Sophie Gay

Biography

Gay was the child of Auguste Antoine Nichault de la Vallette, an entrepreneur who worked for Louis XVIII of France. Her mother was Francesca Peretti, an Italian woman.

She was married in 1794 to Gaspard Liottier (or Gaspar Liottier). She divorced in 1799 to marry another, Jean Sigismond Gay (1768–1822), the mayor of Lupigny, originally from Aix-les-Bains and with a close association to the French treasury, under the French First Empire. He was the contrôleur-général for the Ruhr.

This marriage, some may say a marriage of convenience, allowed both Sophie and her husband to mix in high society. They spent most of their lives around those of the upper class in Aix-la-Chapelle, with those who were trying to establish the town of Spa, Belgium, and particularly with Pauline Bonaparte. Her French: salon, women of the chattering classes, was often supplemented by artists, musicians, writers and drawers, and painters, who loved her for her wit, beauty, and largesse.

She published her first written work in 1802, defending the art of the novel. Delphine by Germaine de Staël, wrote an open letter to the Journal de Paris which is still on record.

The same year, her first novel, her first published work, Laure d’Estell, was anonymously published, on the advice of her publisher Sir Stanislas de Boufflers and Joseph-Alexandre Pierre de Ségur, Viscount of Ségur.

Ten years later, she published Léonie de Montbreuse, which was critically acclaimed by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve as her best novel, but Anatole of 1815, a story of lost romance, may be the most famous of her works.

After her first successful novel and several others, acclaimed for their style and sweet sincerity, she wrote many others such as Salons célèbres in 1837, which was critically acclaimed.

Gay also worked in the theatre, she was the writer of several theatrical comedies and libretti for opera.

Legacy

Sophie Gay was the mother of the writer Delphine de Girardin, and her son-in-law married the chanteuse Sophie Gail.

In 1818 she wrote the libretto for the opéra comique French: la Sérénade' by Regnard, which Sophie Gail set to music. In 1821, she was working on French: Chanoine de Milan by Alexandre Duval, and a comic opera entitled le Maitre de Chapelle ("Master of the House", not to be confused with Master of the House from Les Misérables (musical)).

Meantime she was also writing many others comedies and dramas. The comedy French: 'la Veuve du tanneur' ("The widow of the tanner"), was a huge success at the Castellane, but the Duchesse de Châteauroux bombed at the Théâtre de l'Odéon.

She also wrote several "novel novels", French: Nouvelles nouvelles, as penny dreadfuls, for La Presse. As an acclamined musician, she also published numerous romantic songs, accompanied on the piano, for which she wrote both the words and music: Maris is perhaps a best example, although she would also write in the elegiac style.

After being widowed, between 1826 and 1827 she took a grand tour to Italy with son.

In the later years of her life, she lived at Versailles during the "season". One of her daughters became the Countess O'Donnell, the other, was more famously known by the name of Delphine de Girardin, the wife of Émile de Girardin.

In her first marriage, she had another sister, who was the Countess of Canclaux.

Some say She also had another brother, who died in the Siege of Constantine of 1830, but others say he survived, continued his education in England, and then returned to France.

Works

Autobiography

For an account of her daughter, Delphine Gay, her mother's work of 1834, Souvenirs d'une vieille femme ("memoirs from an old woman. See also Théophile Gautier's Portraits contemporains and Sainte-Beuve's, Causeries du lundi (Monday's chats, essentially).

Her niece was the writer Hortense Allart.