Marie Célestine Amélie d'Armaillé (née, de Ségur; known as the Comtesse d'Armaillé; 8 January 1830 – 7 December 1918) was a French writer, biographer, and historian. In 1887, she was a recipient of the Montyon Prize from the Académie Française, for the biography, Madame Élisabeth, sœur de Louis XVI. Armaillé died in 1918.
Faithful to the traditions of her family, she was interested in historical and literary matters. Moreover, she brought together a society that shared her interests.[3] She began to publish in 1864 with a study on the Queen of France, Marie Leszczyńska, wife of King Louis XV, which earned her the privilege of an article by the French literary criticCharles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.[3][4]
Around the age of 69, she began to evoke the memories of her career through a memoir, voluntarily limiting herself to the first thirty years, from 1830 to 1860.[5]
Personal life
In 1851, she married Louis de La Forest d'Armaillé, Comte d'Armaillé, thus taking the title of "Comtesse d'Armaillé", while also being known as "Marie Célestine Amélie de La Forest d'Armaillé".[6] She was widowed in 1882. Their daughter, Pauline-Célestine-Louise, married Prince Victor de Broglie on September 28, 1871.[7] Pauline and Victor had six children, including Maurice (1875–1960), an experimental physicist, and Louis (1892-1987), who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics (1929).[8]
The Spanish flu pandemic broke out in 1918 and d'Armaillé died of the consequences of this illness,[5] on 7 December of the same year,[9] then aged 88,[2] in her home in the Square de Messine (now, rue du Docteur-Lancereaux) in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.[10] Her funeral was celebrated on 11 December, in the Saint-Philippe-du-Roule church,[11] in the same arrondissement.
^"ARMAILLE (LA FOREST).". Annuaire de la noblesse de France et des maisons souveraines de l'Europe (in French). Bureau de la publication. 1887. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
^M. J. Nye. (1997). "Aristocratic Culture and the Pursuit of Science: The De Broglies in Modern France". Isis. 88 (3) (Isis ed.): 397–421. doi:10.1086/383768. JSTOR236150. S2CID143439041.