Charlotte Aïssé

Portrait inscribed ″Ayce″ on the reverse, c.1720, attributed to Nicolas de Largillière

Portrait engraved by F. Wexelberg. It served as the frontispiece of the second edition of the Lettres de Mademoiselle Aïssé (Lausanne, 1788).

Charlotte Aïssé (a corruption of Haïdé), (c.1694 – 13 March 1733), French letter-writer, was the daughter of a Circassian chief, and was born about 1694.

Life

Her father's palace was pillaged by the Turks, and as a child of four years old she was sold to the comte Charles de Ferriol, the French ambassador at Constantinople. She was brought up in Paris by Ferriol's sister-in-law, Marie-Angélique de Tencin, with her own sons, Antoine de Ferriol de Pont-de-Veyle (1697-1774) and d'Argental (1700-1788). Her great beauty and romantic history made her the fashion, and she attracted the notice of the regent, Philip II, Duke of Orléans, whose offers she had the strength of mind to refuse. She formed a deep and lasting attachment to Blaise-Marie d'Aydie (1692–1761), a knight of Malta, by whom she had a daughter. She died in Paris.

Lettres de Mademoiselle Aïssé à Madame C…

Her letters to her friend Madame Calandrini contain much interesting information with regard to contemporary celebrities, especially on Mme du Deffand and Mme de Tencin, but they are above all of interest in the picture they afford of the writer's own tenderness and fidelity.

Her Lettres were published with notes attributed to Voltaire (1787), by J. Ravenel, with a notice by Sainte-Beuve (1846) and by Eugene Asse (1873).

Letter VII, dated Paris, 1727, was adapted by Leonora Blanche Alleyne as The Man in White and illustrated by Henry Justice Ford in The Red True Story Book (1895).

Mlle Aïssé in fiction

Mlle Aïssé may have inspired Abbé Prévost's Histoire d'une Grecque moderne (1740) and Claire de Duras's Ourika (1823).

She has been the subject of three plays:

• 1854: Mademoiselle Aïssé, a play in 5 acts, in prose, by Alexandre de Lavergne and Paul Foucher
• 1871: Mademoiselle Aïssé, a play in 4 acts, in verse, by Louis Bouilhet, in which her character was played by Sarah Bernhardt
• 1898: Aïssé, comedy in 5 acts, in verse, by Louis Lautrey under the pen name François Dejoux

She was also the inspiration for Rosa Campbell Praed's historical novel, The Romance of Mademoiselle Aïssé (1910).

Bibiography

• Amelia Gere Mason, The Women of the French Salons (1891), ch.11 [1]
• Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Portraits and Backgrounds: Hrotsvitha, Aphra Behn, Aïssé, Rosalba Carriera (1917)
• J. Christopher Herold, Love in five temperaments (1961)
• Amy J. Ransom, ″Mademoiselle Aïssé: inspiration for Claire de Duras's Ourika?″, Romance Quarterly 46:2 (1999), p.84-98.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aïssé, Mademoiselle". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Works by or about Charlotte Aïssé at the Internet Archive