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In attempting to revitalize the materials and methods of the romances Mrs. Haywood was but following the lead of the French romancières, who had successfully invaded the field of prose fiction when the passing of the précieuse fashion and Boileau's influential ridicule had discredited the romance in the eyes of writers with classical predilections. Mme de La Fayette far outshines her rivals, but a host of obscure women, headed by Hortense Desjardins, better known as Mme de Villedieu, hastened to supply the popular demand for romantic stories. In drawing their subjects from the histories of more modern courts than those of Rome, Greece, or Egypt they endeavored to make their "historical" romances of passion more lifelike than the heroic romances, and while they avoided the extravagances, they also shunned the voluminousness of the romans
With the advent of Mme de Villedieu in France and her more celebrated contemporary, Mrs. Behn, in England, literature became a profession whereby women could command a livelihood. The pioneer romancières were commonly adventuresses in life as in letters, needy widows like Mrs. Behn, Mme de Gomez, and Mrs. Mary Davys, or cast mistresses like Mme de Villedieu, Mile de La Force, and Mrs.
Autobiography was almost the only form of writing not attempted by Eliza Haywood in the course of her long career as an adventuress in letters. Unlike Mme de Villedieu or Mrs. Aphra Behn's fictitious exploits and amorous correspondence . Indeed the first biographer of Mrs.
Swift described the writer of the scandal as a "stupid, infamous, scribbling woman"; Peterborough writing to Lady Mary Montagu in behalf of his friend, the English Homer, sneered at the "four remarkable poetesses and scribblers, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Haywood, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. July, 1749. Mme de Villedieu, Annales galantes de Grece and Les exiles de la cour d'Auguste.
At the bottom are the cellar and almonry, then comes the Salle des Chevaliers and the dormitory, and above all are the beautiful cloisters and the refectory. Jourdain, however, only lived to see one storey completed, but his successors carried on the work and Raoul de Villedieu finished the splendid cloister in 1228.
Although the grand romances had a little exhausted the vein of classical material, Mme Durand-Bedacier and Mme de Villedieu compiled sundry annals of Grecian and Roman gallantry. But the cycle of French secret history was much more extensive.
If we had approached Vire from the west, by way of Villedieu and St. Sever, we should have had even finer views than by way of Mortain; but Villedieu is at present more deplorable than Mortain in its domestic arrangements, and the inn is to be avoided by all cleanly people; however, with the completion of the railway from Vire to Granville, we are promised much better things.
In 1203 the fortifications consisted only of wooden palisades. Being attacked by the Bretons, they set fire to them: the fire reached the church and abbey, which was completely destroyed. The monastery was restored in 1226, by Abbot Adulph de Villedieu. His successor, Richard Justin, obtained from the Pope the most distinguished privileges. In 1418 the English made a fruitless attack upon it.
I pass by here the relation of how at every one of his meals he supped up the milk of four thousand and six hundred cows, and how, to make him a skillet to boil his milk in, there were set a-work all the braziers of Somure in Anjou, of Villedieu in Normandy, and of Bramont in Lorraine.
At the bottom are the cellar and almonry, then comes the Salle des Chevaliers and the dormitory, and above all are the beautiful cloisters and the refectory. Jourdain, however, only lived to see one storey completed, but his successors carried on the work and Raoul de Villedieu finished the splendid cloister in 1228.
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