A Letter from Grignan: In the Footsteps of Madame de Sévigné

To those who cherish letters, landscapes, and legacies--
 
It is from the gentle heights of Grignan, nestled in the Provençal hills and touched by golden light, that I write this reflection—part travelogue, part meditation, and wholly infused with the spirit of a woman whose pen has crossed centuries: Madame de Sévigné.

We came to Grignan for a wedding, and yet I left with something far deeper than I expected. There are places where time seems to thrum beneath the stones, where memory gathers like lavender in bloom, and where the past leans in, not as a shadow but as an ancestral voice. Grignan is one such place.
 
It was here that Madame de Sévigné’s daughter lived, far from Paris, in the grand château that still stands like a sentinel over the plains of Drôme Provençale. And it was here that the famous correspondence between mother and daughter was born--letters rich with love, wit, and maternal longing. Mme de Sévigné wrote not only with the elegance of a courtly lady, but with the fire of a mother, and it is perhaps this emotional clarity that continues to speak to us today.
 
What moved me most is that this legacy of correspondence was no isolated phenomenon. Madame de Sévigné came from a lineage of formidable women. Her grandmother was none other than Saint Jane de Chantal, who, alongside Francis de Sales, co-founded the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary. I have long read their spiritual letters—profound exchanges on love, humility, discernment. It is no coincidence that such a granddaughter would write with a voice at once intimate and transcendent. What passed between Jane and Francis as spiritual counsel, Sévigné would later translate into maternal devotion.
 
The château itself bears another trace of feminine resilience: it was lovingly restored in the late 19th century by Marie Fontaine, a woman of vision who used her inheritance not for vanity, but to rebuild the castle as a monument to memory—a memory that includes architectural heritage, literary legacy, and the very bones of correspondence between women across time and space.

What strength it must have taken to bring such stones back to life.
During our stay, I purchased a small edition of Madame de Sévigné’s letters, published in their full, unabridged beauty and freely available now through the Project Gutenberg website. Her words have followed me since. And so, in the spirit of that tradition, I write to you as she once wrote to her daughter--not to inform, but to connect.
 
We also traveled to Le Puy-en-Velay, a town of ancient pilgrimage and holy beginnings. From here, pilgrims set out for Santiago de Compostela, their steps echoing those of countless souls who have walked for healing, for purpose, for hope. In the sanctuary, I lit a candle before the Black Madonna, and I wrote a prayer on a slip of paper.The words were simple:
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“My prayer is for justicepeace.” Not peace without justice, nor justice without peace—but both, bound together, as John Paul Lederach, the peacebuilder I so often quote, once envisioned it. This prayer was placed in a pilgrim’s pouch to be carried across borders and landscapes I may never see. And yet, I no longer carry it alone.
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As we drove through the volcanic hills of the Monts d'Ardèche UNESCO Global Geopark, winding toward our next destination, I thought of how history is not made only in palaces or treaties—but in letters, prayers, and the silent choices of women who rebuild, who remember, who write.
 
So if anyone ever tells you, as they once told me, that Americans have no history, smile quietly. And know that history is not only in names and monuments, but in bloodlines, in memory, and in the stories we dare to keep telling. From Édimbourg, where one of my ancestors, John Mossman, served as royal goldsmith to James VI and recast the Scottish crown… to the castle of Grignan… to the paths of pilgrims winding westward--our history is not absent. It is layered. Migratory. Resilient.
And it lives on—in letters like this.
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With all my tenderness,
—From Grignan, with love

Read Madame de Sévigné’s letters for free through the Gutenberg Project
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43901/43901-h/43901-h.htm

Link to the Chateau de Grignan website:
https://www.chateaux-ladrome.fr/en/the-chateau-of-grignan/the-marchioness-of-sevigne ​