"Alas, ma belle, all I have to tell you of my health is very bad; in a word, I have repose neither night nor day, neither in body nor in mind. I am no more a person either by one or the other. I perish visibly. I must end when it pleases God, and I am submissive. BELIEVE ME, MY DEAREST, YOU ARE THE PERSON IN THE WORLD WHOM I HAVE MOST TRULY LOVED."
Mme. de La Fayette represents better than any other woman the social and literary life of the last half of the seventeenth century. Mme. de Sevigne had an individual genius that might have made itself equally felt in any other period. Mme. de Maintenon, whom Roederer regards as the true successor of Mme. de Rambouillet, was narrowed by personal ambition, and by the limitations of her early life. Born in a prison, reared in poverty, wife in name, but practically secretary and nurse of a crippled, witty, and licentious poet over whose salon she presided brilliantly; discreet and penniless widow, governess of the illegitimate children of the king, adviser and finally wife of that king, friend of Ninon, model of virtue, femme d'esprit, politician, diplomatist, and devote—no fairy tale can furnish more improbable adventures and more striking contrasts. But she was the product of exceptional circumstances joined to an exceptional nature. It is true she put a final touch upon the purity of manners which was so marked a feature of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and for a long period gave a serious tone to the social life of France. But she ruled through repression, and one is inclined to accept the opinion of Sainte-Beuve that she does not represent the distinctive social current of the time. In Mme. de La Fayette we find its delicacy, its courtesy, its elegance, its intelligence, its critical spirit, and its charm.
In considering the great centers in which the fashionable, artistic, literary, and scientific Paris of the seventeenth century found its meeting ground, one is struck with the practical training given to its versatile, flexible feminine minds. Women entered intelligently and sympathetically into the interests of men, who, in turn, did not reserve their best thoughts for the club or an after-dinner talk among themselves. There was stimulus as well as diversity in the two modes of thinking and being. Men became more courteous and refined, women more comprehensive and clear. But conversation is the spontaneous overflow of full minds, and the light play of the intellect is only possible on a high level, when the current thought has become a part of the daily life, so that a word suggests infinite perspectives to the swift intelligence. It is not what we know, but the flavor of what we know, that adds"sweetness and light" to social intercourse. With their rapid intuition and instinctive love of pleasing, these French women were quick to see the value of a ready comprehension of the subjects in which clever men are most interested. It was this keen understanding, added to the habit of utilizing what they thought and read, their ready facility in grasping the salient points presented to them, a natural gift of graceful expression, with a delicacy of taste and an exquisite politeness which prevented them from being aggressive, that gave them their unquestioned supremacy in the salons which made Paris for so long a period the social capital of Europe. It was impossible that intellects so plastic should not expand in such an atmosphere, and the result is not difficult to divine. From Mme. de Rambouillet to Mme. de La Fayette and Mme. de Sevigne, from these to Mme. de Stael and George Sand, there is a logical sequence. The Saxon temperament, with a vein of La Bruyere, gives us George Eliot.
This new introduction of the feminine element into literature, which is directly traceable to the salons of the seventeenth century, suggests a point of special interest to the moralist. It may be assumed that, whether through nature or a long process of evolution, the minds of women as a class have a different coloring from the minds of men as a class. Perhaps the best evidence of this lies in the literature of the last two centuries, in which women have been an important factor, not only through what they have done themselves, but through their reflex influence. The books written by them have rapidly multiplied. Doubtless, the excess of feeling is often unbalanced by mental or artistic training; but even in the crude productions, which are by no means confined to one sex, it may be remarked that women deal more with pure affections and men with the coarser passions. A feminine Zola of any grade of ability has not yet appeared.
It is not, however, in literature of pure sentiment that the influence of women has been most felt. It is true that, as a rule, they look at the world from a more emotional standpoint than men, but both have written of love, and for one Sappho there have been many Anacreons. Mlle. de Scudery and Mme. de La Fayette did not monopolize the sentiment of their time, but they refined and exalted it. The tender and exquisite coloring of Mme. de Stael and George Sand had a worthy counterpart in that of Chateaubriand or Lamartine. But it is in the moral purity, the touch of human sympathy, the divine quality of compassion, the swift insight into the soul pressed down by
that we trace the minds of women attuned to finer spiritual issues. This broad humanity has vitalized modern literature. It is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian ideal—twin lights which have met in the world of today. It may be that from the blending of the two, the crowning of a man's vigor with a woman's finer insight, will spring the perfected flower of human thought.
