Tencin

Tencin, MADAME DE (Claudine Alexandrine Guérin), a clever writer but worthless woman, was born at Grenoble in 1681, and entered the religious life, but soon found its restraints intolerable. Finally, in 1714, she came to Paris, where her wit and beauty soon attracted to her a crowd of lovers, among them personages so great as the Regent and Cardinal Dubois. She had much political influence, was a bitter enemy of the Jansenists, enriched herself, and helped the fortunes of her brother the Cardinal Pierre Guérin de Tencin (1680-1758). But her importance died with the regent and the cardinal in 1723. In 1726 she lay a short time in the Bastille, after the tragic scandal caused by one of her lovers shooting himself in her house. Her later life was more decorous, and her salon became one of the most popular in Paris. She died 4th December 1749. One of her oldest lovers was Fontenelle; D'Alembert was one of her children. Her romances, Mémoires du Comte de Comminges (1735), Le Siège de Calais (1739), and Les Malheurs de l'Amour (1747), show taste, passion, and style, with all the 18th-century limitations. They resemble the romances of Madame de La Fayette in many points, but they lack the peculiar charm that lives in everything written by that admirable woman. Madame de Tencin's Correspondance with her brother appeared at Paris in 1790; the Lettres au Duc de Richelieu in 1806. See Barthélemy's Mémoires Secrets de Mme. de Tencin (Grenoble, 1790).