DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0230
112
VIGEE-LEBRUN
attractive, and Madame feared that, however innocent, such a correspond-
ence was dangerous for her friend. However, so far as Lauzun was a
source of anxiety, the danger was removed by his being sent to the guillotine.
Madame’s friendship with the Duchesse de Fleury would of itself prove
the easiness of her own moral prejudices. That charming young woman
was not so much a grande as a perpetuelle amoureuse. On her return to-
Paris after the Revolution she and her husband obtained a divorce, and
she married a young man whom she loved passionately, until they got
tired of each other, and she was again divorced. Then she took another
lover. One day during the Empire, Napoleon said to her: “ Aimez-
vous toujours les hommes ? ” “ Oui, Sire,” she replied, “ quand ils
sont polis.”
Of Vigee-Lebrun at Rome we get a not over-friendly glimpse from
the Comtesse de Boigne, who, in her Memoires, recalls that Julie Lebrun.
was one of her play-fellows in that city, and of Julie’s mamma writes:
“ Madame Lebrun, a very good person, was still pretty, always very foolish
she had a distinguished talent, and possessed in excess all the little affecta-
tions to which her double role of artist and pretty woman entitled her.
If the term petite maitresse had not become as bad taste as the fashions-
that are nowadays implied by it, it could fairly be applied to her.”
After eight months at Rome, Madame Lebrun set out for Naples,.,
travelling in the rather depressing company of M. Duvivier, who in that
same year (1790) lost his wife, formerly the “ Madame Denis ” so familiar
to readers in the life of her uncle, Voltaire. M. Duvivier had no sense
of natural beauty : the sheep in a flowery meadow near the sea depressed
him because they were not as clean as those he had seen in England; and
the great clouds casting shadows on the Apennines caused him no emotion
except the fear that it would rain the next day! He thought nothing of
the views on the way to Naples, preferring, he said, the scenery of Burgundy,.
“ which promised good wine.”
By some extraordinary freak of fortune, the Hotel de Maroc at Chiaja,
on the sea coast opposite Capri, left no memory of noise or discomfort in
Madame’s mind. Her satisfaction with the house was increased by its
being next door to that of the Russian ambassador at Naples, the Comte
Skavronski, who was so polite as to send her in an excellent dinner on the
evening of her arrival, and whose wife very soon arranged to sit for a
portrait. This beautiful noodle—for such she evidently was—had been
richly endowed with money and jewels by her uncle, the famous Potemkin,,
VIGEE-LEBRUN
attractive, and Madame feared that, however innocent, such a correspond-
ence was dangerous for her friend. However, so far as Lauzun was a
source of anxiety, the danger was removed by his being sent to the guillotine.
Madame’s friendship with the Duchesse de Fleury would of itself prove
the easiness of her own moral prejudices. That charming young woman
was not so much a grande as a perpetuelle amoureuse. On her return to-
Paris after the Revolution she and her husband obtained a divorce, and
she married a young man whom she loved passionately, until they got
tired of each other, and she was again divorced. Then she took another
lover. One day during the Empire, Napoleon said to her: “ Aimez-
vous toujours les hommes ? ” “ Oui, Sire,” she replied, “ quand ils
sont polis.”
Of Vigee-Lebrun at Rome we get a not over-friendly glimpse from
the Comtesse de Boigne, who, in her Memoires, recalls that Julie Lebrun.
was one of her play-fellows in that city, and of Julie’s mamma writes:
“ Madame Lebrun, a very good person, was still pretty, always very foolish
she had a distinguished talent, and possessed in excess all the little affecta-
tions to which her double role of artist and pretty woman entitled her.
If the term petite maitresse had not become as bad taste as the fashions-
that are nowadays implied by it, it could fairly be applied to her.”
After eight months at Rome, Madame Lebrun set out for Naples,.,
travelling in the rather depressing company of M. Duvivier, who in that
same year (1790) lost his wife, formerly the “ Madame Denis ” so familiar
to readers in the life of her uncle, Voltaire. M. Duvivier had no sense
of natural beauty : the sheep in a flowery meadow near the sea depressed
him because they were not as clean as those he had seen in England; and
the great clouds casting shadows on the Apennines caused him no emotion
except the fear that it would rain the next day! He thought nothing of
the views on the way to Naples, preferring, he said, the scenery of Burgundy,.
“ which promised good wine.”
By some extraordinary freak of fortune, the Hotel de Maroc at Chiaja,
on the sea coast opposite Capri, left no memory of noise or discomfort in
Madame’s mind. Her satisfaction with the house was increased by its
being next door to that of the Russian ambassador at Naples, the Comte
Skavronski, who was so polite as to send her in an excellent dinner on the
evening of her arrival, and whose wife very soon arranged to sit for a
portrait. This beautiful noodle—for such she evidently was—had been
richly endowed with money and jewels by her uncle, the famous Potemkin,,