Robert Browning in his poem "By the Fireside" has said a fitting word:
Characteristics of the Eighteenth Century—Its Epicurean Philosophy—Anecdote of Mme. du Deffand—the Salon an Engine of Political Power—Great Influence of Women—Salons Defined Literary Dinners—Etiquette of the Salons—An Exotic on American Soil.
The traits which strike us most forcibly in the lives and characters of the women of the early salons, which colored their minds, ran through their literary pastimes, and gave a distinctive flavor to their conversation, are delicacy and sensibility. It was these qualities, added to a decided taste for pleasures of the intellect, and an innate social genius, that led them to revolt from the gross sensualism of the court, and form, upon a new basis, a society that has given another complexion to the last two centuries. The natural result was, at first, a reign of sentiment that was often over-strained, but which represented on the whole a reaction of morality and refinement. The wits and beauties of the Salon Bleu may have committed a thousand follies, but their chivalrous codes of honor and of manners, their fastidious tastes, even their prudish affectations, were open though sometimes rather bizarre tributes to the virtues that lie at the very foundation of a well-ordered society. They had exalted ideas of the dignity of womanhood, of purity, of loyalty, of devotion. The heroines of Mlle. de Scudery, with their endless discourses upon the metaphysics of love, were no doubt tiresome sometimes to the blase courtiers, as well as to the critics; but they had their originals in living women who reversed the common traditions of a Gabrielle and a Marion Delorme, who combined with the intellectual brilliancy and fine courtesy of the Greek Aspasia the moral graces that give so poetic a fascination to the Christian and medieval types. Mme. de la Fayette painted with rare delicacy the old struggle between passion and duty, but character triumphs over passion, and duty is the final victor. In spite of the low standards of the age, the ideal woman of society, as of literature, was noble, tender, modest, pure, and loyal.
But the eighteenth century brings new types to the surface. The precieuses, with their sentimental theories and naive reserves, have had their day. It is no longer the world of Mme. de Rambouillet that confronts us with its chivalrous models, its refined platonism, and its flavor of literature, but rather that of the epicurean Ninon, brilliant, versatile, free, lax, skeptical, full of intrigue and wit, but without moral sense of spiritual aspiration. Literary portraits and ethical maxims have given place to a spicy mixture of scandal and philosophy, humanitarian speculations and equivocal bons mots. It is piquant and amusing, this light play of intellect, seasoned with clever and sparkling wit, but the note of delicacy and sensibility is quite gone. Society has divested itself of many crudities and affectations perhaps, but it has grown as artificial and self-conscious as its rouged and befeathered leaders.
The woman who presided over these centers of fashion and intelligence represent to us the genius of social sovereignty. We fall under the glamour of the luminous but factitious atmosphere that surrounded them. We are dazzled by the subtlety and clearness of their intellect, the brilliancy of their wit. Their faults are veiled by the smoke of the incense we burn before them, or lost in the dim perspective. It is fortunate, perhaps, for many of our illusions, that the golden age, which is always receding, is seen at such long range that only the softly colored outlines are visible. Men and women are transfigured in the rosy light that rests on historic heights as on far-off mountain tops. But if we bring them into closer view, and turn on the pitiless light of truth, the aureole vanishes, a thousand hidden defects are exposed, and our idol stands out hard and bare, too often divested of its divinity and its charm.
To do justice to these women, we must take the point of view of an age that was corrupt to the core. It is needless to discuss here the merits of the stormy, disenchanting eighteenth century, which was the mother of our own, and upon which the world is likely to remain hopelessly divided. But whatever we may think of its final outcome, it can hardly be denied that this period, which in France was so powerful in ideas, so active in thought, so teeming with intelligence, so rich in philosophy, was poor in faith, bankrupt in morals, without religion, without poetry, and without imagination. The divine ideals of virtue and renunciation were drowned in a sea of selfishness and materialism. The austere devotion of Pascal was out of fashion. The spiritual teachings of Bossuet and Fenelon represented the out-worn creeds of an age that was dead. It was Voltaire who gave the tone, and even Voltaire was not radical enough for many of these iconoclasts. "He is a bigot and a deist," exclaimed a feminine disciple of d'Holbach's atheism. The gay, witty, pleasure-loving abbe, who derided piety, defied morality, was the pet of the salon, and figured in the worst scandals, was a fair representative of the fashionable clergy who had no attribute of priesthood but the name, and clearly justified the sneers of the philosophers. Tradition had given place to private judgment and in its first reaction private judgment knew no law but its own caprices. The watchword of intellectual freedom was made to cover universal license, and clever sophists constructed theories to justify the mad carnival of vice and frivolity. "As soon as one does a bad action, one never fails to make a bad maxim," said the clever Marquise de Crequi. "As soon as a school boy has his love affairs, he wishes no more to say his prayers; and when a woman wrongs her husband, she tries to believe no more in God."
