A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Creguy, Victoire d'Houlay, Marquise de
CREGUY, VICTOIRE D'HOULAY, MARQUISE DE,
A distinguished French lady, was born in 1699, and died in 1804. She has left several volumes of souvenirs, which form a sort of panorama of the eighteenth century. Allied by birth to the highest nobility, and inspired by nature with a taste for literary society, she was acquainted with most of the celebrated characters of all descriptions that flourished during that lapse of time. As a girl, being presented to Louis XIV., when, according to the etiquette of the court, she advanced to kiss the king's hand, the gallant monarch prevented the action by rendering this homage to herself; a fact only worth recording because the very same circumstance occurred on a presentation to Napoleon eighty years afterwards.
A family of the name of Grèguy, but whose ancestor had been an upholsterer in the time of Louis XII., claimed to belong to the great de Creguy race. "There was some similarity in the pursuits of our ancestors," said Madame de Crèguy, "c'est que les uns gagnaient des batailles, tandis que les autres faisaient des sieges." Several other examples are on record of the ready wit for which she was celebrated among her contemporaries. Held at the baptismal font by the distinguished Princess des Ursins, who governed Spain despotically under Philip V., she lived to see that monarchy submitted to the disposal of France, and its crown awarded to one born the private subject of an obscure province. That the Marchioness de Crèguy maintained through all these changes her cheerfulness of mind, shews that her literary pursuits had a happy effect on the tranquillity and usefulness of her long life.