Four major novels, many short stories, dialogues, plays, pamphlets, letters, journals – not counting minor and still unpublished works – plus a legacy to language and an unenviable reputation for near-criminal behaviour and pornography: all this identifies the Marquis de Sade, possibly the most talked about of unread authors in or out of France, his home country. Few writers have excited so much controversy or left so many problems, biographical, social and literary, many still unresolved after some two hundred years. The poet Apollinaire called him 'the freest spirit who ever lived'.
Who was this man? How did he live and come to earn his alarming reputation? What is the relationship between mythology and fact?
The extraordinary writer whose name has passed into dictionaries and reference books world-wide, Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade, was born in Paris in 1740 in the Hôtel de Condé, on the Left Bank, later demolished to make way for the well-known Théâtre de l'Odéon. His family background was grand: the writer's father, the Comte de Sade, spent his life in the army and the diplomatic service, while his marriage brought him a distant alliance to the younger branch of the Bourbons, the ruling dynasty in France. The de Sade family, whose genealogy can be traced back to the Middle Ages, was of Provençal origin and had included several lawyers and many clerics. One early member, Laure de Sade, had been Petrarch's adored if elusive Laura, first seen by the poet in Avignon in 1327.
Donatien-Alphonse-François was to grow up as an only child, an elder sister having died at the age of two and a younger one surviving only a few days. He did not see a great deal of his mother, who was lady-in-waiting to the Princesse de Condé, while his grandmother in Provence was so over-affectionate and indulgent that the little boy was allowed to become vain and violent. He later admitted as much. Four aunts who had entered the religious life also spoilt him, the only surviving boy of his generation. His education followed the usual pattern adopted by the French aristocracy at the time. Between the ages of four and ten he was educated mainly by his uncle, a worldly abbé who lived partly at one of the family properties, Saumane, and partly at the Cistercian Abbaye d'Ebreuil, near Limoges in central France.
The abbé, like many of his contemporaries, was hardly a model character. Admittedly he wrote a biography of the family's best-known ancestor, Laure de Sade, but the religious life did not concern him greatly. Two mistresses, a mother and her daughter, lived openly in his house, and he frequented the establishment of a procuress. Unfortunately for him, one of his visits coincided with a police raid and the abbé was sent to prison for a time. His nephew was surely too young to react personally to this behaviour but he no doubt grew up assuming it to be normal. And up to a point, it was.
However, at ten the boy was old enough for serious education and was sent back to Paris to attend the Lycée Louis-le-Grand which was directed, under strict discipline, by Jesuits. Sade seems to have appreciated the tutor allotted to him, the Abbé Amblet, with whom he remained in touch for many years, and at the Lycée he had his first experience of acting in and producing plays. However, his regular education was over after four years, for at fourteen the schoolboy was old enough to join the army. Since he was a member of an old and aristocratic family, he was able to join the Light Horse, one of the King's favourite regiments. The marquis spent altogether seventeen years in the army, becoming a sub-lieutenant in the King's infantry regiment, then a cornet in the Carabinier regiment (which took part in the Seven Years War), next a captain in a cavalry regiment and finally maître de camp. When he was only twenty, in 1764, Sade acquired more responsibility when his father passed over to him the lieutenant-generalcy of four provinces: Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and Gex.
Army life, much of it spent in Germany, brought the young officer his first experiences with girls, and as soon as he was back in Paris he had even more choice of companions, all flattered by the attentions of a young officer generous with money and eager for entertainment. Girls, betting, laziness: his behaviour upset his father and in fact Sade was hardly satisfied with himself. He wrote out his thoughts to the Abbé Amblet, aware that so far he had not developed any good relationship with a woman: 'Could I imagine that the girls whom I saw could truly bring me pleasure? Alas, does one ever really enjoy happiness that is bought, and can love without delicacy ever be really affectionate? My amour propre is hurt now at the thought that I was loved only because I probably paid better than the next man.' The Comte de Sade, whom his son described as 'the most affectionate of fathers', was not pleased when he had to pay the marquis's gambling debts and listen to complaints about his behaviour, especially his passion for entertainment. The count, who was somewhat austere by nature and consumed by perpetual money worries, admitted that his son's 'little heart or rather body is wildly combustible': surely it was time to arrange a marriage for him, then he might settle down.