The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world was tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not its moral quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was the toy of the scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld were the rule of life. Wit counted for everything, the heart for nothing. The only sins that could not be pardoned were stupidity and awkwardness. "Bah! He has only revealed every one's secret," said Mme. du Defand to an acquaintance who censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis of all human actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her time, in the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon the death of her lifelong friend and lover, Pont de Veyle, she quietly replied, "Alas! He died this evening at six o'clock; otherwise you would not see me here." "My friend fell ill, I attended him; he died, and I dissected him" was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, and morally so weak.
The liberty and complaisance of the domestic relations were complete. It is true there were examples of conjugal devotion, for the gentle human affections never quite disappear in any atmosphere; but the fact that they were considered worthy of note sufficiently indicates the drift of the age. In the world of fashion and of form there was not even a pretense of preserving the sanctity of marriage, if the chronicles of the time are to be credited. It was simply a commercial affair which united names and fortunes, continued the glory of the families, replenished exhausted purses, and gave freedom to women. If love entered into it at all, it was by accident. This superfluous sentiment was ridiculed, or relegated to the bourgeoisie, to whom it was left to preserve the tradition of household virtues. Every one seems to have accepted the philosophy of the irrepressible Ninon, who "returned thanks to God every evening for her esprit, and prayed him every morning to be preserved from follies of the heart." If a young wife was modest or shy, she was the object of unflattering persiflage. If she betrayed her innocent love for her husband, she was not of the charmed circle of wit and good tone which frowned upon so vulgar a weakness, and laughed at inconvenient scruples.
"Indeed," says a typical husband of the period, "I cannot conceive how, in the barbarous ages, one had the courage to wed. The ties of marriage were a chain. Today you see kindness, liberty, peace reign in the bosom of families. If husband and wife love each other, very well; they live together; they are happy. If they cease to love, they say so honestly, and return to each other the promise of fidelity. They cease to be lovers; they are friends. That is what I call social manners, gentle manners." This reign of the senses is aptly illustrated by the epitaph which the gay, voluptuous, and spirtuelle Marquise de Boufflers wrote for herself:
"Courte et bonne," said the favorite daughter of the Regent, in the same spirit.
It is against such a background that the women who figure so prominently in the salons are outlined. Such was the air they breathed, the spirit they imbibed. That it was fatal to the finer graces of character goes without saying. Doubtless, in quiet and secluded nooks, there were many human wild flowers that had not lost their primitive freshness and delicacy, but they did not flourish in the withering atmosphere of the great world. The type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its striking beauty of form and tropical richness of color, it had no sweetness, no fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the worldly and intellectual side. Sydney Smith has aptly characterized them as "women who violated the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers." But standing on the level of a time in which their faults were mildly censured, if at all, their characteristic gifts shine out with marvelous splendor. It is from this standpoint alone that we can present them, drawing the friendly mantle of silence over grave weaknesses and fatal errors.
In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,—and perhaps even this exception is a trifle superfluous,—it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men. These Frenchwomen had all the vanity that lies at the bottom of the Gallic character, but when the triumphs of youth were over, the only legitimate path to individual distinction was that of social influence. This was attained through personal charm, supplemented by more or less cleverness, or through the gift of creating a society that cast about them an illusion of talent of which they were often only the reflection. To these two classes belong the queens of the salons. But the most famous of them only carried to the point of genius a talent that was universal.
