Sophie de Condorcet

Sophie de Condorcet (1764 in Meulan – 8 September 1822 in Paris), best known as Madame de Condorcet, was a prominent salon hostess from 1789 to the Reign of Terror, and again from 1799 until her death in 1822. She was the wife, then widow, of the mathematician and philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet, who died during the Reign of Terror. Despite his death, and the exile of her brother Marshal Emmanuel, Marquis de Grouchy between 1815 and 1821, she maintained her own identity and was well-connected and influential before, during, and after the French Revolution.

As a hostess, Madame de Condorcet was popular for her kind heart, beauty, and indifference to a person's class or social origins. Unlike that of her fellow-Girondist hostess Madame Roland, Madame de Condorcet's salons always included other women, notably Olympe de Gouges. De Condorcet was also a writer and a translator in her own right, highly educated for her day, completely fluent in English and Italian [4]. She produced influential translations of Thomas Paine and Adam Smith.

Born Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, daughter of Francoise Jacques de Grouchy, 1st Marquis de Grouchy (born 1715, a former page of Louis XV) by his intellectual wife Marie Gilberte Henriette Fréteau de Pény,, daughter of Michel Louis Fréteau de Pény, Seigneur de Vaux-le-Pénil. In 1786 Sophie de Grouchy married the famous mathematician and philosopher Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (17 September 1743-28–29 March 1794). Then 21 or 22, she was an acknowledged beauty; he was 42 and Inspector-General of the Mint and a prominent French Academician. Although there was a twenty-year age difference, the two shared many intellectual interests, and had a strong and happy marriage.

After her marriage, Madame de Condorcet started a famous salon at Hôtel des Monnaies in Paris, opposite the Louvre, and later at the Rue de Lille in Paris, that was attended by, among many others, many foreign visitors including Thomas Jefferson, British aristocrats Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, David Murray, 7th Viscount Stormont (later 2nd Earl of Mansfield), the economist Adam Smith, the Marquis de Beccaria, Turgot, the writer Pierre Beaumarchais, the pamphleteer Olympe de Gouges, the writer and hostess Germaine de Staël and many French philosophers. This salon played an important role in the rise of the Girondin movement that stressed the rights of women.

...
Wikipedia