Sade himself was beginning to think about marriage, but in a romantic, unrealistic way, for he had fallen in love. He had met a girl who was a year younger than himself and like him came of an old Provençal family. Her name was Laure de Lauris, and Sade, addressing her as ma chère amie, ma divine amie, 'sole support of my heart, sole delight of my life', wrote a long and passionate letter to her. His father had already chosen a bride for him, as was usual, de rigueur in fact, at the time, but Sade told Laure that he would not marry this other girl. The Comte de Sade had almost given up hope for his son, finding him intractable in everything, but in this case he had encountered an unexpected ally. Laure refused to marry the marquis; she had set her heart on someone else. For the first time in his life the marquis had to do what he was told. Like his near-contemporary Edward Gibbon he sighed as a lover and obeyed as a son. He submitted to the arranged marriage and in 1763 Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil became Marquise de Sade.
The count must have been highly relieved. The Président de Montreuil was a successful lawyer who had made money and the family seemed to be so well inclined towards their new in-laws that the count felt guilty about introducing his difficult son to them. Yet father and son both needed the wealthy Montreuils, since the count had even had to borrow money to outfit his domestic staff for the entertainment and ceremonies incurred by the marriage.
Sade was twenty-three when he entered into this loveless but useful arrangement and, if his elders had hoped he would settle down, he did not do so. Five months after the wedding he left the Montreuils' Normandy château on some pretext and in Paris took a girl named Jeanne Testard, who made fans, into a small house near the rue Mouffetard and locked her into a bedroom with him. He wanted not only sex with flagellation but sex with blasphemous acts. The terrified girl co-operated only to save her life, she said, for her seducer threatened her with pistols and a sword. Later, after the girl had understandably complained to the police, Sade was arrested, and after cross-examination he found himself imprisoned in the donjon of Vincennes, a forbidding fortress built in the Middle Ages. The King had signed the necessary documents authorizing his punishment.
The marquis affected to repent, his desperate father exerted influence at court and after a few weeks the prisoner was released, subject to certain conditions. He was to be a prisoner not of the State but of his in-laws. He was to live with them at the Château d'Echauffour where a resident police inspector would also keep an eye on him.
But Sade's true gaoler was his mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil. She had already paid off the girl, Jeanne Testard, hoping for her silence, and began to wonder how she could keep this young man in control: at all costs his behaviour must not compromise her family ambitions. She referred to him as un drôle d'enfant, 'an odd child'. The phrase sounds dismissive, but it may disguise the fact that Madame de Montreuil, who spent her life in social climbing and intrigue, was attracted to the marquis herself. She was as well known for her charm as for her powers of persuasion and in her the young man met his match. In their different ways, they both liked to dominate and spent their lives looking for ways of doing so.
Was Donatien-Armand-François an attractive man? He is never described as handsome, and the only authentic likeness to have survived shows him as an adolescent. Yet he must have possessed a kind of charisma, a dynamism that some women could not resist. The police reports are more informative than personal recollections: he was about five feet five inches tall, his face pale and pock-marked, his hair a light chestnut in colour, his eyes blue, his gaze intense.
Fascinating or not as a man, everything he did seemed acceptable to his wife: either she was in love with him or she was cold, indifferent. Sade was indifferent about nothing, and where his private pleasures were concerned he was devious and determined. When he believed he had shown sufficient repentance after the Jeanne Testard affair he began to spend time in Paris again, haunting the theatres and the Opéra, where there was no shortage of attractive young actresses and dancers. He seems to have been genuinely in love with Mademoiselle Colet, who was eighteen when he first met her. She was officially kept by the Marquis de Lignerai,* who was apparently ready to retire in favour of his rival. But Sade could not afford the girl. He even confessed his problem to Madame de Montreuil, who referred to his feelings as une frénésie. Like every upper- or middle-class eighteenth-century mother-in-law she did not expect marital fidelity but she hoped the young man would at least maintain a show of discretion.