In its best estate a brilliant social life is essentially an external one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces, in the facile and winning manners, the ready tact, the quick intelligence, the rare and perishable gifts of conversation—in the nameless trifles which are elusive as shadows and potent as light. It is the way of putting things that tells, rather than the value of the things themselves. This world of draperies and amenities, of dinners and conversaziones, of epigrams, coquetries, and sparkling trivialities in the Frenchwoman's milieu. It has little in common with the inner world that surges forever behind and beneath it; little sympathy with inconvenient ideals and exalted sentiments. The serious and earnest soul to which divine messages have been whispered in hours of solitude finds its treasures unheeded, its language unspoken here. The cares, the burdens, the griefs that weigh so heavily on the great heart of humanity are banished from this social Eden. The Frenchman has as little love for the somber side of life as the Athenian, who veiled every expression of suffering. "Joy marks the force of the intellect," said the pleasure-loving Ninon. It is this peculiar gift of projecting themselves into a joyous atmosphere, of treating even serious subjects in a piquant and lively fashion, of dwelling upon the pleasant surface of things, that has made the French the artists, above all others, of social life. The Parisienne selects her company, as a skillful leader forms his orchestra, with a fine instinct of harmony; no single instrument dominates, but every member is an artist in his way, adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting place. She aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which shall express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free from personality.
But the representative salons, which have left a permanent mark upon their time, and a memory that does not seem likely to die, were no longer simply centers of refined and intellectual amusement. The moral and literary reaction of the seventeenth century was one of the great social and political forces of the eighteenth. The salon had become a vast engine of power, an organ of public opinion, like the modern press. Clever and ambitious women had found their instrument and their opportunity. They had long since learned that the homage paid to weakness is illusory; that the power of beauty is short-lived. With none of the devotion which had made the convent the time-honored refuge of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed. They distinctly illustrated the truth that "our ideal is not out of ourselves, but in ourselves wisely modified." The intellect of these women was rarely the dupe of the emotions. Their clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added, were their characters enriched by it. "The women of the eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their hearts," said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their success. To be simple and true is to forget often to consider effects. Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who feels the most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is the one who has most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men. Self-sacrifice and a lofty sense of duty find their rewards in the intangible realm of the spirit, but they do not find them in a brilliant society whose foundations are laid in vanity and sensualism. "The virtues, though superior to the sentiments, are not so agreeable," said Mme. du Deffand; and she echoed the spirit of an age of which she was one of the most striking representatives. To be agreeable was the cardinal aim in the lives of these women. To this end they knew how to use their talents, and they studied, to the minutest shade, their own limitations. They had the gift of the general who marshals his forces with a swift eye for combination and availability. To this quality was added more or less mental brilliancy, or, what is equally essential, the faculty of calling out the brilliancy of others; but their education was rarely profound or even accurate. To an abbe who wished to dedicate a grammar to Mme. Geoffrin she replied: "To me? Dedicate a grammar to me? Why, I do not even know how to spell." Even Mme. du Deffand, whom Sainte Beuve ranks next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the epoch in prose, says of herself, "I do not know a word of grammar; my manner of expressing myself is always the result of chance, independent of all rule and all art."
But it is not to be supposed that women who were the daily and lifelong companions and confidantes of men like Fontenelle, d'Alembert, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Marmontel were deficient in a knowledge of books, though this was always subservient to a knowledge of life. It was a means, not an end. When the salon was at the height of its power, it was not yet time for Mme. de Stael; and, with rare exceptions, those who wrote were not marked, or their literary talent was so overshadowed by their social gifts as to be unnoted. Their writings were no measure of their abilities. Those who wrote for amusement were careful to disclaim the title of bel esprit, and their works usually reached the public through accidental channels. Mme. de Lambert herself had too keen an eye for consideration to pose as an author, but it is with an accent of regret at the popular prejudice that she says of Mme. Dacier, "She knows how to associate learning with the amenities; for at present modesty is out of fashion; there is no more shame for vices, and women blush only for knowledge."
But if they did not write, they presided over the mint in which books were coined. They were familiar with theories and ideas at their fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period pays its tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. "He who will write with precision, energy, and vigor only," said Marmontel, "may live with men alone; but he who wishes for suppleness in his style, for amenity, and for that something which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do well to live with women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every morning to the Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles breakfasted with Aspasia." This same author was in the habit of reading his tales in the salon, and noting their effect. He found a happy inspiration in "the most beautiful eyes in the world, swimming in tears;" but he adds, "I well perceived the cold and feeble passages, which they passed over in silence, as well as those where I had mistaken the word, the tone of nature, or the just shade of truth." He refers to the beautiful, witty, but erring and unfortunate Mme. de la Popeliniere, to whom he read his tragedy, as the best of all his critics. "Her corrections," he said, "struck me as so many rays of light." "A point of morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris," said Rousseau. This constant habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant of the French men of letters, who were glad to discuss safely and at their ease many subjects which the public censorship made it impossible to write about. They found companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort of intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no country outside of France. Its model may be found in the limited circle that gathered about Aspasia in the old Athenian days.
