Marquis de Thibouville

Henri-Lambert d'Herbigny, marquis de Thibouville (1710 in Paris - 1784) was a notable French writer, wit and homosexual.

Born to a conseiller d'État, he at first followed a military career, rising to the rank of mestre de camp in the régiment des dragons de la Reine. He then left the army for a literary career and linked himself to Voltaire, via an assiduous correspondence (more than 50 letters by Voltaire to Thibouville survive). His taste for the theatre and declamation allowed him to act as intermediary between Voltaire and actors putting on his plays, and sometimes between Voltaire and his editors.

In 1731 Thibouville had married Louise-Élisabeth de Rochechouart, taking a female mistress, Mélanie de Laballe (who had débuted at the Comédie Française in 1746 in the rôle of Agnès in École des femmes and died of smallpox in 1748 aged only 16). This gave rise to the epigram

Melchior Grimm described Thibouville, probably around 1759, as "even more attached than M. de Villette to the cult of love which our sages rudely proscribe, but which those of ancient Greece excused with such indulgence", referring to his notorious homosexuality. Voltaire himself, in the first editions of La Pucelle d'Orléans, mentioned him alongside Honoré-Armand de Villars, accused of the same vice, in the following verses:

In a letter of 21 May 1755 to Thibouville Voltaire denied being the real author of those lines - "My poor Pucelle has become an infamous p..., accused of insupportable vulgarities. It is still mixed up with satire; for their commodity of rhyme, scandalous verses have been slipped into it against the people to whom I am most attached." However, Voltaire was accustomed to making these disingenous denials and the veracity of this one is questionable.

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