Note 52 — Chapter IV · English Authors in Parisian Salons

In Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la Littérature Française, op. cit., 6. 404, Walpole, who must have had her character from Madame du Deffand, tells Mason that she was ‘a most horrid woman’ who ‘had great parts and so little principle that she was supposed to have murdered and robbed one of her lovers, a scrape out of which Lord Harrington and another of them saved her. She had levees from eight in the morning till night, from the lowest tools to the highest.’ Letters 10. 28; 13 March 1777.