre-Revolutionary Enlightenment, like La Harpe, abbé Morellet, and Suard - and some rising stars like Chateaubriand, who wrote in his Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe (Memoirs from beyond the grave) that Saint-Lambert and Sophie d'Houdetot both represented the opinions and the freedoms of a by-gone age, carefully stuffed and preserved: it was the eighteenth century expired and married in its manner. It was sufficient to remain steadfast in one's life for illegitimacies to become legitimacies. She died on January 28, 1813.
Her acquaintances praised Sophie d'Houdetot for her generosity and intelligence rather than for her beauty.
Quotes from others about the person
The Baron de Frénilly, who knew her in the 1790s, described her as "the good, amiable, and eternally young Vicomtesse d'Houdetot . .. a laugher at etiquette, cheerful, vivacious, witty, prolific in ingenious thoughts and happy phrases" despite "an ignoble ugliness, a raucous voice, and a treacherous eye which was always looking sideways when it seemed to be looking you in the face. "
Sophie married Claude Constant César, Comte d' Houdetot, an army brigadier, at the Saint-Roch church in Paris on 28 February 1748. Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared his love to Sophie on 24 May 1757, and for a few months they saw a great deal of each other. Saint-Lambert, who had been away on military service, returned in July, and after his return to duty Sophie brought the affair with Jean-Jacques to an end. Saint-Lambert had become Mme d'Houdetot's lover around 1752. Her husband tolerated and perhaps even welcomed the situation; she had fulfilled her conjugal obligations by providing him with a son, and her lover was a presentable man. It was not uncommon in the Old Régime for partners in a marriage of convenience to accept this kind of infidelity in a Ménage à trois; Émilie du Châtelet, her husband and Voltaire are another example. Saint-Lambert and Sophie d'Houdetot remained together until the poet's death in 1803.