He did not, and was soon infatuated with Mademoiselle de Beauvoisin, a senior actress-courtesan aged twenty-two, and his behaviour with her was anything but discreet. He took her to the family château at La Coste in Provence, where he had the private theatre restored so that they could act together, assisted by professionals whom he called in, and by any available amateurs. The marquis also wrote plays for performance here. The young Beauvoisin was sometimes even presented as the marquise, or mistaken for her, but when she was at La Coste Renée-Pélagie would take part in the entertainments herself. She may well have believed that by this method she had more chance of keeping her husband's friendship, if nothing more, rather than through any jealous scenes.
Early in 1767 the Comte de Sade died suddenly. His son was emotionally upset by the loss and Madame de Montreuil was touched by his reaction. Was the young man, le drôle d'enfant, truly capable of family feeling? He could now have taken the style of comte, but apparently he preferred to be known almost always as marquis. That same year, late in August, his eldest son, Louis-Marie, was born, and everyone, including the two grandmothers, was pleased. When the Prince de Condé and the Princesse de Conti agreed to be godparents, Madame de Montreuil may have felt that her social ambitions were on the way to fulfilment.
However, there was no new chapter of happy domestic life. Sade was not satisfied with the minor dramas of the entertainment world and backstage theatre life. He wanted something more. It was on Easter Sunday 1768 that he saw Rose Keller, a thirty-six-year-old widow of German origin, begging in the place des Victoires. He took her to his little house at Arcueil, a place he kept, like most young aristocrats of the time, for sexual assignments, but merely told her he needed a chambermaid. Rose Keller foreshadowed Justine, the marquis's future and best-known downtrodden heroine. He made her undress, tied her down on a bed and beat her, using alternately a rod and a 'martinet', a whip with knotted cords, occasionally putting wax on her wounds, until he experienced orgasm. He then told her to wash, gave her some eau-de-vie for the wounds and plied her with boiled beef and wine. Afterwards he locked her in a bedroom, from which she escaped through the window and down a rope of knotted sheets. Sade's valet ran after her and offered her money, which she refused.
Naturally she complained. Within three days the local judge was listening to witnesses and by the fourth the Marquise de Montreuil was again paying hush-money to the victim.
However inexcusable the incident, Sade was by no means the only 'sadist' in mid-eighteenth-century France, or in the England of Sir Francis Dashwood's Hell-fire Club. Many members of the French aristocracy and even the King's brother, the Comte de Charolais, committed cruel sexual offences just as or even more serious, but, through family privilege and fortune, they escaped punishment. Sade did not escape entirely, neither he nor even his parents-in-law were powerful or rich enough for that, and he was made into something of a scapegoat, for his case was investigated by the criminal council of the Parlement de Paris, the highest court in the country. By the end of April the young man – he was still only twenty-eight – was sent briefly to the Château de Saumur, then to the gloomy fortress of Pierre-Encise, near Lyon, and from there to the Conciergerie in Paris. Yet again, through the intervention of his own mother and his mother-in-law, Sade did not suffer too much, for by November 1768 he was free.
He apparently did not wish to be free of his family, and his wife, although she did not know of all his misdeeds, forgave him what she did know. A second son, Donatien-Claude-Armand, was born in the summer of 1769, which, it transpired, was to be the most uneventful year in Sade's life. Even the police inspector who still kept him under observation, could find nothing to report. The marquis, interested in most aspects of culture, went to Holland to look at paintings and spent some time writing poetry, having 'borrowed the brush of Aretino'. His ambitious mother-in-law hoped he would appear at court, but unfortunately the King did not wish to see him there. He was prepared to return to the army, but again he did not seem popular, for the officers in charge of the Bourgogne Cavalerie regiment did not wish his presence either. He apparently visited London in 1770, carrying out some historical research, which he enjoyed. The Prince de Condé helped him to acquire a commission as maître de cavalerie, equivalent to the rank of colonel; but alas, the post was unpaid.
