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Updated: May 19, 2025
The idea of woman's education and aim, which was generally entertained by the intelligent and modest women of the seventeenth century, is well expressed by Mlle. de Scudéry in the following: "The difficulty of knowing something with seemliness does not come to a woman so much from what she knows as from what others do not know; and it is, without doubt, singularity that makes it difficult to be as others are not, without being exposed to blame.
In many respects she was not unlike Mlle. de Scudéry; exceptionally plain, her face was much marked with smallpox, a disfigurement not uncommon in those days; her exceedingly piercing and fine eyes, beautiful hair, tall and elegant figure, excellent taste in dress, pleasing voice and a most brilliant talent for conversation, combined to make her one of the most attractive and popular women of her time.
Some really patrician milieu is needed to replace the antique court of the dear old Marquise, and to extinguish the Scudery, whose Saturdays grow more vulgar every week. Yes, you will come to Paris, bringing that human lily, Mrs. Angela, in your train; and I promise to make you the fashion before your house has been open a month. The wits and Court favourites will go where I bid them.
Her wide culture, versatility, modesty, goodness, fidelity, and disinterestedness caused her to be universally sought. Mlle. de Scudéry, in her novel Cyrus, leaves a fine portrait of her: "The spirit and soul of this marvellous person surpass by far her beauty: the first has no limits in its extent and the other has no equal in its generosity, goodness, justice, and purity.
"And now," said D'Artagnan, "that shabby-looking man, who accompanies M. Getard, is he also of the household of M. Fouquet?" "Oh! yes," said Porthos, with contempt; "it is one M. Jupenet, or Juponet, a sort of poet." "Who is come to establish himself here?" "I believe so." "I thought M. Fouquet had poets enough, yonder Scudery, Loret, Pelisson, La Fontaine?
The door of the vestibule opened, and about fifty people came in, among them the Countess of Soissons, Madame du Refuge, Mlle. de Scudery, M, de Roquelaure, and the Abbe de Chimay. At the sight the marquise reddened with shame, and turning to the doctor, said, "Is this man to strip me again, as he did in the question chamber?
A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by striking the editor from the pension-list, a fine of fifteen hundred livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the hands of Madame Scudéry, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman. The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664.
Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, the Acanthe of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reëxamine the grounds of his religious faith.
He had worshipped her romantically, in a mediaeval, Italian way, and she had accepted the homage. It had all been deliciously artificial. It had all been Mademoiselle de Scudery.
He occupied the great chair in which Sir Michael had so often conned his Scudery of winter evenings; but though he filled the chair, he knew that he had neither the will nor the mastery of its old owner. If it had not passed already, the thing might easily pass beyond his staying.
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