Charlotte Aïssé Explained
| Birth Place: | Circassia |
| Death Place: | Paris |
| Partner: | Blaise-Marie d'Aydie |
| Children: | a daughter |
Charlotte Aïssé (a corruption of Haïdé; – 13 March 1733) was a French letter-writer and the daughter of a Circassian chief.
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 (see Crimean slave trade). She was brought up in Paris by Ferriol's sister-in-law, Marie-Angélique de Tencin, with her own sons, (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 Julie Calandrini (; 1668–1754), were first published with notes attributed to Voltaire (1787).[1] They were republished the following year and throughout the 19th century. Their recipient was not correctly identified until the 1806 edition.
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).[2]
It has been argued that the letters were heavily rewritten before their posthumous publication,[3] based on stylistic differences with rare surviving manuscripts.[4]
Mlle Aïssé in fiction
Mlle Aïssé may have inspired Abbé Prévost's (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 and Paul Foucher
She was also the inspiration for Rosa Campbell Praed's historical novel, The Romance of Mademoiselle Aïssé (1910).[5]
Bibliography
- Amelia Gere Mason, The Women of the French Salons (1891), ch.11. https://web.archive.org/web/20070311124925/http://www.worldwideschool.com/library/books/lit/historical/TheWomenoftheFrenchSalons/chap12.html
- Edmund Gosse, French Profiles (1905), p.35-67.
- 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.
- Valerie Lastinger, ″Charlotte Elisabeth Aïssé″, in Writings by pre-revolutionary French women, ed. Anne R. Larsen and Colette H. Winn (1999) vol.2, p.543–58.
External links
Notes and References
- See Edward Langille, ″Ouvrages dont l'annotation a été attribuée à Voltaire″, in Complete Works of Voltaire, vol.145 (2019), Notes et écrits marginaux conservés hors de la bibliothèque nationale de Russie.
- See the introduction https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27603/27603-h/27603-h.htm#Page_vii and the story https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27603/27603-h/27603-h.htm#Page_354.
- See Claire-Éliane Engel, ″Voltaire est-il l'auteur des lettres de Mlle Aïssé?″, Revue des Deux Mondes (1 August 1953), p.530-39, and « Autour de Mademoiselle Aïssé », Revue des Deux Mondes (15 September 1961), p.260-69.
- La Bibliothèque de Genève holds a copy made by Antoine Tronchin of a letter from Aïssé to Julie Calandrini of 2 August 1727 https://archives.bge-geneve.ch/ark:/17786/vta1163c632cfaee215/dao/0/1, as well as three letters in Aïssé's hand to one or different members of the Tronchin family, dating from summer 1727 https://archives.bge-geneve.ch/ark:/17786/vta49207f23ab8dc4da/dao/0/1, 6 January 1730 https://archives.bge-geneve.ch/ark:/17786/vtac3e8bd6b322e5128/dao/0/4, and 5 September 1730 https://archives.bge-geneve.ch/ark:/17786/vtad494c8560e7c87e9/dao/0/1.
- Rosa Campbell Praed, The Romance of Mademoiselle Aïssé (London, 1910) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433102564956&view=1up&seq=9&skin=2021.