The year 1771 brought the birth of his daughter, Madeleine- Laure, but it ended the short period of peaceful existence for Sade, for that year he was back in prison, not for sexual offences but for a mundane question of debt. Sade was good at spending money, but like his father he was not good at collecting or managing the money that could have been brought in from the Château de La Coste. Even after selling his army commission he was still short of funds, his debtors would not wait and he was forced to spend a few weeks in the prison of Fort l'Evèque, near Lyon. However, he was able to leave in the autumn, having pledged to settle his debts. Sade then joined his family at La Coste, with its forty-two well-appointed rooms, which included his own library stocked with a wide range of books: classical authors, Pascal, Bossuet, the romans libres so fashionable at the time, and controversial books by such free-thinking authors as Baron d'Holbach.
But he could not limit himself to reading, however adventurous the books. At thirty-two he still felt compelled to go on acting out the fantasies which could not be satisfied either with his wife or with his favourite actress companions. During the early months of 1772 there was a different atmosphere about La Coste, owing to the arrival of a visitor from the Montreuil family, Anne-Prospère, one of Renée-Pélagie's younger sisters and her mother's favourite. It is not known why no husband had yet been found for her, or why she was a canoness, in other words a nun who had not yet taken her vows and was still living a privileged and worldly existence. Money had talked; the girl lived in a convent to which only noble families were normally admitted. Anne-Prospère was obviously attractive and intelligent. Sade's uncle, the abbé, apparently fell in love with her. So did Sade himself, and soon she was his mistress. Seducing a nun, however co-operative, was apparently even more exciting than beating a widow on Easter Sunday.
If Renée-Pélagie was secretly jealous of her sister, she continued to play the role of faithful wife, and a curious form of ménage à trois developed, the abbé wishing he could join in.
However, Sade still wanted something more, for intellectual discussions with a woman of his own class, even accompanied by a sexual relationship, were not enough. He needed women he could dominate in a crude physical way; he needed a short-term irresponsible escape from the conventional life of the château. At the end of June in 1772, on the pretext of attending to some financial business, he went to Marseille with his valet Latour and sent him in search of girls who were to join them in an orgy. Found through a procuress they were brought to the marquis, who offered them some sweets. Later the girls complained of feeling ill, and blamed the sweets, but not before they had accepted invitations to join in sexual intercourse with brutal accompaniments. Sometimes the girls were asked to whip the marquis, sometimes he whipped them, and Latour took part in the proceedings. As for the sweets, they were not poisoned but contained cantharides or 'Spanish fly', a well-known aphrodisiac much used at the time.
Like Rose Keller, the girls complained and in early July the arrest of Sade and Latour was ordered.
What was to be done? The marquis decided to leave France, but he would not leave alone. Latour must obviously go with him, and he took a second companion: Anne-Prospère. As for Renée-Pélagie, she did not complain, doing all she could to help the trio make a rapid escape. They went to Italy. Sade and Latour were accused in Marseille of 'poisoning and sodomy' and in September the Parlement at Aix condemned them to death, in their absence. On 12th September their effigies were publicly burnt in the centre of the town.
The years 1772–8 were so eventful in Sade's life that his adventures during that time read like fiction. Later in 1772 he left Italy, avoiding France and going to Savoy, which at that date was still part of Sardinia. But he was not safe even there, for he had underestimated Madame de Montreuil, infuriated by the seduction of her favourite daughter, even though Anne-Prospère had returned to France in November. The revengeful mother-in-law now arranged indirectly, through various diplomats, French and Sardinian, for Sade to be imprisoned, by order of King Charles-Emmanuel III of Sardinia, in the fortress of Miolans near Chambéry. His valet went with him and there they remained for nearly six months. In the spring of 1773 they escaped and the marquis returned to La Coste, convinced that his wife would continue to forgive him and help to conceal him.
