There Are No Letters Like Yours: The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charriere and Constant D'Hermenches

This animated, cultured correspondence begins almost like a romantic novel: high-born Dutch virgin, age 20, meets dashing older married man--a Swiss colonel with a reputation as a libertine--and they strike up a clandestine correspondence. Gossip alternates with deep thoughts and self-revelation in this 16-year epistolary friendship of Dutch novelist Isabelle de Charriere (1740-1805), whose novels (written in French) have been compared to those of Jane Austen, and David-Louis, baron de Constant d'Hermenches (1722-1785), amateur musician and actor, pamphleteer and poet, friend of Voltaire. Isabelle van Tuyll (the novelist's maiden name) writes bright, witty, lucid letters spiked with epigrammatic wit, which weave a cunning self-portrait of a passionate, intelligent woman who oscillates between self-assertive independence and doing what her family and associates expect of her. D'Hermenches's letters, which swing between self-dramatization, moralizing and worldly advice, reflect the extended midlife crisis of a man who feels trapped in the role of misanthropic Don Juan, growing estranged from his wife and tired of upper-class pretensions. When the scheming baron tries to marry off Isabelle to his friend, the four-year fiasco ends with her fleeing to London in 1767 for a half-year vacation; she later marries a placid Swiss country gentleman. D'Hermenches's transfer to Corsica, where he helps the French crush a revolt, prompts his self-justifying letters full of carnage and Isabelle's tart replies doubting the motives of colonialism. Janet Whatley (a professor of French at the University of Vermont) and Malcolm Whatley have done a fine job translating this lively correspondence. (Mar.)