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DAlembert or Mile de Lespinasse:
a Case of Mistaken Identity

JOHN N. PAPPAS
 


 

■ ^HE presence in the David Eugene Smith collection of a
Mile de Lespinasse letter, inserted among the d'Alembert
manuscripts, appears upon closer scrutiny to be a case of
mistaken identity; yet it is somehow most fitting. It symbolizes the
intimacy of a relationship already legendary during their lifetime,
and romanticized thereafter by many a biographer. D'Alembert
himself furnished the basis for the legend. Upon the death of Mile
de Lespinasse in 1776, he wrote a lament to the memory of the
wroman he loved, wherein he points to their own life stories as
proof that fate had destined them for each other.

Jean Lerond d'Alenibert's mother, Alme de Tcncin, had aban¬
doned him on the steps of a baptistry because an artillery general,
Destouches-Canon, rather than her husband, had fathered him.
Julie de Lespinasse's parents had planned to send her off to a con¬
vent, for similar reasons. In d'Alenibert's case his natural father,
upon returning from a military campaign, demanded the return of
his son from the foundling home, placed him with a nurse in Paris,
and left him a lifetime pension to provide for his education. Julie
was saved from her exile bv an old friend of the family, Mmc du
Deffand, who found the young woman so bright and pleasing that
 

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