Valentine de Saint-Point - Early Life

Early Life

Saint-Point was the only daughter of Alice de Glans de Cessiat and Charles-Joseph Vercell. Her mother was the niece of poet Alphonse de Lamartine. The pseudonym Saint-Point took upon her entry into the literary world refers to the home of this famous ancestor, the Château de Saint-Point.

In 1883 her father died and Alice returned to Mâcon with her daughter, who grew up surrounded by her grandmother and tutor. In 1893 Valentine married Florian Theophile Perrenot, a teacher 14 years her senior. The following year he was appointed to Lons le Saunier, where Valentine met Charles Dumont, a philosophy professor and colleague of her husband. Dumont became her lover. In 1897, Perrenot was transferred to Corsica. This was Saint-Point's first trip to the Mediterranean. Perronot eventually transferred to Niort, where he died the summer of 1899.