Despite the searches by the police, and at least one raid on the château, Sade remained free for the whole of 1774 and half of the following year. His wife was apparently so devoted in her strange way that she had even taken legal action against her mother in an attempt to stop her interference. She did not succeed. Unfortunately too there was soon more for her to forgive. If Sade's feelings for Mademoiselle Colet a few years earlier had merited the description of 'frenzy', the direction of his 'frenzy' had long since turned away from 'love' into something totally destructive. If the orgy in Marseille had taken place on the premises of one of the girls involved, there now followed a whole series of orgies conducted in his own château. Some of the girls had been procured by a priest; boys took part also and so, apparently, did the Marquise de Sade herself. Perhaps these events were a trial run in some ways for those that formed Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome, Sade's first full-length book, although the château in which it was set was barricaded against the outside world. This was not the case at La Coste. The scandalous news spread to the surrounding villages, and later one angry father even tried to shoot the marquis.
Sade was soon a fugitive again, for Madame de Montreuil had now obtained the French king's permission for his arrest and the seizure of his papers. Once more he fled to Italy, where he stayed until the following year, collecting material for a book he was hoping to write about the country.
For six months or so in late 1776, back in France, he remained free, but early the following year he heard that his mother in Paris was ill. He decided that he would go to see her, but after a slow journey with his family he reached the city too late. The countess was dead. He was not too late for Madame de Montreuil's revenge: hearing of his presence she arranged at once to have him arrested under a lettre de cachet, an autocratic system that sanctioned imprisonment without trial. On 13th February he was taken once again to the donjon of Vincennes. There he began to plead with his mother-in-law for release and, on 6th March 1777, wrote in desperation to his wife: 'Get me out of this place, my dear wife, get me out, I beg you, for I feel I am dying by inches . .. love me in proportion to my sufferings, I ask no more, and believe me, I am in the depths of despair.'
He was not dying yet; he was to live another thirty-seven years. In June 1778 he was allowed out of Vincennes under escort to appear in court at Aix and appeal against the earlier death sentence following the Marseille affair. He was successful, escaping with a severe admonishment for débauche outrée. But he wanted total liberty. On the way back to Vincennes he escaped from his escort at Valence and yet again made his way back to La Coste. He was discovered, rearrested – for the lettre de cachet was still in force – and taken back to Vincennes.
What next? The authorities and Madame de Montreuil had had enough. Her social ambitions were thwarted, for in view of her son-in-law's behaviour, how could she marry off her remaining daughters? Sade was not allowed to see his wife for three years and was forced to spend most of his energy writing to her for supplies. He had nothing. The extravagant, hot-headed aristocrat faced a lonely, empty existence. But he was determined to fill it. His active physical life was over, but a new life began – a life of writing.
The extracts from writings by Sade in this anthology have been translated or summarized from the following editions of his work, all published in Paris unless otherwise stated:
Aline et Valcour (Brussels: J.J. Gay, 1822; L'Oeuvre du Marquis de Sade (Les Maîtres de l'Amour, 1909); Les Crimes de l'Amour: Historiettes, Contes et Fabliaux (Sagittaire, 1950); Histoire Secrète d'Isabelle de Bavière (Gallimard, 1953); L'Affaire Pauvert (Pauvert, 1957); Histoire de Sainville et de Léonore (from Aline et Valcour), ed. Gilbert Lély (Union Générale d'Editions, 1963); Journal Inédit (Gallimard, 1970); La Philosophie dans le Boudoir (Gallimard, 1976); Oeuvres Complètes du Marquis de Sade (Pauvert, 1986–).
In the interests of clarity and readability, some of the original punctuation has been modified. The writer's erratic use of capital initials has also been brought into line.
MARGARET CROSLAND
*The name Lignerai is so spelt in a police report of 1764 quoted by the defence when Sade's publisher Pauvert was in the dock for obscenity in 1965. Sade's French biographer Gilbert Lély uses the same spelling.