Souza, MADAME DE

Souza, MADAME DE, a charming French writer, was born in Paris, 14th May 1761, her maiden name Adélaïde-Marie-Émilie Filleul. Her parents died early, and she was brought up in a convent, from which she emerged only to marry the Comte de Flahaut, then fifty-seven, a union which was not happy. At the outbreak of the Revolution she found refuge, together with her only son, first in Germany, then in England, and here learned of her husband's execution at Arras (1793). For solace she turned to writing, and, in the midst of grief and poverty, wrote her first book, the fresh and delightful Adèle de Sénange (Lond. 1794). After Thermidor she tried to return to France, but had to tarry a while at Hamburg, where she met the Marquis de Souza-Botelho (1758-1825), afterwards Portuguese minister at Paris, whom she married in 1802. The charm of her conversation and manners, her bright wit, and above all her goodness made her the queen of a group that numbered many of the most distinguished men in Paris. The Restoration brought her the great grief of long separation from her son, who had been aide-de-camp to Napoleon. She died in Paris, 16th April 1836. Later novels were Émilie et Alphonse (1799); Charles et Marie (1801), a delightful story, something in Fanny Burney's manner, and coloured throughout by English impressions; Eugène de Rothelin (1808), an exquisite piece of work, its hero a Grandison without insipidity; Eugénie et Mathilde (1811), her longest and best sustained story, in which we find close traces of her own history; and La Comtesse de Fargy (1822). Madame de Souza was a product of the best side of the 18th century, and she helps us to understand the politeness, the harmoniousness, the taste, the reticence—all that was noble and exquisite in the old régime. See Patin's Mélanges (1840) and Sainte-Beuve's Portraits de Femmes.