Background
Chamfort was born Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme on April 6, 1741. He was, according to a baptismal certificate found among his papers, the son of a grocer named Nicolas.
Chamfort was born Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme on April 6, 1741. He was, according to a baptismal certificate found among his papers, the son of a grocer named Nicolas.
A journey to Paris resulted in Sebastien Chamfort's obtaining a bursary at the College des Grassins.
For some time Sebastien Chamfort contrived to exist by teaching and as a booksellers' hack, His good looks and ready wit, however, soon brought him into notice; but though endowed with immense strength-" Hercule sous la figure d'Adonis, " Madame de Craon called him-he lived so hard that he was glad of the chance of doing a " cure " at Spa when the Belgian minister in Paris, M. van Eyck, took him with him to Germany in 1761.
On his return to Paris he produced a comedy, La Jeune Indienne (1764), which was performed with some success, and this was followed by a series of " epistles " in verse, essays and odes.
Thus Madame Helvetius entertained him at Sevres for some years.
In 1770 another comedy, Le Marchand de Smyrne, brought him still further into notice, and he seemed on the road to fortune, when he was suddenly smitten with a horrible disease.
His distress was relieved by the generosity of a friend, who made over to him a pension of 1200 livres charged on the Mercure de France.
With this assistance he was able to go to the baths of Contrexeville and to spend some time in the country, where he wrote an Eloge on La Fontaine which won the prize of the Academy of Marseilles (1774).
In 1776 his poor tragedy, Mustapha et Zeangir, was played at Fontainebleau before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the king gave him a further pension of 1200 livres, and the prince de Conde made him his secretary.
But he was a Bohemian naturally and by habit, the restraints of the court irked him, and with increasing years he was growing misanthropical.
After a year he resigned his post in the prince's household and retired into solitude at Auteuil.
There, comparing the authors of old with the men of his own time, he uttered the famous mot that proclaims the superiority of the dead over the living as companions; and there too he presently fell in love.
They left Auteuil, and went to Vaucouleurs, where in six months Madame Chamfort died.
He was thus once more attached to the court, and made himself friends in spite of the reach and tendency of his unalterable irony; but he quitted it for ever after an unfortunate and mysterious love affair, and was received into the house of M. de Vaudreuil.
Here in 1783 he had met Mirabeau, with whom he remained to the last on terms of intimate friendship. 825
Sebastien Chamfort a 48 years old, but also clever, amusing, and a woman of the world. Chamfort married her. They soon moved to Vaucouleurs, where she died within six months.
