Mallet family

Etymology

According to the official genealogies from the Banque de France, the surname Mallet is likely derived from either the name of the city of Saint-Malo in Brittany or the parish of Saint-Maclou in Rouen, both namesakes of the 6th century Saint Malo of Aleth.^[15] This theory is one of several posed by modern lexicographers and onomasticians.^[16][17][18]

Origins

In the mid—late 16th century, religious civil war in France drove many Calvinist Huguenots, such as the Mallets, to seek refuge in Geneva, which had declared itself Lutheran in 1536. The earliest members of the Mallet family known to have escaped from Normandy were Jacques (1530–1598), from whom all future generations descend, and his brother, Esaïe. After the death of his first wife, Jacquemine Favre, Jacques married Laure Sartoris, daughter of Jean-Léonard, former secretary to Charles III, Duke of Savoy.^[19] The couple had eleven children. The descendants of Gabriel (1572–1651), the ninth child, include Jacques-André Mallet and the family of the Barons de Chalmassy. All other significant extant lines descend from Jacques (1575–1657), Gabriel's younger brother.

Jacques Mallet du Pan

Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749–1800) was a journalist and political propagandist from Geneva.

In 1772, upon the recommendation of his colleague Voltaire, he accepted a professorship of French literature at Kassel.^[20][21] Due to severe political criticism of his writing, however, he soon left the continent for England in search of greater journalistic freedom. In 1789, he was recruited by Panckoucke as an editor of the Mercure de France in Paris.^[22] He resided in the city until 1792, when he was enlisted by Louis XVI, who saw du Pan as his political ally, as a special envoy charged with gathering military support from neighboring leaders.^[23] Du Pan participated in drafting precursors to the Brunswick Manifesto,^[24][25] and was forced into exile to Bern in 1797.^[26] He returned to England the following year, founded the Mercure britannique, and died of consumption in 1800.^[27][28]

Mallet du Pan followed a Calvinist philosophy,^[29] (c. 1700‒1930) and was known as a conservative counter-revolutionary. His work was largely neglected until after World War II, when it was rediscovered and championed by historians and philosophers such as Alessandro Passerin d'Entrèves and Jacques Godechot.^[30] It is accepted that du Pan originated the term suffrage universel (English: universal suffrage).^[31]

His grandson was the British civil servant Sir Louis Mallet. Through Louis and his brother, Charles (1824–1892), Jacques is the ancestor of many English civil servants and other public figures, including Louis du Pan Mallet, Charles Mallet the younger, Victor Mallet, and John and Richard Butler, Barons Dunboyne.

Paul Henri Mallet

Paul Henri Mallet (1730–1807) was a scholar and diplomat from Geneva. His nephew, Paul Henri Mallet Prevost (1756–1835), was the progenitor of the American Mallet-Prevost branch.

In 1752, he replaced La Beaumelle as professor of French belles-lettres at the Academy of Copenhagen.^[32][33] He became interested in ancient Denmark and other Northern lands and published several volumes on Danish history with the help of the government.^[34] In 1755, perhaps due to Mallet's works having been vocally supportive of monarchical absolutism,^[35][36] queen consort Louisa of Denmark employed Mallet as the tutor of literature and French language for her son, Christian, the future king of Denmark and Norway.^[37][38] Mallet's writings on mythology and religion, translated by Bishop Percy,^[39] also inspired the poet William Blake, among others.^[40][41]

After he had completed his duties in Denmark, Mallet journeyed to England to visit the royal family, which included Caroline Matilda, the betrothed of his former pupil, Christian. Mallet became the princess' epistolary literary advisor when she left for Denmark.^[42] In 1760, Mallet returned to Geneva, where he was offered a professorship as chair of the department of history and, four years later, a position on the Council of Two Hundred. Despite his apparent success as an educator, Mallet refused empress Catherine's offer to tutor her young son, Paul I.^[43][44] Instead, he chose to accompany Lord Mount Stuart on a Grand Tour through Europe.^[45][46][47]

While in England, Mallet received a commission to create a history for the House of Hanover. This work, along with another from Frederick II for the House of Hesse, was completed in 1785.^[44] However, over the next few years, the wealth Mallet had accumulated, including his pensions from the nobility, was essentially dissolved due to ongoing political turmoil. When the occupying French government found out about his poor financial state, however, Mallet was supplied with a generous allowance, which he took advantage of for a brief period until his death in 1807 from an acute attack of paralysis.^[48][49] A volume of Mallet's first biography, by Sismondi, was published in the same year.^[50][51]

Jacques-André Mallet

Jacques-André Mallet (1740–1790) was a mathematician and astronomer from Geneva. He is best known for founding the first observatory in Geneva.

He was expected to follow the career of his father, who had been a soldier. However, an accident in Jacques-André's youth caused damage to his legs, and he shifted his fascination to academia.^[52][53] In 1755, he began his education at the Academy of Geneva, studying first with mathematician Louis Necker. His pursuit of knowledge brought him next to Basel in 1760, where he studied with Daniel Bernoulli, and in 1765 to England and France, where he was inspired by astronomers Jérôme Lalande, John Bevis, and Nevil Maskelyne, among others. Mallet was subsequently invited by Catherine II and the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences to travel to Russia to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Lapland.^[54][55][56] Due to an overcast sky that obscured his view, Mallet's observations in Lapland provided the scientific community with little useful data. Nonetheless, he was awarded honorary membership in the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.^[57][58]

Upon his return to Geneva, Jacques-André was granted a position within the Council of Two Hundred and an honorary professorship at his alma mater, the Academy of Geneva. In 1772, he successfully petitioned the council for approval to build an observatory in Geneva, the first in the canton. The observatory's structure and technology were state-of-the-art.^[59][60] As director of the observatory, Jacques-André and his students, which included Marc-Auguste Pictet and Jean Trembley, conducted research concerning planetary movements, solar eclipses, and other celestial phenomena. As Jacques-André grew ill in subsequent years, he continued his research at the Mallet family chateau in Avully.

His sister married the astronomer Jean-Louis Pictet, who had joined Mallet on his journey to Russia. Pictet's son, Jean-Pierre, was the father of François Jules Pictet, whose own son would marry back into the Mallet family in 1863. Jacques-André died in 1790 without issue.

Mallet-Prevost

Mallet-Butini