W. S. Lewis Collection of Marie du Deffand

Marie du Deffand bequeathed her papers to her friend Horace Walpole, who kept them during his lifetime in a cedar chest at his home, Strawberry Hill, in Twickenham. The papers remained at Strawberry Hill following Walpole’s death, until they were sold in 1842 to D. O. Dyce-Sombre as Lot 107 on the sixth day of the great Strawberry Hill sale. In 1920, the son of Dyce-Sombre’s nephew W. R. Parker Jervis sold the papers, which were divided into eight individual lots, in a March 10-12 Sotheby’s sale. The antiquarian book and manuscripts firm Maggs Bros. purchased three of the lots (390, 392, and 394) and later sold them to Wilmarth S. Lewis. Three lots (388, 391, and 393) initially went to others but were eventually acquired by Lewis. The two remaining lots are now at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (387) and the Bibliotheque National (389).

While most of the material in this collection was at one point owned by Horace Walpole, not all of du Deffand’s papers made it into Walpole’s hands after her death. Madame de Choiseul and Abbé Barthélemy removed their own correspondence from du Deffand’s home before her papers passed to Walpole, an action that caused a rift between them and Walpole (see the Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, volume 3). Walpole, in turn, bequeathed his correspondence with du Deffand to Mary Berry, who published a selection in her 1810 edition of du Deffand’s correspondence and likely destroyed many of the letters. According to the Yale edition, the marquis de Sainte-Aulaire acquired several of du Deffand’s manuscripts, including letters of madame de Choiseul and Abbé Barthélemy, from comte Joseph d’Estourmel, although it is unclear where or how Estourmel acquired these papers. Sainte-Aulaire used these letters for his 1859 edition of du Deffand’s correspondence.

Once the du Deffand material arrived at Wilmarth Lewis’s library (after 1980, Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library), various call numbers were assigned, including 49 2545 [volumes] I-V, which are listed in Allen T. Hazen’s A Catalogue of Horace Walpole's Library, 49 2545 [volume] VI, LWL MSS 11, and LWL MSS Vol. 137. Material under call number 49 2545 VI, a portfolio of loose letters owned by Sainte-Aulaire, had formerly been cataloged as MS. Vol. 138. It was reclassed to 49 2545 VI because evidence, including annotations in Walpole’s hand, points to the fact that it belonged to Walpole although it is not included in Hazen’s catalogue of Walpole's library.

Whether or not Walpole once owned Sainte-Aulaire’s collection of du Deffand’s correspondence is unclear. Lewis purchased Sainte-Aulaire’s collection from Henry Sorensen in 1950, and correspondence between Lewis and Sorensen indicates that Lewis did believe that the letters had been in Walpole’s possession. This conclusion is supported by the presence of a penciled “cross-crosslet,” a mark he associated with Walpole, on the two letters from du Deffand to Walpole in this group. This mark is explained in an unsigned letter to the dealer Henry Sorensen in 1971 (likely from Lewis), located in the object file for LWL MSS 11. However, the 1939 Yale Walpole edition identifies this mark as an editorial mark of Mary Berry, who did possess these letters. An undated letter from Warren Hunting Smith also supports the idea that these letters did not actually pass to Walpole and were thus never part of the Strawberry Hill sale or the Parker Jervis sale and did not pass through the hands of Maggs Bros.

A set of typed cards was made to index volumes 49 2545 III-V and LWL MSS 11 by title or correspondent, while cards handwritten by the Yale edition editor Warren Hunting Smith index volume 49 2545 VI by correspondent and selected subjects or contents of each letter, but only offer minimal descriptive information. Additionally, the cards for LWL MSS 11 bear red flags to denote specific Walpole annotations and marks. Volumes 49 2545 I-II and LWL MSS Vol. 137 have title cards but were not further indexed. The catalog cards with their original call numbers have been preserved and may be consulted in the reading room.

A preliminary finding aid covering the material in LWL MSS 11 and volumes 49 2545 I-VI was completed by library staff in 2015, with contents extracted from the library’s catalog cards. In summer 2021, all manuscript material once owned by Marie du Deffand was combined under the single call number LWL MSS 11. The reorganization provided the opportunity to arrange and describe all the correspondence and writings by author, and for the staff to research the authors of previously unidentified manuscript fragments of verse and prose. The entire collection was rehoused. Many of the items had been stored in acidic folders bearing manuscript notes in the hand of Wilmarth Lewis’s librarian Catherine Jestin (1920-2004), who had stayed on at the library after his death to work for Yale University. In 2021 her notes were photocopied onto archival paper and annotated with the 2015 box and folder numbers; those photocopied notes remain with the relevant items in their new folders.