Taillepied de Bondy, Françoise-Camille-Marie, vicomtesse

Biography

The younger daughter of Paul Sigisbert Moitessier and his wife, Marie-Clotilde-Inès, née de Foucauld, Françoise-Camille-Marie was called Marie. She was born 19 August 1850 at the Château de Villiers, near Paris. She studied English, and later Italian, facilitated by frequent travels in Italy with her mother. But her greatest passion was music; she spent several hours a day practicing the piano and singing. Her younger cousin Charles de Foucauld [1858-1916] spent a great deal of time at the Moitessier home, after the death of his own parents in 1864. Charles and Marie took lessons together, beginning a close friendship and a correspondence which lasted many years; much of the correspondence is published. Charles de Foucauld achieved some reknown as a Trappist monk in Morocco, where he was assassinated in 1916. Marie herself was raised in a religious household; she took her first communion on 7 May 1863, and attended mass daily throughout her life. On 13 April 1874 (some sources give 11 April), Marie married Olivier-Achille-Gabriel, vicomte Taillepied de Bondy [1840-1895], a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The couple divided their time between the Moitessier home on the rue d'Anjou, her father's château de Louye, and the Taillepied de Bondy château de la Barre, Indre-et-Loire. They had four children, François, Robert, Jean, and Magdeleine, and in 1886 the de Bondys established themselves in Paris for the children's education. Marie suffered the loss of her son Robert, who died in the war in 1914; her son Jean married Anne Marie Alice Pauline di Grimaudet de Rochebouet in 1919 and her daughter Magdeleine was married in 1906 to the Marquis de Forbin des Issarts. Marie died on 15 March 1934; her husband predeceased her in 1895. Marie's mother Inès Moitessier was the subject of two portraits by Ingres, which passed to Marie's sister sister Clothilde-Marie-Catherine, comtesse de Flavigny and later to Marie and the Taillepied de Bondy family.

Bibliography

1966

Foucauld, Charles de. Lettres à Mme. de Bondy. Paris, 1966.

1968

Hamilton, Elizabeth. The Desert my Dwelling Place: A Study of Charles de Foucauld, 1858-1916. London, 1968.

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