Jean François de Saint-Lambert
| Jean François de Saint-Lambert | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
26 December 1716 Nancy |
| Died | 9 February 1803 (aged 86) Paris |
| Title | Marquis de Saint-Lambert |
| Partner(s) |
Émilie du Châtelet Sophie d'Houdetot |
| Children | Stanislas-Adélaïde du Châtelet, born on 4 September 1749, died on 6 May 1751 (aged 1) |
Jean François de Saint-Lambert (26 December 1716 – 9 February 1803) was a French poet, philosopher and military officer.
Saint-Lambert was born at Nancy and raised on his parents' estate at Affracourt, a village in Lorraine near Haroué, a seat of the Beauvau family, with whom he had close ties. He studied at the university at Pont-à-Mousson, but then spent several years at home recovering from an unidentified illness. He often complained of poor health, but participated in military campaigns, led a strenuous social life, and lived to be 86 years old.
Saint-Lambert began writing poetry in his adolescence and belonged to the circle around Françoise de Graffigny in Lunéville. By October 1733 he had already begun work on The Seasons, his major poetical work, which did not appear in print until 1769 (see 1769 in poetry). All his life, he read his works in salons and to his friends, but did not rush to publish them.
In 1739, Saint-Lambert joined the Heudicourt regiment in the Lorraine Guards, in which his boyhood friend, Charles-Just, prince de Beauvau-Craon, was already a colonel, despite being only 19 years old. For much of the 1740s the two men fought side by side in the Italian campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession.
Saint-Lambert spent the winter quarter in Lunéville in 1745-46, and according to François-Antoine Devaux, he became at that time the lover of the Marquise de Boufflers. She was a sister of the prince de Beauvau, and the mistress of Stanislaus Leszczynski, who had been established in 1737 as duke of Lorraine.
Over the winter of 1747-48, Voltaire and his entourage took up residence in Lunéville. Saint-Lambert soon began a liaison with the great writer's mistress, Émilie du Châtelet. She was in her forties, and had had many lovers, but succumbed to a mad passion for Saint-Lambert and became pregnant with his child. The baby, a girl named Stanislas-Adélaïde Du Châtelet, was born on 4 September 1749 in what at first seemed an easy delivery; but Émilie contracted a fever and died on 10 September. The infant died in Lunéville on 6 May 1751.
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