A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Graffigny, Francoise d'Happoncourt
GRAFFIGNY, FRANCOISE D'HAPPONCOURT,
Was the daughter of a great-niece of the celebrated engraver Callot. Her disposition gentle and serious, her judgment excellent, she was benevolent and affectionate, and much esteemed by her numerous friends. Her "Lettres Peruviennes" obtained great celebrity. Their variety of description, richness of imagery, and impassioned interest, have been justly admired. She also composed a comedy of the Genre Larmoyante, which contains many ingenious thoughts, but is negligently finished.
Madame de Graffigny sometimes told with mortification, that her mother, having inherited a vast number of the copperplates of the great Callot, sent one day for a brazier and had them all melted down, and made into kitchen utensils.
In her married life she suffered much unkindness from an unworthy husband. Becoming a widow, in 1740 she went to Paris in the suite of Mademoiselle de Guise, little foreseeing the honours that awaited her in the literary world. Her reputation was formed in the capital while she was unconscious of it. Several men of letters engaged her assistance in a periodical production that was in vogue at that time. She wrote for them a tale entitled "Bad examples produce as many virtues as vices." This story is filled with maxims, of which the very title is one. Madame de Graffigny began the career of an author at rather a late period of life; but no want of spirit or animation is to be objected to her writings. Besides many other dramatic and imaginative works, she composed three or four little plays for the young, which were represented in Vienna by 'the children of the Emperor, who gave her a pension. These were of a moral tendency, and written with a characteristic simplicity. She died in 1758,