{"id":511,"date":"2010-06-10T16:11:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T14:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/?page_id=511"},"modified":"2013-09-24T10:21:06","modified_gmt":"2013-09-24T08:21:06","slug":"elisabeth-sophie-bonicel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/family\/relatives-of-guizot\/elisabeth-sophie-bonicel\/","title":{"rendered":"Elisabeth Sophie Bonicel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Auguste<\/a>\u00abThere are two inexhaustible, infinite things in you: tenderness and courage\u00bb, wrote Fran\u00e7ois Guizot to his mother in 1840, when she was looking after her three grandchildren while their father, who had been widowed seven years earlier, was away in London as French ambassador. \u00c9lisabeth-Sophie Bonicel was 75 at the time. She wore on her chest the last letter written to her by her husband Andr\u00e9 Guizot on the eve of his execution on 8 April 1794, the eternal colours of widowhood on her clothes and the tears in her eyes that, she said, had overwhelmed her almost every night since.<\/p>\n

This woman, who has become exceptional \"\"<\/a>was not destined to suffer. She was born into a Protestant bourgeois family from N\u00eemes, whose roots were in Pont-de-Montvert, at the foot of Mont Loz\u00e8re. The marriage of Jean-Jacques Bonicel, a wealthy and respected solicitor, to Catherine Mathieu in 1762 resulted in a string of children, of whom Elisabeth-Sophie was one of the eldest. \"Anonymous.<\/a>Friends and family describe her as a lively, pretty girl who loved music and reading, and was quite independent-minded. \u00abIf ever I take a husband\/ I want love to give him to me\u00bb, she used to sing. She found both in Andr\u00e9 Guizot, 18 months younger than herself, whom she married in N\u00eemes in December 1786, bringing a substantial dowry of 12,000 livres. It seems that the union was a perfectly happy one, strengthened by the birth of Fran\u00e7ois ten months later: \u00abYour father and I, well made for each other, were at that age when one feels happiness down to the marrow of one's bones\u00bb. Jean-Jacques was born in October 1789. The catastrophe of 1794 shattered everything. From a cheerful and spiritual young woman, widowhood at the age of 29 and the loss of two sisters in the same years turned her into a bitter and authoritarian person, steeped in devotion, quivering with affection but incapable of expressing it. With the exception of God, her eldest son became everything to her, and she demanded that she be everything to him, constantly reminding him of his sufferings and sacrifices. A portrait of her painted by Fran\u00e7ois in 1802 shows what she had become. The energy she had deployed in Geneva to ensure her children's education was restored when, widowed in 1833, Guizot entrusted her with the care of his own children and the running of his home, where she had lived for ten years. She carried out this onerous task with all the vigour and rigour of her temperament. As her granddaughter Henriette wrote, she was \u00absteeped to the core in the traditions and doctrines of the old Huguenot spirit\u00bb. Jealous, she had not looked kindly on her son's marriage to Pauline de Meulan in 1812, or even his second marriage to Eliza Dillon in 1828. \"Ary<\/a>She hated the Princess de Lieven as much as she could. In summer, at Val-Richer, she sometimes found a semblance of gaiety, so fond was she of nature and particularly of flowers. In winter, at the home of her son, then a minister, she impressed visitors, as Victor Hugo did in 1846: \u00abShe attends her son's parties, seated by the fireplace, in a wimple and black bonnet, amidst the embroidery, plaques and large cords. In the middle of this velvet and gold salon, you would think you were looking at an apparition from the C\u00e9vennes. This austere yet passionate side of her appealed, for example, to Mme R\u00e9camier and Chateaubriand, whom she deeply admired and who honoured her with a personal reading of a passage from the Memoirs from beyond the grave<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The revolution of February 1848 was her last test. Taking refuge with friends, she did not join her son and grandchildren in Brompton until 15 March. She was reunited with her husband, she says, on 31 March, at the age of 83. \u00abWe took her to her final resting place in Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow-road; there is a plot there reserved for Dissenters, Presbyterian or otherwise,\u00bb wrote her son, who added: \u00abShe was one of those who must not and can scarcely be forgotten.\u00bb<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00ab\u00a0Il y a en vous deux choses in\u00e9puisables, infinies, la tendresse et le courage\u00a0\u00bb, \u00e9crit Fran\u00e7ois Guizot \u00e0 sa m\u00e8re en 1840, alors qu\u2019elle s\u2019occupe de ses trois petits-enfants tandis que leur p\u00e8re, veuf depuis sept ans, s\u00e9journe sans eux \u00e0 Londres comme ambassadeur de France. \u00c9lisabeth-Sophie Bonicel est alors \u00e2g\u00e9e de 75 ans. Elle […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4501,"parent":3294,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-511","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":90,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9526,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/511\/revisions\/9526"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guizot.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}