It is perhaps this habit of intellectual companionship that, more than any other single thing, accounts for the practical cleverness of the Frenchwomen and the conspicuous part they have played in the political as well as social life of France. Nowhere else are women linked to the same degree with the success of men. There are few distinguished Frenchmen with whose fame some more or less gifted woman is not closely allied. Montaigne and Mlle. de Gournay, La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de La Fayette, d'Alembert and Mlle. de Lespinasse, Chateaubriand and Mme. Recamier, Joubert and Mme. de Beaumont—these are only a few of the well-known and unsullied friendships that suggest themselves out of a list that might be extended indefinitely. The social instincts of the French, and the fact that men and women met on a common plane of intellectual life, made these friendships natural; that they excited little comment and less criticism made them possible.
The result was that from the quiet and thoughtful Marquise de Lambert, who was admitted to have made half of the Academicians, to the clever but less scrupulous Mme. de Pompadour, who had to be reckoned with in every political change in Europe, women were everywhere the power behind the throne. No movement was carried through without them. "They form a kind of republic," said Montesquieu, "whose members, always active, aid and serve one another. It is a new state within a state; and whoever observes the action of those in power, if he does not know the women who govern them, is like a man who sees the action of a machine but does not know its secret springs." Mme. de Tenein advised Marmontel, before all things, to cultivate the society of women, if he wished to succeed. It is said that both Diderot and Thomas, two of the most brilliant thinkers of their time, failed of the fame they merited, through their neglect to court the favor of women. Bolingbroke, then an exile in Paris, with a few others, formed a club of men for the discussion of literary and political questions. While it lasted it was never mentioned by women. It was quietly ignored. Cardinal Fleury considered it dangerous to the State, and suppressed it. At the same time, in the salon of Mme. de Tenein, the leaders of French thought were safely maturing the theories which Montesquieu set forth in his "Esprit des Lois," the first open attack on absolute monarchy, the forerunner of Rousseau, and the germ of the Revolution. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
But the salons were far from being centers of "plain living and high thinking." "Supper is one of the four ends of man," said Mme. du Deffand; and it must be admitted that the great doctrine of human equality was rather luxuriously cradled. The supreme science of the Frenchwomen was a knowledge of men. Understanding their tastes, their ambitions, their interests, their vanities, and their weaknesses, they played upon this complicated human instrument with the skill of an artist who knows how to touch the lightest note, to give the finest shade of expression, to bring out the fullest harmony. In their efforts to raise social life to the most perfect and symmetrical proportions, the pleasures of sense and the delicate illusions of color were not forgotten. They were as noted for their good cheer, for their attention to the elegances that strike the eye, the accessories that charm the taste, as for their intelligence, their tact, and their conversation.
But one must look for the power and the fascination of the French salons in their essential spirit and the characteristics of the Gallic race, rather than in any definite and tangible form. The word simply suggests habitual and informal gatherings of men and women of intelligence and good breeding in the drawing-room, for conversation and amusement. The hostess who opened her house for these assemblies selected her guests with discrimination, and those who had once gained an entree were always welcome. In studying the character of the noted salons, one is struck with a certain unity that could result only from natural growth about a nucleus of people bound together by many ties of congeniality and friendship. Society, in its best sense, does not signify a multitude, nor can a salon be created on commercial principles. This spirit of commercialism, so fatal to modern social life, was here conspicuously absent. It was not at all a question of debit and credit, of formal invitations to be given and returned. Personal values were regarded. The distinctions of wealth were ignored and talent, combined with the requisite tact, was, to a certain point, the equivalent of rank. If rivalries existed, they were based upon the quality of the guests rather than upon material display. But the modes of entertainment were as varied as the tastes and abilities of the women who presided. Many of the well-known salons were open daily. Sometimes there were suppers, which came very much into vogue after the petits soupers of the regent. The Duchesse de Choiseul, during the ministry of her husband, gave a supper every evening excepting on Friday and Sunday. At a quarter before ten the steward glanced through the crowded rooms, and prepared the table for all who were present. The Monday suppers at the Temple were thronged. On other days a more intimate circle gathered round the tables, and the ladies served tea after the English fashion. A few women of rank and fortune imitated these princely hospitalities, but it was the smaller coteries which presented the most charming and distinctive side of French society. It was not the luxurious salon of the Duchesse du Maine, with its whirl of festivities and passion for esprit, nor that of the Temple, with its brilliant and courtly, but more or less intellectual, atmosphere; nor that of the clever and critical Marechale de Luxembourg, so elegant, so witty, so noted in its day—which left the most permanent traces and the widest fame. It was those presided over by women of lesser rank and more catholic sympathies, of whom Voltaire aptly said that "the decline of their beauty revealed the dawn of their intellect;" women who had the talent, tact, and address to gather about them a circle of distinguished men who have crowned them with a luminous ray from their own immortality. The names of Mme. de Lambert, Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. Necker, Mme. de Stael, and others of lesser note, call up visions of a society which the world is not likely to see repeated.
