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Updated: June 7, 2025
Like Tencin, she was ill-reputed in her youth on account of her amours, and reckoned the Regent among her fortunate wooers; at a later period she turned her attention to literature.
He had some desire that the Cardinal de Tencin should succeed him; but his sister was such an intrigante that Cardinal de Fleury advised me to have nothing to do with the matter, and I behaved so as to destroy all his hopes, and to undeceive others. M. d'Argenson has strongly impressed me with the same opinion, and has succeeded in destroying all my respect for him."
The King was very fond of having little private correspondences, very often unknown to Madame de Pompadour: she knew, however, of the existence of some, for he passed part of his mornings in writing to his family, to the King of Spain, to Cardinal Tencin, to the Abbe de Broglie, and also to some obscure persons.
This ferment of intellectual life was one of the signs of the times, but it led to no more definite and tangible results than the turning of a madrigal or the sparkle of an epigram. An Intriguing Chanoinesse Her Singular Fascination Her Salon Its Philosophical Character Mlle. Aisse Romances of Mme. de Tencin D'Alembert La Belle Emilie Voltaire The Two Women Compared
Alert and reserved, Helvetius listened and gathered material for the future." Mme. de Tencin loved literature and philosophy for their own sake, and received men of letters at their intrinsic value. She encouraged, too, the freedom of thought and expression at that time so rare and so dangerous.
The great literary men whom Mme. de Tencin gathered about her, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Marivaux, Helvétius, Marmontel, were called her menagerie, or her bêtes. Among them, Marivaux received a pension of one thousand écus from her, besides drawing at will upon the exchequer of an old maid by the name of Saint-Jean.
But it was not as a literary woman that Mme. de Tencin held her position and won her fame. Her gifts were eminently those of her age and race, and it may be of interest to compare her with a woman of larger talent of a purely intellectual order, who belonged more or less to the world of the salons, without aspiring to leadership, and who, though much younger, died in the same year.
D'Argenson describes his brother Henry as 'Italian, superstitious, a rogue, avaricious, fond of ease, and jealous of the Prince. Cardinal Tencin, he says, and Lord and Lady Lismore, have been bribed by England to wheedle Henry into the cardinalate, 'which England desires more than anything in the world. Charles expressed the same opinion in an epigram.
Marmontel also says, that the aged Madame de Tencin had guessed quite correctly the intentions of Madame Geoffrin, when she said, that she merely came to her house so often in order to see what part of her inventory she could afterward make useful. Madame Geoffrin became celebrated all over Europe, merely by devoting a portion of her income and of her time to the reception of clever society.
The first lady who must be mentioned, is Madame de Tencin.
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