A Sketch of Belle de Zuylen, Age of Enlightenment Writer
By Jim Nolan | On August 22, 2024 | Updated August 25, 2024 | Comments (0)
What Belle de Zuylen did in 1763 was inexcusable for a young woman. She wrote a novel.
I discovered Belle de Zuylen (1740 – 1805), Dutch-Swiss writer in the age of Enlightenment (also known as Isabelle de Charriére, Belle van Zuylen, Isabella Elisabeth van Tuyll van Seeroskerken, and Zélide) via James Boswell, the 18th-century biographer (The Life of Samuel Johnson) and diarist.
The second book of Boswell’s papers, Boswell in Holland, included his correspondence with de Zuylen. Boswell, a Scot, was studying law in Holland (Scottish and Dutch law apparently being related) and had made her acquaintance.
Boswell was always on the lookout for a rich heiress to marry, and de Zuylen came from a wealthy, aristocratic family. Among other properties they owned a moated castle, now a museum, in which she spent her summers.
Their correspondence began as he was leaving Holland and went on for four years. Frederick Pottle, editor of the Boswell papers, writes that they “may be safely be called one of the oddest series of love letters ever written.”
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Drawing of Belle de Zuylen by Isabella Bannerman
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Eventually Boswell proposed to her, in terms he well knew she would never accept. For one, he demanded she take an oath in front of her father, brothers, and Boswell that “without their approbation she would neither publish nor cause to be acted any of her literary compositions.”
It is impossible to imagine her married to Boswell. As she explained to him, “I lack the subaltern talents.” She later continues:
“I have fortune enough that I do not need a husband’s; I have a sufficiently happy cast of mind and enough mental resources to be able to dispense with a husband, with a family, and what is called an establishment. I therefore make no vows, I take no resolutions; I let the days come and go, deciding always for the better among the things which Fate presents to me with some power of choice. I should be glad if time in its flow might carry away my thousand little faults of humor and character which I recognize and deplore. Often my progress does not come up to my good intentions.” (translation from Pottle’s Boswell in Holland)
It is interesting to me to speculate that, had she been miserably married Boswell, she may at least have had the literary support of Samuel Johnson, a champion of many women writers of the time, including Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, Hannah More and Fanny Burney.
There may have been more opportunities for women writers in England than Holland (or Switzerland). To learn more about Johnson’s friendships with women writers, see Norma Clarke’s Dr. Johnson’s Women. Another excellent book on the subject is Wits & Wives: Dr. Johnson in the Company of Women by Kate Chisholm.
Prior to meeting Boswell, de Zuylen had begun a secret sixteen-year correspondence with Constant d’Hermenches, a military officer, actor, musician, and it was said, womanizer. He was 18 years her senior and married. Their correspondence has been gathered and translated by Janet Whatley and Malcolm Whatley in There Are No Letters Like Yours, who describe it as “one of the richest in a whole age of great letter writing.” They are perhaps less love letters than, in time, the writings of two oddly matched, supportive pen pals.
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In 1762 de Zuylen anonymously published The Nobleman, which was scandalous for two reasons: One, the aristocratic heroine Julie jumps out of the window of her ancient home onto a cushion of ancestral portraits, which she has thrown there herself, the better to elope with her not-aristocratic-enough-for-her-family suitor, Valaincourt.
Sensitive readers should know that they engage in much gratuitous hand-kissing. Two, women weren’t supposed to write novels. It was considered unseemly. And taken as more evidence that de Zuylen, who saw no reason to rein in her opinions, would never be the demure wife sought after in her circles, despite her family name and fortune.
The Nobleman, which in my edition (translated by Caroline Warman) is under twenty pages long, was withdrawn from sale when her parents discovered who had written it—that is to say, they bought up any and all existing copies. Perhaps they are at the bottom of the moat.
She also wrote what Whatley and Whatley call “a provocative literary self-portrait: Portrait de Zélide.” This would become the title of a book published in 1925 by Geoffrey Scott, one that helped revive her fame, at least to some extent. Scott’s book is something to read, a classic and artful and maybe even weird biography. My editions include brilliant introductions by Shirley Hazzard, George Dangerfield, and Richard Holmes, quite the heavyweight trio.
In many ways Scott’s book presents her life as a tragedy, as in his opinion she grew more detached from friends and life (she sure wrote a lot, though). To me, at least, he makes leaps from some of her writing to her state of mind. Good for a biography, perhaps, but maybe it doesn’t tell the full story.
She eventually married her brothers’ tutor, Charles-Emmanuel de Charrière, and they moved to Colombier, Switzerland. This was surprising to many, as he was not of her social class, but she appears to have fallen in love with him, at least for a while, and he was supportive of her writing.
As far as we know, she didn’t have to jump out the castle window onto a pile of family portraits to marry him. She published a novella, Lettres neuchâteloises, Lettres de Mistriss Henley, Lettres écrites de Lausanne, and Caliste, which would become a success (and was written in Paris, a city she did not like).
It was in Paris she met Benjamin Constant, who was twenty-seven years her junior, and the nephew of Constant de Hermenches. They too would have a famous correspondence. He often visited her and her husband in Switzerland, and she responded to his intelligence and wit. He eventually left her for Madame de Stäel, who she despised, dare I opine, rightfully so. Geoffrey Scott makes a great deal of the ending of their correspondence, their break putting her into a self-imposed “icy cage.”
If so it was a cage filled with companions and correspondents, including Henriette L’Hardy, with whom she wrote over 240 letters, and other women friends including Isabel Morel, who became a writer herself. De Zuylen also created many musical works, including an opera-bouffe based on Le Noble, which has been lost.
Belle de Zuylen has fascinated critics and readers for decades after her rediscovery in the early part of the 20th century. She is unique in every way, and did everything her way, at a time when women weren’t supposed to pick up a pen. Reading her today, we can be grateful she did.
Contributed by Jim Nolan, a copywriter based in New York. His humor writing can be found at Medium.
Further reading
- Belle van Zuylen: An Emancipated Woman of the Enlightenment
- Isabelle de Charrier – Voltaire Foundation
- Isabelle de Charrier Biography & Facts – Britannica
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