Not the least among the attractions of this society was its charming informality. A favorite custom in the literary and philosophical salons was to give dinners, at an early hour, two or three times a week. In the evening a larger company assembled without ceremony. A popular man of letters, so inclined, might dine Monday and Wednesday with Mme. Geoffrin, Tuesday with Mme. Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday and Thursday with Mme. d'Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other salons afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de Lespinasse, and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many of these gatherings he would be certain to find readings, recitations, comedies, music, games, or some other form of extemporized amusement. The popular mania for esprit, for literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through the social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and parlor readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through the society of today. It had numberless shades and gradations, with the usual train of pretentious follies which in every age furnish ample material for the pen of the satirist, but it was a spontaneous expression of the marvelously quickened taste for things of the intellect. The woman who improvised a witty verse, invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang a popular air, or acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy grace into the discussion of the last political problem, or listened with the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon her smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la Popeliniere the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions seems to have been continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the morning, afterward a grand dinner, at five o'clock a light repast, at nine a supper, and later a musicale. One is inclined to wonder if there was ever any retirement, any domesticity in this life so full of movement and variety.
But it was really the freedom, wit, and brilliancy of the conversation that constituted the chief attraction of the salons. Men were in the habit of making the daily round of certain drawing rooms, just as they drop into clubs in our time, sure of more or less pleasant discussion on whatever subject was uppermost at the moment, whether it was literature, philosophy, art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word of their friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon the surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or gay, with the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that make the charm of social intercourse.
The unwritten laws that governed this brilliant world were drawn from the old ideas of chivalry, upon which the etiquette of the early salons was founded. The fine morality and gentle virtues which were the bases of these laws had lost their force in the eighteenth century, but the manners which grew out of them had passed into a tradition. If morals were in reality not pure, nor principles severe, there was at least the vanity of posing as models of good breeding. Honor was a religion; politeness and courtesy were the current, though by no means always genuine, coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood in the place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty, ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the general harmony. Evil passions might exist, but it was agreeable to hide them, and enmities slept under a gracious smile. noblesse OBLIGE was the motto of these censors of manners; and as it is perhaps a Gallic trait to attach greater importance to reputation than to character, this sentiment was far more potent than conscience. Vice in many veiled forms might be tolerated, but that which called itself good society barred its doors against those who violated the canons of good taste, which recognize at least the outward semblance of many amiable virtues. Sincerity certainly was not one of these virtues; but no one was deceived, as it was perfectly well understood that courteous forms meant little more than the dress which may or may not conceal a physical defect, but is fit and becoming. It was not best to inquire too closely into character and motives, so long as appearances were fair and decorous. How far the individual may be affected by putting on the garb of qualities and feelings that do not exist may be a question for the moralist; but this conventional untruth has its advantages, not only in reducing to a minimum the friction of social machinery, and subjecting the impulses to the control of the will, but in the subtle influence of an ideal that is good and true, however far one may in reality fall short of it.
Imagine a society composed of a leisure class with more or less intellectual tastes; men eminent in science and letters; men less eminent, whose success depended largely upon their social gifts, and clever women supremely versed in the art of pleasing, who were the intelligent complements of these men; add a universal talent for conversation, a genius for the amenities of social life, habits of daily intercourse, and manners formed upon an ideal of generosity, amiability, loyalty, and urbanity; consider, also, the fact that the journals and the magazines, which are so conspicuous a feature of modern life, were practically unknown; that the salons were centers in which the affairs of the world were discussed, its passing events noted—and the power of these salons may be to some extent comprehended.
