Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, French writer, 1746-1830
By Gillian Dow, University of Southampton and Chawton House Library
Stéphanie-Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin was born at Champcery near Autun in Burgundy in 1746, the oldest child of Pierre-César Ducrest and Marie-Françoise-Félicité Mauget de Mézières. Like so many girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Genlis’s early education was largely neglected - she was cared for by the staff in her parents’ house and taught a little Catechism. A taste for literature seems to have been part of her formative years: Genlis’s mother was fond of amateur dramatics, and even wrote comic operas and plays herself, as Genlis tells us in her memoirs. When she reached the age of seven, the Ducrest’s decided their daughter should have a governess, and appointed a Breton girl, Mlle. de Mars, who had some knowledge of the harpsichord. Together, the sixteen-year-old Mars and Genlis were let loose in Genlis’s father’s library, where they read Scudéry’s Clélie and Barbier’s Théâtre. Jean Harmand, one of Genlis’s early biographers, suggests that this choice of reading material was random, but it is possible that the young women were attracted to the work of female authors. Later in life, Genlis never misses an opportunity to point out that she is self-taught from this early reading, and her habit of supporting any published statement with extensive notes can be seen as evidence of an insecurity that stems from her lack of a formal education.
A financial disaster in Genlis’s early teenage years meant that the family could no longer pay Mlle. de Mars’s wages: Genlis and her mother eventually arrived in Paris, where they depended on La Popelinière’s benevolence in establishing themselves at his home in Passy, and encouraging Genlis’s training on the harp. Genlis herself, and all the published biographies, spend a great deal of time discussing her physical attractions at this time. She was graceful, with beautifully oval face, sparkling eyes, and thick glossy hair. It is little wonder that a colleague of her father’s fell in love with her simply from viewing a portrait, we read! In any case, the facts remain that in 1763, she married Monsieur le Comte Charles-Alexis de Genlis (later the Marquis of Sillery), and it was by her married name, Mme de Genlis, that she was to become known as a writer.
Genlis seems always to have been attracted to writing. During her first pregnancy, she wrote a work entitled Confessions d’une mère de vingt ans, although this work was never published. Genlis’s daughter Caroline was born in September 1765: another daughter, Pulchérie, was born the following year, and a son, Casimir, was born in 1768. Taking on the position of lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Chartres in the Palais-Royal in 1772, Genlis was also the mistress of the Duc de Chartres (later Duc d’Orléans, and Philippe-Egalité during the revolutionary years), a subject of much speculation and gossip. In 1777, Genlis was made governess to the family’s newborn twin daughters, and moved to an estate at Bellechasse. She was the first woman to be appointed as ‘gouverneur’ to Royal children, and, in 1782, the care of the sons, the Duc de Valois (later King Louis-Philippe) and the Duc de Montpensier was also entrusted to her. There has been great debate about whether two young English girls in the household, Pamela and Hermine, were actually the illegitimate daughters of Genlis and the Duc de Chartres. Although it has been proven that Pamela could not have been Genlis’s child, the same has not been established for Hermine. What is certain is that Genlis claimed that she adopted the girls to speak English with her young pupils: part of Genlis’s educational theories involved an emphasis on modern languages. After the Revolution, Genlis spent eight years in ‘exile’ on the continent, first in England, then in Switzerland and Germany. Returning to Paris in 1800, she took up residence in the Arsenal, and corresponded on a regular basis with Napoleon. Leaving the Arsenal for the rue Sainte-Anne in 1812, she was made ‘dame inspectrice’ for the primary schools in her arrondissement. She continued to live in Paris under the Bourbon restoration, moving to ‘La Maison des Carmes’, a residence for women run by nuns, in 1816, and staying for 18 months, before moving to the rue Faubourg Sainte-Honoré, and finally, rue Neuve des Petits-Champs. Genlis died in 1830, shortly after the ascent to the throne of Louis-Philippe, her former pupil.
Sources
AsK October 2010
- Portraits of Authors: Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis >