Claudine Guérin de Tencin

Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin, Baroness of Saint-Martin-de-Ré (27 April 1682 – 4 December 1749) was a French salonist and author. She was the mother of Jean le Rond d'Alembert, philosophe and contributor to the Encyclopédie, though she left him on the steps of the Saint-Jean-le-Rond de Paris church a few days after his birth.

Claudine was born in Grenoble, France where her father, Antoine Guérin, sieur de Tencin, was president of the parliament. Claudine was brought up at a convent near Grenoble and, at the wish of her parents, took the veil but broke her vows and succeeded, in 1712, in gaining formal permission from Pope Clement XI for her secularisation. She is reputed to have had a liaison, while still formally a nun, with the Irish exile soldier Arthur Dillon.

She joined her sister Mme. de Ferriol in Paris, where she soon established a salon, frequented by wits and roués. Among her numerous lovers and benefactors was the Chevalier Louis-Camus Destouches, by whom she had an illegitimate son, Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Guillaume Dubois, the future First Minister was reportedly another of her lovers, even after he became Archbishop of Cambrai; but the affair, if it existed, was conducted with discretion.

One of her liaisons did have a tragic ending. Charles-Joseph de la Fresnaye committed suicide in her house, and Mme. de Tencin spent some time in the Châtelet and then in the Bastille in consequence, but was soon liberated as the result of a declaration of her innocence by the Grand Consul.

From this time she devoted herself to political intrigue, especially for the preferment of her brother the abbé Tencin, who became archbishop of Embrun and received a cardinal's hat. The nature of her relationship with her brother was a subject of much speculation, but although she never troubled to deny the rumours, there seems to be no evidence that their affection was more than fraternal.

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