The reason, too, why it is idle to dream of reproducing them today on American soil will be readily seen. The forms may be repeated, but the vitalizing spirit is not there. We have no leisure class that finds its occupation in this pleasant daily converse. Our feverish civilization has not time for it. We sit in our libraries and scan the news of the world, instead of gathering it in the drawing rooms of our friends. Perhaps we read and think more, but we talk less, and conversation is a relaxation rather than an art. The ability to think aloud, easily and gracefully, is not eminently an Anglo-Saxon gift, though there are many individual exceptions to this limitation. Our social life is largely a form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a unity, nor an expression of our best intellectual life; this seeks other channels. Men are immersed in business and politics, and prefer the easy, less exacting atmosphere of the club. The woman who aspires to hold a salon is confronted at the outset by this formidable rival. She is a queen without a kingdom, presiding over a fluctuating circle without homogeneity, and composed largely of women—a fact in itself fatal to the true esprit de societe. It is true we have our literary coteries, but they are apt to savor too much of the library; we take them too seriously, and bring into them too strong a flavor of personality. We find in them, as a rule, little trace of the spontaneity, the variety, the wit, the originality, the urbanity, the polish, that distinguished the French literary salons of the last century. Even in their own native atmosphere, the salons exist no longer as recognized institutions. This perfected flower of a past civilization has faded and fallen, as have all others. The salon in its widest sense, and in some modified form, may always constitute a feature of French life, but the type has changed, and its old glory has forever departed. In a foreign air, even in its best days, it could only have been an exotic, flourishing feebly, and lacking both color and fragrance. As a copy of past models it is still less likely to be a living force. Society, like government, takes its spirit and its vitality from its own soil.
The Marquise de Lambert—Her "Bureau d'Esprit"—Fontenelle—Advice to her Son—Wise Thoughts on the Education of Women—Her love of Consideration—Her Generosoty—Influence of Women upon the Academy.
While the gay suppers of the regent were giving a new but by no means desirable tone to the great world of Paris, and chasing away the last vestiges of the stately decorum that marked the closing days of Louis XIV, and Mme. de Maintenon, there was one quiet drawing room which still preserved the old traditions. The Marquise de Lambert forms a connecting link between the salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leaning to the side of the latter, intellectually, but retaining much of the finer morality that distinguished the best life of the former. Her attitude towards the disorders of the regency was similar to that which Mme. de Rambouillet had held towards the profligate court of Henry IV, though her salon never attained the vogue of its model. It lacked a certain charm of youth and freshness perhaps, but it was one of the few in which gambling was not permitted, and in which conversation had not lost its serious and critical flavor.
If Mme. de Lambert were living today she would doubtless figure openly as an author. Her early tastes pointed clearly in that direction. She was inclined to withdraw from the amusements of her age, and to pass her time in reading, or in noting down the thoughts that pleased her. The natural bent of her mind was towards moral reflections. In this quality she resembled Mme. de Sable, but she was a woman of greater breadth and originality, though less fine and exclusive. She wrote much in later life on educational themes, for the benefit of her children and for her own diversion; but she yielded to the prejudices of her age against the woman author, and her works were given to the world only through the medium of friends to whom she had read or lent them. "Women," she said, "should have towards the sciences a modesty almost as sensitive as towards vices." But in spite of her studied observance of the conventional limits which tradition still assigned to her sex, her writings suggest much more care than is usually bestowed upon the amusement of an idle hour. If, like many other women of her time, she wrote only for her friends, she evidently doubted their discretion in the matter of secrecy.
