Élie Catherine Fréron

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Élie Fréron

Élie Catherine Fréron (20 January 1718 – 10 March 1776) was a French journalist, literary critic and controversialist.

Biography

Fréron was born at Quimper in Brittany, the son of Daniel Fréron, a goldsmith from Agen[1] and his wife Marie-Anne Campion,[2] a distant relative of Malherbe.

He made such rapid academic progress that he was appointed professor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand before he turned twenty. He became a contributor to the Observations sur les écrits modernes of the abbé Pierre Desfontaines. At the death of Desfontaines, in 1745, Fréron created his own journal, the Lettres de la comtesse de ***. Fréron in 1746 founded a similar journal of his own, entitled Lettres de la Comtesse de ... It was suppressed in 1749, but he immediately replaced it by Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps, which, with the exception of a short suspension in 1752, on account of an attack on the character of Voltaire, was continued till 1754, when it was succeeded by the more ambitious Année littéraire.

Fréron was received as an apprentice Freemason in December 1743 and then as a Master Mason on February 26, 1744 at the "Procope" lodge,[3] a famous Parisian café in the Fossés-Saint-Germain area where a large number of Freemasons from the world of Letters met. In April 1745, Fréron was speaker of the Grand Lodge of France.

In 1754, Fréron founded the Année littéraire, which was his life's work and which he directed until his death in 1776. In it he strongly criticized the literature of his time by relating it to the models of the 17th-century and fought the philosophes of the Enlightenment in the name of religion and monarchy. The periodical was very successful at first and Fréron earned a very good living. He lived in a superb house at Rue de Seine, decorated with magnificent gilded panelling, and was a very good host, receiving at his table the Duke of Choiseul, the Duke of Orleans or the King Stanislaus I.

He mainly attacked Voltaire, whom he had already described in the Lettres sur quelques écrits du temps as "sublime in some of his writings, groveling in all his actions". The criticism was then repeated in each issue of the Année littéraire, often biting but always expressed with composure and in a courteous tone. One of his last attacks was on an edition of the Commentary on La Henriade (1775) which La Beaumelle was unable to complete before his death in 1773.

Voltaire, who could not stand the attacks, retaliated with extreme violence. He wrote a virulent satire against Fréron, Le Pauvre diable (1758), as well as a play, Le Café ou l'Écossaise (1760), in which Fréron is represented by the character of "Wasp", spy and informer, envious and vile rascal, always ready to slander at a high price in his newspaper l'Âne littéraire, "the Literary Ass".[4] Fréron attended the first two performances: if his wife fainted before the vigor of the attack, he himself did not lose his composure and gave an ironic and correct account of the play. Voltaire also wrote many epigrams against him, in prose or in verse, among which this one has remained famous:

L’autre jour au fond d’un vallon,

Un serpent piqua Jean Fréron;

Que croyez-vous qu’il arriva?

Ce fut le serpent qui creva.[5]

But Voltaire and the philosophes party also used against Fréron their powerful relays in the Government and in the high administration, in particular the director of the Librairie, Lamoignon-Malesherbes. Fréron, having lost several of his protectors, remained protected by Queen Marie Leszczyńska and her father King Stanislaus I, although the latter was a friend of the Philosophes. Despite this, the Année littéraire suffered numerous suspensions and Fréron a few days of imprisonment in the Bastille and the For-l'Évêque. The paper collapsed. In 1766, Fréron had remarried a cousin, Annette (known as Annetic) Royou, who tried to put his affairs in order. But in the end, the Keeper of the Seals, Hue de Miromesnil, ordered the suppression of the Année littéraire in 1776. Fréron was so upset by this that he died soon after. His enemies, however, alleged an attack of gout, the result of long-lasting excesses of eating and drinking.

Private life

In 1751, Fréron had married a young orphan from Quimper, Thérèse Guyomar. They had a son, Stanislas Fréron, who played a role during the French Revolution: nicknamed the "Missionary of the Terror", he was notably the instigator of the terrible repression of Toulon at the end of 1793.

Works

  • Histoire de Marie Stuart (1742; with abbé de Marsy)
  • Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy (1745)
  • Lettres de la comtesse de *** (1746)
  • Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (1749–1750 and 1752–1754; with Joseph de La Porte; 13 volumes)
  • Opuscules (1753; 3 volumes)
  • L'Année Littéraire (1754–1790; 290 volumes)
  • Histoire de l'empire d'Allemagne (1771; 8 volumes)

Notes

  1. ↑ The cradle of the Fréron family was the commune of Clairac since the 16th century. Daniel Fréron established in Quimper in 1693.
  2. ↑ Marie-Anne Campion was born in Pont-l'Abbé.
  3. ↑ Brengues, Jacques (1970). "Duclos et Fréron Frères Ennemis," Dix-huitième Siècle, No. 2, p. 201.
  4. ↑ Fréron is also mentioned in Voltaire's novella Candide, in reference to a rude critic the title character meets at a theater. A further attack on Fréron entitled Anecdotes sur Fréron ... (1760), published anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.
  5. ↑ Fréron was not to be outdone. The following anecdote is sometimes quoted (but this word is also attributed to Piron), underlining Fréron's vivacity of language. Voltaire, having noticed that he was invited to the same party as Fréron, wanted to cancel his invitation; when Fréron learned of this, he promised to keep to himself and to say only three words. The pusillanimous Voltaire, reassured, answered the invitation where he gobbled up a huge portion of oysters and concluded: "Madam, your oysters are so good that I will eat as many as Samson killed Philistines". It was not good for him, because Fréron, who had not loosened his teeth until then, added: "Avec même mâchoire" ("With the same jaw"), which put the laughers on his side.

References

External links

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