As the child who inherited the rather formidable name of Anne Theresa de Marguenat de Coucelles was born during the last days of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she doubtless cherished many illusions regarding this famous salon. Its influence was more or less apparent when the time came to open one of her own. Her father was a man of feeble intellect, who died early; but her mother, a woman more noted for beauty than for decorum, was afterward married to Bachaumont, a well-known bel esprit, who appreciated the gifts of the young girl, and brought her within a circle of wits who did far more towards forming her impressible mind than her light and frivolous mother had done. She was still very young when she became the wife of the Marquis de Lambert, an officer of distinction, to whose interests she devoted her talents and her ample fortune. The exquisitely decorated Hotel Lambert, on the Ile Saint Louis, still retains much of its old splendor, though the finest masterpieces of Lebrun and Lesueur which ornamented its walls have found their way to the Louvre. "It is a home made for a sovereign who would be a philosopher," wrote Voltaire to Frederick the Great. In these magnificent salons, Mme. de Lambert, surrounded by every luxury that wealth and taste could furnish, entertained a distinguished company. She carried her lavish hospitalities also to Luxembourg, where she adorned the position of her husband, who was governor of that province for a short period before his death in 1686. After this event, she was absorbed for some years in settling his affairs, which were left in great disorder, and in protecting the fortunes of her two children. This involved her in long and vexatious lawsuits which she seems to have conducted with admirable ability. "There are so few great fortunes that are innocent," she writes to her son, "that I pardon your ancestors for not leaving you one. I have done what I could to put in order our affairs, in which there is left to women only the glory of economy." It was not until the closing years of her life, from 1710 to 1733, that her social influence was at its height. She was past sixty, at an age when the powers of most women are on the wane, when her real career began. She fitted up luxurious apartments in the Palais Mazarin, employing artists like Watteau upon the decorations, and expending money as lavishly as if she had been in the full springtide of life, instead of the golden autumn. Then she gathered about her a choice and lettered society, which seemed to be a world apart, a last revival of the genius of the seventeenth century, and quite out of the main drift of the period. "She was born with much talent," writes one of her friends; "she cultivated it by assiduous reading; but the most beautiful flower in her crown was a noble and luminous simplicity, of which, at sixty years, she took it into her head to divest herself. She lent herself to the public, associated with the Academicians, and established at her house a bureau d'esprit." Twice a week she gave dinners, which were as noted for the cuisine as for the company, and included, among others, the best of the forty Immortals. Here new works were read or discussed, authors talked of their plans, and candidates were proposed for vacant chairs in the Academy. "The learned and the lettered formed the dominant element," says a critic of the time. "They dined at noon, and the rest of the day was passed in conversations, in readings, in literary and scientific discussions. No card tables; it was in ready wit that each one paid his contribution." Ennui never came to shed its torpors over these reunions, of which the Academy furnished the most distinguished guests, in company with grands seigneurs eager to show themselves as worthy by intelligence as by rank to play a role in these gatherings of the intellectual elite. Fontenelle was the presiding genius of this salon, and added to its critical and literary spirit a tinge of philosophy. This gallant savant, who was adored in society as "a man of rare and exquisite conversation," has left many traces of himself here. No one was so sparkling in epigram; no one talked so beautifully of love, of which he knew nothing; and no one talked to delightfully of science, of which he knew a great deal. But he thought that knowledge needed a seasoning of sentiment to make it palatable to women. In his "Pluralite des Mondes," a singular melange of science and sentiment, which he had written some years before and dedicated to a daughter of the gay and learned Mme. de La Sabliere, he talks about the stars, to la belle marquise, like a lover; but his delicate flatteries are the seasoning of serious truths. It was the first attempt to offer science sugar-coated, and suggests the character of this coterie, which prided itself upon a discreet mingling of elevated thought with decorous gaiety. The world moves. Imagine a female undergraduate of Harvard or Columbia taking her astronomy diluted with sentiment!
President Henault, the life-long friend of Mme. du Deffand, whose light criticism of a pure-minded woman might be regarded as rather flattering than otherwise, says: "It was apparent that Mme. de Lambert touched upon the time of the Hotel de Rambouillet; she was a little affected, and had not the force to overstep the limits of the prude and the precieuse. Her salon was the rendevous of celebrated men.... In the evening the scenery changed as well as the actors. A more elegant world assembled at the suppers. The Marquise took pleasure in receiving people who were agreeable to each other. Her tone, however, did not vary, and she preached la belle galanterie to some who went a little beyond it. I was of the two parties; I dogmatized in the morning and sang in the evening." The two eminent Greek Scholars, La Motte and Mme. Dacier, held spirited discussions on the merits of Homer, which came near ending in permanent ill-feeling, but the amiable hostess gave a dinner for them, "they drank to the health of the poet, and all was forgotten." The war between the partizans of the old and the new was as lively then as it is today. "La Motte and Fontenelle prefer the moderns," said the caustic Mme. du Deffand; "but the ancients are dead, and the moderns are themselves." The names of Sainte-Aulaire, de Sacy, Mairan, President Henault, and others equally scholarly and witty, suffice to indicate the quality of the conversation, which treated lightly and gracefully of the most serious things. The Duchesse du Maine and her clever companion, Mlle. de Launay were often among the guests; also the beautiful and brilliant Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon, whom some poetical critic has styled "the last flower of the seventeenth century." Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux, characterized this salon by a witty quatrain: